Yukon River Canoe Expedition

Whitehorse · Canada

Moderate18 daysNorth America~£1,200 est.

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Overview

Paddling the Yukon from Whitehorse to Dawson City is 715 kilometres of moving meditation through the landscape of the Klondike Gold Rush - the same water thirty thousand stampeders floated in 1898. The river does much of the work, sliding along at eight to ten kilometres an hour, which leaves your attention free for what matters: moose hock-deep in the sloughs, black bears on gravel bars, bald eagles in every third cottonwood. Lake Laberge's fifty windbound kilometres open the trip; Fort Selkirk, a Northern Tutchone settlement and trading post abandoned in the 1950s and beautifully preserved, is its historical heart; Five Finger Rapids provides the one genuine pulse-raiser - take the right-hand channel, as the sternwheelers did. June and July give near-24-hour daylight and the fiercest mosquitoes (bring a head net and mean it); August brings dark enough nights for aurora and the first autumn gold. The river is remote but forgiving for competent canoe campers, with wind on Laberge, bear-camp discipline and cold water the real risks. Canoe hire from Whitehorse outfitters, the shuttle back from Dawson, food and camp kit for 16 to 18 days runs about £1,200.