Bright New World

We made it to town! 10 hours of travel in the dark, 160 miles/ 255 km down the Yukon and over the mountains, 5 glaciers and 2 lakes of overflow to traverse, rolled the new machine twice, bust the side windshield but we had to get to the Post Office and we made it!

If only I’d remembered the fucking PO Box key. 

"What do you mean, it's not there?" said Neil, with a face like an angry emoticon.

By lucky, lucky chance, I had brought the letter from Canada Post assigning us our PO box in case we needed it at the bank. We have no utilities here so it is one of the few things I have with proof of our address.

I said “I’m sure this will be fine,” hoping very much that it would be. 

Nice easy journey- Neil walking a glacier in the dark to see if it's safe to cross

Actually, they did kindly give us our mail, even though they shouldn’t really, and thereby perhaps saved our marriage.

Tea stop

Temps have got so warm here (we’ve been above freezing twice) we thought we’d take advantage and try to make it town. And we needed to run in our brand new Skidoo. We’ve been fighting over who’s going to drive it since we collected it from our pal’s downriver.

Oops

Neil has rolled it twice and already broken bits off it so I think I’ve got the upper hand with that. It is more tippy than our other machines. Snowmachine design, for those who don’t know and probably couldn’t give a toss, has got higher. Our 2 twenty year old Polaris hug the ground like little dodgem cars.

Too cute, both of them

There is nothing cute about this beast. It looks like a Transformer and floats over jumble ice like it's riding sugar cubes. But the higher centre of gravity gives it less stability as Neil has perfectly demonstrated. Twice. I would suggest he gets stabilisers but after the PO box key-thing I’ll keep my mouth shut.

Right way up for once

At least it should be run-in now. I spun it a full 360 on some glare ice, Neil’s done two commando rolls so we just need to loop the loop and we’ll have driven it on every possible dimension in the first week of ownership.

We also wanted to get up into the mountains to see the sun. It’s been a long time gone from here. It’s dark by 4pm and stays that way til 11am so we thought the open hills and a glimpse of our radiant friend would be just the ticket. That didn’t quite go as planned either.

Enjoying the misty mountain views

The 5 glaciers we have to cross have wept inconsolably in the warm weather. We crossed glaciers numbers 1, 2 and 3 fine but as it was pitch black I didn’t see glacier number 4 until I was already on it and sliding sideways into a pond. I leapt off the machine as I felt it bust down through the ice and ran beside it, knee deep in icy water, and leapt back on as it reached solid ice.

Neil had crossed above me where the glacier was still frozen and stayed dry. He said “That was ok wasn’t it. All still frozen.” He hadn’t even noticed my feat of daring-do.

Glacier number 4 in daylight

The river hasn’t frozen yet outside town so we had to take a winding route up through the marvellously named Lousetown. During the Gold Rush all the prostitutes and other undesirables were shifted across the Klondike River in an effort to clean up the tent city of Dawson. Bet it’s still a tough sell for the local realtors.

Dawson, just the other side of this lake on the Klondike

There was overflow everywhere, and the trail at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon looked positively scary. With an open lead just below it and a foot of water on top, we played safe and went round and over the bridge.

As we got off the machines on Front Street I thought, what the fuck do I look like? Aside from the undyed hair, now a grey and brown two-tone and not brushed since the leaves were on the birch trees, I was sporting my WW2 Swedish army trousers. 

The waistband is so high it rubs my nipples so I’ve rolled it down and sewn a velcro tab across the front to keep them up. Over those outlandish fashion statements I was wearing my snow bibs with broken flies that I lace up with an old bit of ribbon. 

As Neil said, it’s the rather swish, but heavily-stained brown leather handbag that sets the look off. Always accessories, darlings. 

The mail we needed didn’t arrive, they couldn’t give us an appointment at the bank and there were no staples for the staple gun at the hardware store so it was all beginning to feel a bit pointless and then we found this.

Will you look at the state of her

I believe it is called Christmas Park. It is fully inflatable and the festive figurines lean, tilt and sag in the breeze like a bunch of drunken sailors on a Saturday night. It’s marvellous. 

A pump somewhere inflates and deflates them so they bulge at you and then wilt away and then bulge again. We were entranced and could have spent the whole afternoon there if hadn’t been for the whole 5 hour drive thing and trails getting soggier by the hour. 

Love that Santa behind, totally hammered

Having missed our absent friend we decided to ride up top again a few days later. We found him in full blazing glory, perched on the southern mountains.

We followed an unused track to an old asbestos mine and put the new machine to the test with trail breaking, and then snowshoed up the highest hill in this part of the range.

I disturbed a small band of caribou near the top and after a bit of curious staring, they decided to play safe and trotted away in that odd bandy-legged run they use for a medium-fast exit.

You can just about make them out

The view was spectacular, Tombstone Mountains to the north, the Ogilvie Range spreading into Alaska to the west. Shimmering white summits, clouded valleys and misty sunbeams for ever and ever. Our world is wide open again. We can get to town, we have our new machine.

Poor Homer’s just closed with a clang. We shut our dog in the pen whilst we were out. I’m glad we did, as that evening, a large pack of wolves came down the creek, had a little social on the beach and went off up river. 

Wolves

Had we left him on his chain in our absence they would have been pleased to find a tasty snack attached to a post in our yard.

"Yes, Miss Louise, wolf tracks. You better stay close in case you get scared"

They put a nice trail in up the creek for us and we skied it this morning. Homer usually bounds through the undergrowth out of sight but this time he stayed so close he almost stood on my skis.

Yikes! What's that over there?

At least we have some great films to show him. I think this is our most hilarious effort so far. 

It starts well with some amazing scenery but then I realise the impossibility of doing a 360 panorama whilst wearing snowshoes. Neil notices he’s in shot, panics and freezes like a frozen lemon. The ending is the best bit. I nearly fell over so the camera does a double take and swings back on Neil as if to say- Who the fuck was that!?

Neil took a lot of footage too but didn’t notice his shadow was in all of them and he had his mitt over the lens.

Trail disappears into our moat

We are going to try to get our mail from town again next week. The glacier in front of the property has become a moat. It’s all very grand but as we don’t have a drawbridge it is getting inconvenient. So I’m not sure how well this trip will go and don't hold your breath for any decent videos.