Storm-chasing in a Yukon winter
I needed some excitement yesterday, and the weather forecast for the South Klondike Highway called for snow and wind, so I figured I’d go down to do some extreme-weather photography. My daughter posted on my Facebook page last night: “Only you would take off down the highway HOPING for awful weather :p ” – yup! That decision was to some degree triggered by a truly silly segment on the TV series Gold Rush the previous night, in which they describe moving mining equipment from Portland to Dawson City “on some of the most dangerous roads in the world”. The “dead man’s curve” they talk about on Steamboat Mountain was removed about 15 years ago – I used to hate driving Steamboat in the winter, but now you hardly notice that you’re on it. Most accidents on the Alaska Highway now are caused by people going to sleep behind the wheel. I quit watching “Dangerous Drives” for the same reason – theatre became more important than facts.
Anyway, I got away just after 10:00 am, as I had to go into town on some errands first thing. When I left, the temperature was -14°C (+7°F) with a bit of wind. The visibility down at Km 124 was still quite good. I was using 2 cameras today – my old Fujifilm Finepix S1800, and the new Canon EOS 7D. In this post, the Fuji images are 990×743 pixels (the first photo being an example), the Canon ones are 990×660 pixels (the second photo, etc).
A summer day at Emerald Lake is much better 🙂
At Carcross, this sign lets drivers know whether the highway is open or not. The lights weren’t flashing, so all good 🙂
The gate that actually closes the highway is 8km further south.
Before I reached the gate, though, I spent a few minutes with this bull caribou, who just didn’t want to get off the road. The road was so icy that he actually slipped and went down on one knee – giving you an idea of what the odds of a heavy truck being able to avoid him are 🙁
The wind got much stronger as I drove along Windy Arm, offering pretty much a straight shot for the northeast wind.
Somewhere up in that snow-dust-cloud is a snowplow. There’s no way I could get near him, but he eventually saw my lights and slowed right down so I could get by. The plow drivers are always very courteous.
A winter wonderland – but not what I was looking for.
Log Cabin can be quite busy, winter or summer, but there was nobody around yesterday.
The outhouses at Log Cabin – “stopping for a cool one”, Yukon style 🙂
The wind was churning up the snow quite well at Fraser, but it still took a telephoto to make it look impressive.
Passing through Fraser.
Dropping down towards Skagway from the Summit, where the “good” conditions I was hoping for didn’t materialize.
I had a good lunch in Skagway, where the temperature was -1°C (+30°F), didn’t find any good photo ops, and was headed North again just after 2:00pm.
One of the challenges of winter driving is warning signs that are covered in snow. Although it’s nowhere near the problem it was 20 years ago when there really were a lot of dangerous corners, unless you really know the road well, it would be nice to know whether that sign says “Slow to 45” or “Slow to 25”.
Clearing Customs at Fraser was quick and simple as always. The officer told me that everybody has to be logged in now – license plate and passport numbers. Fraser is a way down the list to get the fancy equipment that will do it almost automatically, so it’s a manual process now – that will certainly slow down summer crossings if the crossing doesn’t have the automation yet.
Getting back to Carcross, I saw the first commercial vehicle of the day, an ore truck. It was odd to see none, as normally commercial vehicles comprise most of the traffic.
So that was as extreme as the day got – it was actually a fairly normal winter drive. If I worked for a TV show, though, could I have made a story out of that nightmare blizzard that I barely survived!!!! 🙂
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