Hiking along the Yukon River to Canyon City at Whitehorse
Our hiking group used to do outings on Saturday mostly, but as the group is expanding, so is the variety of times and places. One of the members suggested a few days ago that dinner-time hikes might be nice, so on Thursday, 5 of us with 3 dogs met at 4:30 to hike along the Yukon River to Canyon City and back.
This was actually the second hike of the day for the dogs and I but I’ll tell about about the first one in the next post – that will make sense when I post it 🙂
The Miles Canyon Road is gated at the Alaska Highway in winter, and despite what’s going on this year, it does snow some years, so we walked down to the river from the highway. You can see an interactive map here (opens in a new window).
Our first sight of the Yukon River, towards the bottom of the narrowest part of Miles Canyon.
At the last curve before you drop down to the small parking lot, the low ridge ahead hides this view…
And on that ridge, some Prairie crocuses were a most welcome sight 🙂
Looking upriver at Miles Canyon.
I was very surprised by the very low water level – I saw an article a few days later that the levels are at record lows.
We chose to take the Lower Canyon City Trail that runs right along the river, for the views. It has lots of ups and downs.
The trail is busy enough that this was a leashed walk for Bella and Tucker and the other dog, Lucky Marshall.
What a wonderful way to spend an evening!
Once we reached Canyon City at 5:40 pm, it was time for a drink!
Canyon City grew up around the North West Mounted Police post where people headed for the Klondike gold fields had to stop and either prove they were capable of running the rapids ahead, or put everything on one of the two tramways that were built around the rapids.
There’s little at the site now, but interpretive signage and a restored tramway cart give visitors an idea of what the place was like.
Another person with a dog came along, and the 4 dogs all had a great play. I’m always really pleased to see little Tucker get right in with the bigger dogs – he’s certainly had some experiences to make him wary of doing it.
On the return walk, Sue and I chose to take the upper trail, which is the route of one of the tramways. The next photo is looking back towards Canyon City.
The next photo shows a section of the trail as it drops back down to the Robert Lowe Suspension Bridge that we crossed the river on.
The Robert Lowe Suspension Bridge, and an interpretive sign about the otters and beavers that may be seen.
We got back to our vehicles just before 7:00, with everyone agreeing that these dinner-time hikes were a great idea.
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