London preparations for our return to the Yukon

We are in London (population 8,674,000) planning one of the greatest annual challenges for bush-dwellers, the big shop. Our cabin is off the road system and 50 miles from our nearest shop, the General Store in tiny Dawson City (population 1300). There's no Co-op round the corner. 

River running with ice and untravelable

Bush shopping list

During autumn and spring the river isn’t negotiable by boat or snow machine so with no road access, the nearest shop may as well be on the moon. When possible the journey can range from being unpleasant to life threatening. So once a year, armed with a shopping list that spans some 4 pages of foolscap, I buy most things we need for the next 6-12 months. Quite a challenge for someone who is used to skipping between Lidl, Superdrug and the 24 hour Tesco on an almost daily basis in London.

Our notional boat

This year’s list (see below) includes a truck and a boat with 40 hp engine and all the accessories to make it river worthy, most of which I struggle to imagine. Paddles? Fuel tank? Barrel of rum? I’m so vague I refer to it as “our notional boat”, not helpful for acquiring an actual one. We have lived four winters in the Yukon wilderness but this is our first summer. The lack of snow and cold brings a whole new set of challenges.

A boat like the one we're imagining with me in my sou'wester. Can you spot me?

Some other things

Other things we need: summer clothes, two guns (rifle and pump action shotgun), shampoo, wire fencing for wolf-proof dog pen, vanilla essence, 150 pounds of flour, athlete's foot spray, beans (that's 50 pounds dried not tins of Heinz), as much gas as we can haul, tea bags in the same amount, spare chains for chainsaws and some nice- I’ve underlined nice, hand cream (which is the best I can hope for in terms of a treat.)

Loading up the rental car at Walmart, Whitehorse

I get the list in better order before hitting the shops of Whitehorse, the Yukon Territory’s capital. From our cabin it's 50 miles up river and then 330 miles by unpaved road, and the only place we can get all our supplies.

We have no truck so these lovely guys haul our shopping to Dawson. 

Sitting here in London, the list feels like some childhood game, an adventure into space.  

More boat anxiety

I've stopped waking up in a cold sweat at 3am fretting about boats and their confusing accessories by studying youtube. There are videos on how to launch a boat, maintenance, common engine problems but our knowledge is so lacking it is hard to find clips that are basic enough. It's worrying for two people who will shortly launch themselves 50 miles down the Yukon River unaided. However if we are too inept we will not be able to get our notional boat into the river. We may never make it to our cabin, and have to live in one of Dawson City’s grubby hotels for the next 8 months.

Guns

Guns is the other worry. Not so much guns more bears. Arriving at home could prove dangerous, if not fatal, if we are unarmed. We left in early April. Bears wake up around May. Despite the mediaeval looking bearboards we made and hammered over our windows and door (each with hundreds of three-inch nails protruding through) it is possible that one may have moved in.

Bearboards and mothballs -another bear repellant. Yes, really.

Bear anxiety
We had to leave food in the cabin and of course there is all that poo in the outhouse (see footnote) to eat. Human poo is a great draw for bears, apparently. So we may have a horridly messy Goldilocks type situation on our hands. It will be a tense encounter and one we’ll have to win if we don’t want to sit in our notional boat forever.

Possession and Acquisition Licence, lack of

In order to buy guns, we must have a licence. Three months on, we are still waiting for government officials to check our documents and send them to our little PO Box. Canada has lots of government posts to maintain and very few people to inflict legislation on. So everything, not just dangerous things like guns, everything must be licenced and regulated. Even the bears are regulated, they just don’t know it.

Arriving at our home without firearms has becoming another “wake up at 3am in a cold sweat thought.” Rather than catastrophise, I remember that we may get our notional boat stuck on a gravel bar and become hypothermic, or simply sink it, and die of our own ineptitude.

Work

But never mind all that. What I should be doing now is ingesting a 25 page PDF brief for a training day with a major accountancy firm which I will be facilitating in two day’s time. Less important maybe but, whilst here in London, more urgent.
Footnote. The “outhouse” is our outdoor toilet. A hole in the ground with a seat over it, encased in flimsy plywood. I might be tempted to give further delightful details in another post, but for now please understand it is not an “outbuilding” that we have filled with shit (as someone once thought).