Great job! I bet they saw a lot af amazing sights!
Thank you. Well, yes, the Yukon is full of amazing sights, not least of which is the river itself. It is big, really big. Everything is big. Nothing down here really compares, perhaps the St Lawrence River for sheer size. But we trained on the St Lawrence and it certainly is not very similar.
We went up with a 6-person crew in a 28 ft wood-strip voyageur canoe, driven all the way from NYS by the team captain. He picked up one crew member to help with the drive from Edmonton. The rest of us flew to Whitehorse. The team had all arrived by Thursday, and met with 2 other NY tandem canoe crews. One of those crewmembers didn't make it - he went into gall bladder surgery the day he was to have left NY. The partner now there is a good friend of all of us and we didn't want to see him not paddle the race. As luck would have it, another larger canoe was available in Whitehorse. A 34 ft carbon graphite canoe that had won the YRQ (the "short" 460 mile race) against us in 2008. So now we had a 7-person crew and plenty of room for all the required equipment and food. The race organizers required enough self-sufficient supplies, including 20 kg (44 pounds) of food per person to last potentially 3 weeks in the wilderness. We knew we could finish in a week in good weather, but no matter, 7x44 pounds was what we must carry. Oh, and it all had to be in certified bear-resistant containers. We spent several hours reconfiguring the side/side sliding seats of the new boat, polishing it, and did 3 practice runs near Whitehorse to test the boat and placement of gear. The long list of required gear was checked and food was weighed at check-in Sunday.
Race start was set sailboat style.... there was a start line on the river and a not-earlier-than-time of 11:00 Monday morning to cross the line without penalty. Problem is, you can't really paddle to hold upstream very effectively against the 5-6 mph current. On the near shore there is a shallow shoal slowing the water where most boats gathered. We alone managed to paddle our big boat upstream in the shallows so we could do a rendezvous turn over the shallows into the fast current in time to arrive at the start on time, and at speed. I calculated that at 6 mph a tenth of a mile takes a minute to cover. We paddled upstream .18 miles and began our turn over the gravel with 2 minutes to go. It worked perfectly... we crossed the line just 10 seconds late paddling at 12mph while the other boats sprinted behind us across river to get into the current from a dead stop. Our nice lead wouldn't last against the 3 tandem Brit kayaks, but it was a fun way to begin.
Cheers from our "bank staff" (pit crew) greeted us at the 12 mile mark at the Takhini River junction, one of the very few viewing places available on the entire route. Twenty-one miles after the start we entered Lake Laberge (of Cremation of Sam McGee fame) with a hefty tailwind. Already we had seen a dozen bald eagles watching us from the river shore. We had 30 miles of open water with whitecaps and big rollers to navigate. Most (all?) the other boats took a slightly longer path next to shore, but we were confident in the big boat to head out into the open. Oh, and even at the end of July the glacial melt water temperature is barely 40 degrees. I took a couple of random big waves on me over the bow, but otherwise we stayed dry.
By the end of the lake some 5 hours later we were happy to re-enter the river, one of the prettiest river sections of all. The water to this point is deep blue-green and clear. Many hair-pin turns in fast current and 200-300 ft high sandy banks cut through the rough terrain. Now in late evening we could eat our dinner. The "voyageur advantage" meant one person could work the stove to heat water for the load of home-dehydrated food I had prepared while the others are still paddling. We ate really well this way, sitting out 2 paddlers at a time to gain nourishment. Our short night rest periods could be reserved exclusively for setting up tents and sleeping.
At mile 85 the Teslin River joins the flow, bringing the first load of muddy silt that only gets worse and ever thicker as other rivers add their glacial load of silt. We collected 5 gallons of clear water just prior to the Teslin. Later we would use a chemical treatment to congeal and settle the silt 5 gallons at a time.
Soon it was time to start looking for a decent camping spot before the mandatory 23:15 hour. We are required to stop for not less than 6 hours each night, to be verified with GPS manual "OK" transmissions from SPOT. This could be a problem, as in many places the shoreline is essentially vertical, or if not vertical then it is swampy. Neither could support any kind of campsite. We lucked out and found an actual previously used campsite on the inside of a bend. After landing and shooing away a huge porcupine, up went the tents and down went our heads. Six hour to the minute after landing we were back on the water for our first 18-hour long day.
Navigation through this upper section was not too difficult. Google Earth is more accurate than the 1950's topographic maps and GE generated waypoints serves us well to negotiate shortest distance/fastest current around thousands of islands to come.
We lost count after 20+ eagles, we saw 6 moose, 3 bear cubs, an adult bear (separately), and a black wolf.
We stopped briefly at Carmacks (200 miles) and waved/hugged our waiting staff, and again at Dawson (460 miles).
Below Dawson we encountered massive shoreline destruction caused by record spring floods and ice blocks the size of houses (now melted). At the Alaska border town of Eagle (actually 6 miles beyond the Yukon/Alaska border crossing), entire houses were ripped off foundations, islands were denuded of big spruce trees. Eagle is a required stop to show the border officer (Chuck) our passports. Chuck is a super dedicated guy, and we chatted longer than we should have.
Finally we reached the town of Circle, where the "flats" begin. Gone are the mountains and well defined river. We also began to enter thick smoke from dozens of forest fires in Alaska. The river widens to about 4 miles here. Looks more like a lake than a river amongst dozens and dozens of islands and gravel shoals. But with current! Fast current can be found, but much flows over shallow gravel. The challenge is to find the shortest path with fast current and not get hung up on gravel bars. We had to get feet wet 5 or 6 times from running aground, but were always able to walk through to deeper water in a short distance. This section of river looks nothing like you can imagine from the maps or from any previous experience elsewhere. It's actually kind of spooky because of the complete desolation and the fast water completely surrounding you for miles.
The flats continued for the next 100 miles, and didn't get much better beyond Fort Yukon. We were advised not to stop at Ft Yukon because it is the only non-dry village for hundreds of miles, and.... well bush planes regularly fly there from the dry villages. But here we were, now paddling above the Arctic Circle!
About 45 miles from the end we came upon one of the 3 kayaks ahead of us. The team was on shore (later we learned they had to stop in the middle of the day to sleep). They followed us an eighth of a mile back for the next 25 miles in what can only be called a sprint. We traveled our fastest, but they traveled faster and eventually passed us just 20 miles from the finish.
But we had a good finish, in thick smoke. Our bank staff was there to meet us at the Dalton Highway Bridge (of TV show Ice Road Trucker's fame). After a brief rest we only had 140 miles/5 hours of washboard road to Fairbanks.
What a great trip and a fantastic river. So glad to be the first canoe to cross the finish line in the first ever 1000 mile canoe race.
There's a land where the mountains are nameless
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There's a land--oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back--and I will.
- Robert William Service, Spell of the Yukon
