If your readers are inspired by stories set in pristine wilderness, the Yukon is hard to top. Almost 80 per cent of the Yukon remains wild with a rich landscape of towering mountains, vast boreal forests, sweeping tundra, glacier-fed rivers and rugged coastline. And with a dozen major national and territorial parks and exceptional opportunities to watch northern wildlife, Yukon’s "larger than life" vistas, soul-stirring journeys and invigorating outdoor experiences are legendary.
Tombstone - Definitely Not a Graveyard
Named for its resemblance to a grave marker, Tombstone Mountain is a shaft of black rock that dominates the view from the Dempster Highway and now shares its name with this spectacular park. An iconic Yukon landscape, Tombstone Territorial Park is memorable for its jagged ridges of granite and colour-stained tundra in late summer. The Dempster passes through the heart of the park, making the area’s wildlife, birds and vegetation accessible to travellers.
The park is important to the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nations people who have hunted, camped and traded here for centuries. Interesting geological features also make this place interesting—parts of Tombstone bear the mark of glaciers, while other parts escaped glaciation and became an Ice Age refuge. The park is particularly popular with hikers, photographers and birders. The Tombstone Park Interpretive Centre located in the park is open from May to September and has naturalists on staff.
A Herd of What?
No, we didn’t say a herd of porcupines. The annual migration of the Porcupine caribou herd is the largest migration of any land animal on Earth. The 120,000-strong herd spends most of the year in the boreal forests of the Yukon and Alaska before migrating each spring to calving areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska) and Ivvavik National Park (Yukon). Caribou herds are a true emblem of the North, and they are integral to northern ecosystems. Barren-ground caribou shape the northern landscape, riddling the terrain with trails and serving as prey for wolves, bears, golden eagles and other carnivores.
The Yukon offers a rare opportunity to see migrating caribou—the Dempster Highway traverses the herd’s route and wintering grounds, and wilderness journeys like Firth River rafting trips cross their path. Caribou is of great cultural importance to the First Nations people of Northern Yukon and Alaska, particularly to the Vuntut Gwitch’in community of Old Crow, a tiny fly-in community north of the Arctic Circle. Vuntut and Ivvavik National Parks were both created to help protect the sensitive habitat of the Porcupine caribou herd. For more than a decade, debate in the United States has been very heated over accessing large reserves of oil located under the Alaskan calving grounds.
Night Magic
The Yukon enjoys exceptional viewing of the aurora borealis. This wintertime phenomenon—known to many people as the Northern Lights—appears like undulating ribbons of green, blue and red light. Scientifically speaking, the Northern Lights are the aftermath of explosions on the sun known as solar flares. These explosions send a wave of high-energy particles into space. This ‘solar wind’ is drawn towards Earth’s magnetic fields, and solar dust particles concentrate like rings around the polar regions. They hit gases in our upper atmosphere and charge the gas molecules, making them glow like neon lights. If the earth did not have a magnetic field, we would not have the aurora.
Yukon’s low-light winters make for excellent viewing, and fall and spring produce the best effects. According to some, the northern lights even make a crackling noise, and the lights have inspired many myths and legends. The Yukon is also home of the Northern Lights Space & Science Centre housed in Watson Lake. The centre welcomes visitors year-round to learn about the aurora borealis and view simulations.
A Giant Mountain of Ice
The highest point in Canada, Mount Logan (5,959 metres) is located in the St. Elias Mountains in southwest Yukon in Kluane National Park. The sea of ice surrounding Mount Logan comprises the world’s largest non-polar icefield. The St. Elias icefield, believed to be 1.6 kilometres deep in the heart of the mountains, sends long glaciers down the park’s broad valleys. Mount Logan is the quarry of elite mountaineers who come from around the world, but it can also be viewed by travellers on flightseeing trips.
Mount Logan also lies at the centre of one of the world’s largest international protected areas. Kluane National Park (Yukon), Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park (B.C.), Glacier Bay National Park (Alaska), and Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park (Alaska) together are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the first bi-national entry of its kind. Mount Logan was named for Sir William Logan, father of the Geological Survey of Canada and a Canadian pioneer in geological sciences.
Welcome to Grizzly Country
Yukon is home to more than a quarter of Canada’s grizzly bears. About 80 per cent of the Yukon is wilderness, compared to a North and Central American average of 40 per cent, making it important grizzly habitat and one of the best places to see a grizzly bear. Many visitors to the Yukon spot bears on the side of the road, while hiking and paddling, or even from the air.
Shorter summers in the North mean that grizzlies must be as efficient as possible in preparing for their long winter hibernation. In the Yukon, grizzlies depend on thick crops of berries and seasonal runs of salmon to fatten up. In an autumn feeding frenzy, a grizzly can eat 200,000 berries in a single day! Bears are important to Yukon First Nations people, as reflected in legends like ‘Why Bear Got a Short Tail’ and in aboriginal art. Grizzly bears face significant challenges in southwestern Canada and the U.S. Rocky Mountain states, where habitat is disappearing and survival rates are low.
Birding North of 60
Whether it’s northern wheatears, trumpeter swans or gyrfalcons, Yukon has many special northern bird species not commonly found in southern Canada. Keen birders (birdwatchers) make the trip to the Yukon in pursuit of our northern specialties. Altogether, almost 300 species of birds have been spotted in the Yukon.
The North sees migrations of waterfowl and shorebirds numbering in the countless thousands. Many species that winter in places like Panama migrate thousands of kilometres to breed on Yukon’s North Slope and Old Crow Flats. Spring in Southern Yukon brings the Celebration of the Swans, a weeklong festival at Swan Haven on Marsh Lake that marks the return of flocks of trumpeter and tundra swans. A spectacular movement of Sandhill Cranes occurs each spring and fall along the Tintina Trench in central Yukon. North America’s premier birds of prey, northern goshawk, peregrine falcon, gyrfalcon and golden eagle, are all readily found in the Yukon. For many birders, the North offers a rare chance to see songbirds such as northern wheatear, bluethroat, yellow wagtail and Smith's longspur. The territory also has Canada's only breeding population of surfbirds.