July 9th to August 22nd 2008
A journey to Alaska and Canada (Yukon and Northern Territory) with Trek America followed by travel from Juneau (Alaska) to Port Hardy (Victoria Island Canada) by myself through the Inside Passage and then through British Columbia and Alberta (Canada) with Trek America
The original page using Flikr photos may be found HERE
The journey is split up as follows.
Yukon and Northern Territory
The Dempster Highway and Inuvik
Denali (for wildlife photos)
Plants seen along the way.The Inside Passage
Admiralty Island (for Bear photos)
Parks and Peaks
Fraser Valley and Yoho National Park
The Photographs of the Parks and Peaks are mainly from friends following a drowned Canon G9 and a faulty Canon EOS card
Our journey started in Anchorage with a drive to Seward. Most of the group spent the day here on a cruise into the Kenai National Park.
Between Anchorage and Seward
Wild Life Park near Hope
Seward and Kenai National Park
From Seward we drove via a wild life refuge to Whittier to board the ferry to Valdez. In Valdez some of us spent the day on a Kayak trip to the waters off the Columbia Glacier.
Prince William Sound
Kayaking near the Columbian Glacier
Road to McCarthy
This original frontier town still retains much of its old character. The abandoned copper mining town of Kennicott was interesting and the nearby Root Glacier enabled some of us to do some ice-climbing.
To the Canadian Border and on to Whitehorse
We drove back down the McCarthy Highway and on to Tok for a night before continuing to the Canadian border. From the border we drove to Kluane Lake to camp and walk the Sheep Creek Hike.
The Dempster Highway was built between 1959 and 1979. The road is non tarmaced for the 417miles from near Dawson City to Inuvik. We had to camp once in each direction. The journey requires two ferry journeys.
This town at the end of the Dempster highway has some interesting buildings. Because it is above the Arctic Circle and there is Perma Frost present throughout the year the buildings need to be built on short stilts.
Some of us took a flight to this small town situated on the Baring Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean.
What is a PINGO?
Every few years, a new Pingo begins to form in a recently drained lake. The sandy ground beneath a lake is unfrozen but surrounded by permafrost. Once the lake drains, the permafrost begins to spread into the unfrozen sediments as they become exposed to the frigid winter temperatures. Water in the saturated sand freezes and expands, pushing excess water ahead of the freezing ground.
As the circle of permafrost inches toward the centre of the lake, the excess water comes under increasing pressure. Trapped between the continuous permafrost below and the much weaker freezing crust of the lake bed above, the pressurized water finally pushes the lake bed up and up and up. When the lake completely freezes the Pingo stops growing. Ibyuk, the tallest pingo in Canada, near Tuktoyaktuk is growing at about two centimetres per year, indicating that the basin of Ibyuk Lake is not yet frozen through even though it is probably more than a thousand years old.
This town is still in a time warp from the days of the Klondike Gold Rush it was fascinating.
From Dawson City we drove along the top of the world highway through the clouds and across once more into Alaska. We drove to the town of Chicken before camping along the Denali Highway. We travelled for some of the time alongside the Alaska Oil Pipeline.
In Denali National Park we were able to take several bus rides into the park. On my bus we were lucky to see the big five, Bear, Caribou, Moose, Dall Sheep and Wolves. We also saw Foxes, a badger, willow ptarmigan, raven, golden eagle and common loon.
After an excellent time in Denali we drove to Anchorage to finish our trip around Alaska and Canada. Most of the way back we were privileged to have good views of Mount McKinley.
After finishing the Alaskan Yukon Explorer with Trek America I flew from Anchorage to the Alaskan capitol Juneau.
In Juneau I visited the Mendenhall Glacier and flew to Pack Creek on Admiralty Island to see Bears catching Salmon.
Mendenhall Glacier
From Juneau I took the ferry down through the inside passage to Prince Rupert and Port Hardy on Vancouver Island and from there flew to Seattle via Vancouver.
Parks and Peaks -Most of the following photos were taken by Corinna, Louise, Jo or David
This was a trip from Seattle to the Canadian Rockies and across to Vancouver Island before returning to Seattle.
Fraser Valley and Yoho National Park
