Celebrating solstice

Dream, Whitehorse.

Day 38.

5,625km travelled.

Week 5: Haines Pass

If you read my last post, you'll be familiar with our two days spent in rainy Haines, Alaska. Chilkat State Park makes the list of favourite places we've visited so far, and even though we were socked in, the weather only added to the stillness. There's something about fog that hushes a place even further. It swallows sound the same way it swallows the mountains, and you find yourself listening more carefully in the quiet, hearing what might otherwise pass you by.

On the edge of town we had our first close encounter with a grizzly. We didn't want to stop the truck too close, so as not to bother him, so the sighting was short, but sweet. We don't see these brown beasts much in the Sea to Sky, so there's a new kind of excitement that follows spotting one. Winnie was chomping on grass by the side of the road, a mere stone's throw from a small residential street that skirts the oceanfront. Very close. His larger size, burly back hump, and dominating presence make you take grizzlies more seriously than their smaller black cousin. We're hoping to see more.

North of Haines, we moved through what might be the most depressing border crossing in existence. The crossing from Haines back into BC consists of a deserted-looking plot with three dreary, old-fashioned, two-level apartment buildings, bereft of any character. No plants, no gardens, no personal effects. Just plain buildings sitting next to the border patrol office. I'm making assumptions when I say this post must be the most boring of all the crossings on the entire US/Canada border. Someone has to staff it, though, and I find myself wondering what that job does to a person over a winter. There can't be much to look at besides each other. And we all know border patrol officers… they are the most jovial of people.

Only an hour back in Canada, and the highway begins to ascend through a misty mountain pass that levels out to a truly magnificent vantage point. Bare of trees, the Haines Pass bends and curves through vast, open, rust-red and brown rocky slopes that rise up and up to snowy peaks on either side. It was blowing hard at the highest point, so we only stopped briefly for a quick photo before carrying on. Some places are meant to be passed through rather than lingered in, and this felt like one of them. It was beautiful precisely because it was fleeting and a little hostile. I also somehow managed to crash the drone in the only scattering of trees in the entire area. Great work, Anna. Tom's already crashed it once. I was merely levelling the playing field.

Once we descended back down to a proper treeline, we camped for the night at Million Dollar Falls, a quiet campground with plenty of free wood that we felt no guilt in loading into our wood bag to take away with us. And yes, you'll be proud to know my wood-chopping skills are in order! Tom's a natural, no surprise there. My technique was a little rusty at the start of the trip, but I've since redeemed myself, and now take great pleasure in contributing to our evening heat source and ceremonial relaxation circle.

I've gone off route. Where was I.

North of Million Dollar Falls is Haines Junction. Similar to Lillooet, HJ is a crossroads, with those coming from Alaska in the west, and those coming from Haines in the south, both roads eventually leading to Whitehorse in the east. As a town, it's much smaller than Lillooet, but it has the same feels-a-bit-like-the-middle-of-nowhere kind of vibe, the sort of place that exists mostly because three roads needed somewhere to meet. The bakery came recommended, though we decided it wasn't anything to rave about. Good coffee and breakfast sandwiches, to be sure.

Kluane National Park

After requesting recommendations in a 4x4 Facebook group I'm part of, we were told to head up the east side of Kluane Lake, which skirts the edge of Kluane National Park. We ventured up this beautiful dirt road for about two hours before finding a remote, sandy beach to camp at. It was such a wonderful spot that we decided to give Envy the day off and enjoy a whole extra day, relaxing in the sun, dipping in the lake, and spotting beavers and grizzlies enjoying the shoreline as much as we were. The road itself was nothing serious, though it did have a couple of very exposed sections where it cut into the shale slope just enough to fit one car's width across. Thankfully we never met anyone coming the other way.

With plenty of deadfall for the picking, we didn't even touch the wood we'd taken from the paid campground. But it wasn't for nothing! As I write this, I'm enjoying the warmth of our thievery.

Our discovery of the east road up Kluane was a prime example of how asking for recommendations can go a long way. We're fortunate to have Starlink for exactly this reason. Do we need the internet all the time? Absolutely not. But having the freedom to ask a question in a chat full of fellow off-roaders means we get to see something that was right under our nose, something we might not have found otherwise. Having the freedom to stop for an extra day, to dip down an unplanned road, to adjust our course on a whim, is exactly how we want to experience this trip. I'm a firm believer that the road takes you where you're meant to go, and that staying open and curious is what lets those opportunities unfold in the first place. You can plan a route, but you can't plan for who you'll meet, what they'll tell you, or what you'll feel like doing once you hear it. 

It's not about seeing it all. It's about saying yes, and seeing where that takes you.

Whitehorse

For those who haven't been: to me, Whitehorse is like Squamish, but with a Kamloops vibe. Not as hipster as home, but with a much larger downtown core. The Yukon River meanders beside the town, and they've developed a lovely riverfront walkway that reminds me a little of the seawall in Vancouver. Whitehorse is busy on the road though! It appears everyone drives a vehicle. Doesn't that sound familiar. There were so many cars moving about, it felt busier than its size should allow, like a small town that grew a big-city habit before it grew the infrastructure to match.

I must comment on the bike trails. Hate me all you want, Whitehorse, but… darn. There's no denying the options. Whitehorse has a lot of trails, but the flatter hillsides surrounding the town mean there's little to no elevation, or steepness, to anything. A blue rider's dream come true. I suppose every place earns its trails the way its landscape allows. Ours are steep because Squamish refuses to be anything but steep, and Whitehorse's are mellow and flowy because that's simply what the land gave it to work with.

Week 6: Summer Solstice

On the eve of summer solstice, Tom and I were sitting in a laundromat in Whitehorse, pondering where we might camp that night, when a man approached us and asked if we had any plans for the longest day of the year. Before starting the trip, I'd mentioned to Tom that I wanted to find something special to ring in the solstice, simply because we'd be in the land where the sun doesn't set. Little did we know my hopes were about to come true. Logan, our laundromat stranger, proceeded to invite us to a bush rave on his friend's private property, north of the hot springs we'd visited the day before. After speaking with him for a short while, waiting for our laundry to dry, we got the feeling Logan could be trusted, and so we agreed to join the party.

It's a strange and wonderful thing, how easily strangers offer you their world when you're travelling. At home, an invitation like that might raise an eyebrow. Out here, it just feels like the natural order of things, like everyone understands that the road runs on small acts of trust, and that today you might be the one extending it, and tomorrow you might be the one needing it. I think that's part of what travelling does to you. It softens the instinct to keep your guard up, and replaces it with something more like faith. Not blind faith. Just enough faith to follow a stranger's directions into the bush without having any idea what you’re getting into.

A few hours later, Tom and I found ourselves following some random directions Logan had given us, to a 40-acre property resting on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the Takhini River, about 40 minutes north of Whitehorse. As we drove onto the property, we saw a scattering of about 50 other cars, tents, and campervans, and after briefly setting up Envy, we ventured into the unknown, and happened to cross paths with Logan almost immediately.

The rest of the night, and into the early morning, Tom and I met a group of incredibly kind, welcoming, and undeniably eclectic people. We spent hours dancing to a few DJs, some of whom had made the journey up from Vancouver just to perform at this party. People were kind enough to lend us costumes, of which there was no shortage, and we welcomed the never-setting sun alongside total strangers. We have never felt so at ease, so quickly, by people we didn't know.

There's something particular about being welcomed into a community you have no claim to. We hadn't earned our place there the way everyone else had, through years of friendship, and shared history. We were just two people from a laundromat. And yet nobody made us feel like that mattered. Generosity like that says something about a place, and something about the people the North tends to attract. Maybe when winters take as much as they do up here, summer hospitality becomes a kind of repayment, a way of saying yes, come in, stay a while, the light won't last forever and neither will we, so let's not waste a minute of it being strangers.

We danced for hours, and somewhere past three or four in the morning, almost without anyone noticing the shift, we started to feel the heat of the sun returning rather than the cool of night setting in. There was no darkness to mark the line between one day ending and the next one beginning, just one long, gold, unbroken stretch of light that we'd somehow danced our way straight through.

Because the party was held on private land, the 100 or so people there all knew each other very well. As outsiders, we were approached by different people asking, "Are you the friends Logan picked up at the laundromat?" Yes, yes indeed.

We can all likely think back to a time in our lives when one small thing happened that snowballed into a series of events that felt like they were meant to happen. Being in the laundromat that day was one of those particular times. And that small invitation led to one of the best nights of our lives.

Dream Track

The following evening we met up with a couple we'd bumped into several weeks before, during our stop at Burns Lake, south of Smithers. This young couple, whom we'd spoken to at the campground there, were a month into a road trip riding their mountain bikes around BC. Their celebration of the solstice included hike-a-biking up to the highest trail in Whitehorse, called Dream, and we were invited.

Starting a bike ride at 8:30pm isn't a custom we're used to, but with the sun still sitting high in the sky, we thought, why not? It’s disorienting and a little thrilling climbing a mountain at an hour your body insists should be winding down, while the light insists otherwise. We hiked for about an hour and a half along a ridgeline with a 360-degree view of Whitehorse, the Yukon River, and the surrounding mountains, the sun doing nothing even close to setting the entire time, just sliding sideways along the horizon like it had nowhere else to be. From there, we descended a beautifully built blue alpine trail that meandered down the ridge before dipping into the forest and meeting with the lower network of trails.

We finished the ride at midnight, and it wasn't even dark.

I don't think I can properly explain to anyone who hasn't felt it. Midnight is supposed to mean something. It's supposed to be dark, and quiet, the kind of hour that tells your body, and mind, to stop. Up here, midnight is just a number on a clock that the sky has decided to ignore. The whole ride down, the light held and held, bright gold turning to a softer gold, never quite committing to dusk. It was a magical experience, feeling the wind on my face, the warmth of the sun on my skin, riding my bike down the mountain and knowing it was already close to the following day.

You really get a sense for the Yukon's relationship with light up here. Summer is fleeting, but the light lasts and lasts, almost like it's trying to make up for something. The people here appreciate it because winters are so dark, so hard. I can only imagine how grateful one might be to have a day that never ends, to soak up the sun, to ride bikes till the wee hours of the morning, or dance on the edge of a river, only to have it swiftly change again in another month's time, the light receding as quickly and generously as it arrived. These days are precious. And how precious, too, are the people who show up out of nowhere to make sure you don't spend them alone.