Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Yukon Brewing or Bust

This morning I woke up to what I thought were water droplets on my tent, but once I examined them closer I found they had actually frozen! I did my best to shake them off, and after filling up and getting breakfast I was off northward. The road followed a lake, crossed some rivers, but was mostly through either burnt or thinning forests. As I move north, the trees begin to look more like Dr. Seuss trees, very scraggly and thin, definitely responding to the harsher temperatures and weather. I saw some Caribou for the first time! Next up is Reindeer and hopefully a bear at some point.

Eventually I arrived at the 37 junction with the Alaska Highway. I asked the gas station attendant if there was any good biking trails nearby, and she said there was a "wicked" trail near Lucky Lake, about a 20 mile detour in the wrong direction, which sounded fine by me. It turned out that this trail was only 2.2 km long, and after beginning to take my bike off I decided I'd just run it instead.

Turns out this was a good choice, the trail was sandy until the snow took over all the way until a river. I was being overly optimistic by wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I ran through as much snow as I could but eventually it was too deep and I had to walk. I saw lots of interesting footprints, one was likely a moose but I'm not sure. The river was almost entirely frozen. It looked like a bunch of icebergs had a traffic jam and the water was just flowing around them all.

A photo posted by Byron Young (@byron.a.young) on

Once I got back to the junction I found some wifi and discovered that there was a brewery in Whitehorse called Yukon Brewing, but it was very far away and if I hurried I could make it there before they closed. I booked it the entire way there, and ended up covering a lot of ground. I should put more breweries off until the last minute. I felt a little bad though, my first long stint on the Alaska Highway, and plenty of good views but I was in too much of a rush to stop.

A photo posted by Byron Young (@byron.a.young) on

The brewery was worth the effort though, I ended up mixing a six pack and got a lot of good advice from the bartender. Unfortunately the hot spring/campground I was hoping to check out was closed, so it might have to wait until my journey back south. As a result of it being closed, I was traveling north later than I usually like to. I ended up stopping to make dinner at a river, and then moved on another 15 miles or so to camp. I figured a bear would be less likely to want to get into my trunk if he hadn't just gotten lured there by dinner smells,

I was hoping to find a rest area, but as the sun was going down I decided to just stop on the road and pitch a tent in a field. Turned out to be one of my most scenic camping spots, hopefully a Mounty doesn't come to shove me out of it!

A photo posted by Byron Young (@byron.a.young) on


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