Denizens of the Dempster

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

EAGLE PLAINS, YUKON — The population of this settlement in the off-season is six. Eagle Plains is 30 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, and consists of a lodge, campground and gas station, and not much more.
Nevertheless, it was a welcome sight when we came over the rise and saw it waiting for us at the end of a long day’s drive. We felt like long-lost wayfarers when we pulled up to the lodge in the driving rain, with lightning flashing, thunder booming and rain pelting down on us!
The day started off in Dawson shrouded in a gloomy mist, but at least it wasn’t cold. Today was our day to head up the Dempster Highway, and we were following the advice of a number of people by deciding to leave the trailer behind; the road is just too harsh. Leaving the trailer at the campsite at Mile Zero of the Dempster was an option, and the manager said we could do it for free, but if we plugged it in, it would cost $30 a night.
We had stopped at an RV service to inquire whether the propane refrigerator would work without shore power for the week we were away. We didn’t want to lose our food, especially the nice fish we have in the freezer. The answer was that shore power was in fact necessary, but the RV service owner saved us a bundle by letting us park the trailer, plugged in for the week, for $50 total at his place, right across from the Dawson campground where we were staying. Perfect!
Once we had that detail taken care of, we headed off on our Arctic adventure. The sky was clearing at Mile Zero of the Dempster, a 29 km drive south of Dawson, when we made the turn, crossing the Klondike River and heading north. Way north!
How can I describe the Dempster? We saw so much beauty, colour, variety, vastness — it was amazing. Our first glimpse of wildlife was a ptarmigan by the side of the road, trotting along with little regard for us. We saw several more of these Arctic chickens along the way, and one of them flew off, revealing its white-tipped feathers. In winter the ptarmigan turns all white, but they are mostly brown now.
A little further on I caught sight of a badger on the side of the road. He quickly scrambled away into the bush, but it was quite a surprise. We haven’t seen a badger anywhere on this trip before.
The landscape was quite varied, with flat plains covered in shrubs or black spruce, rolling hills, sweeping mountains, carpeted with green or craggy with rocks, or some that even looked like enormous piles of gravel. There were lots of different rock formations, and beautiful spreads of purple fireweed, yellow grasses, puffy white cotton grass and soft green moss. Winding streams gurgled alongside the road, and Engineer Creek, well into the trip, was an extraordinary rusty orange colour because of the iron oxide in the rocks by the stream.
Up on the mountain were some Dall sheep, like white dots against the brown background. On one ridge we saw one climbing a precipitous path, and through the binoculars we could see it had the curved horns of a male sheep — but not completely curved around, so it was an adolescent. After watching it navigate some narrow tracks, we were amazed to see it curl up its legs and sit down on a tiny outcropping for a little nap!
The highway surface was gravel, sending up dust clouds behind us. For much of the way we felt like the only ones on the road, but every now and then we encountered other travelers. One helpful encounter was with an oncoming camper van stopped up ahead on the road. The driver flashed his headlights at us, so we figured he must have seen some wildlife. Val advanced the truck very slowly till we were across from him, and he pointed into the bush to our right. It was a grizzly bear, calmly munching on berries and leaves several yards into the bush! With the binoculars we could see that he was a fine specimen. We would never have seen him if not for the other driver.
Val caught sight of a bald eagle a few miles further on, perched high on a spruce tree. Its white head makes it stand out clearly, and the binoculars once again brought him clearly into view. At another bend in the road, I saw, by a stream, what I’m sure was a caribou, but before we could safely stop and check it out, we were down the road and it was out of view. So I’m going to say that the brown tree stump by the creek was definitely a caribou, because there’s no one to say I’m mistaken!
The animals were wonderful to see in their own habitat. And the habitat itself was absolutely breathtaking. No photograph can do justice to the Dempster’s endless stretches of mountains, wide valleys dappled in colour and huge changing skies. But we couldn’t resist capturing some anyway.