A Fall colours evening on Mount Mac at Whitehorse
The weather hasn’t been great lately, but despite the clouds, the Fall colours are getting really pretty around Whitehorse. When my friend Karla asked if I wanted to go out shooting after she got off work on Wednesday (September 6), I was in. I suggested that we take the Tracker up Mt. McIntyre (known locally as Mount Mac).
The light in my back yard that morning was lovely. Although it almost looked like a storm light when I shot the first photo, a bit of blue sky behind Golden Horn held promise.
I met Karla in town just after 5:00 pm, and we started up Mount Mac. The access road that I’ve always used has been blocked, but we soon found the new route that goes through the Lobird gravel pits. By 5:20 we were well up the mountain road.
The yellows along the lower part of the road were really nice even under the cloud cover, but it was the reds up high on the mountain that I was really looking forward to photographing.
The views quickly get to be quite stunning on the Mount Mac road. The road also very quickly gets very rough, though, and most people seem to hike the road. We saw that some vehicle had recently straddled a big rock and put a hole in their oil pan – we followed a trail of oil until their engine probably seized, and they got towed out.
There was a storm at the south end of Fish Lake. We hoped that it would stay down there so we could get a bit of walking in.
Progress up the mountain was quite slow, as we made a lot of stops for photos. The next photo was shot at 5:35, looking to the northwest over Fish Lake.
The road ahead, at 5:41.
Once you reach the top of Mount Mac, there’s an aviation navigation facility. A good 4×4 can skirt around it and continue for many miles along the ridge, down into a couple of valleys, and far beyond.
This is within a few hundred meters/yards of the Whitehorse city limits. Is it any wonder that we proudly call it “The Wilderness City”?
At 6:00, we were looking down on the Mount Sima ski area, with the Yukon River beyond.
I hadn’t brought Bella or Tucker, but Karla’s little Meeko was having a ball – she even flushed some ptarmigan a few minutes before she settled down for a photo session.
From the Mount Mac ridge, the view to the east extends to Marsh Lake, about 45 minutes southeast of Whitehorse on the Alaska Highway.
At about 6:15, we started back down the mountain. By the time we got halfway down, the rain had reached the spot where we’d been on the ridge. Perfect timing.
Our entire outing only took a couple of hours. It’s pretty amazing to be able to have an experience like that so close to home.
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