A Day Of Hikes

We woke up this morning, peeked out the window and were pleased to see that it wasn't still raining. You could actually see little bits of blue sky between the fairly heavy clouds. That was good enough! Our first stop, after Tim Horton's, was Miles Canyon. It's about a 10 minute drive from town but you are transported right into a beautiful natural environment with no traffic noise, no crowds and perfect hiking conditions. Other than the mosquitoes. But, we had Muskol so they weren't that bad. We took the Rim Trail which follows along the bank of the Yukon River. There are no railings or steps, you just have to watch your step. It would be pretty easy to tumble down into the swiftly moving river. Needless to say, I always stopped to take photos and made every effort not to trip over rocks or roots!
Before getting into the canyon, we stopped at a lookout and got these views. The clouds were amazing! The white suspension bridge is where you cross over to the hiking trails.

Once we got down to the trail head, it was very peaceful except for the buzzing of mosquitoes! The colour of the water was quite different from rivers at home being almost turquoise. 

Here's Marilyn on the bridge with her new walking poles. 

As we started along the path, we noticed these. Actually, Marilyn did because I was too busy looking down so I didn't trip on something!

I'm finding that, in the north, Darwin's law about survival of the fittest is constantly in play. As I mentioned earlier, there are no handrails or ropes to guide you along the trail. And the trail was wet and slippery from all the rain so slipping was definitely a possibility. It was the same with the roads that run along steep cliffs or beside large rivers. If you mess up, they send somebody to pick up the pieces later! Here are a couple of views of the trail above the river.

On our way to the next hike, we stopped at a lookout on Grey Mountain which overlooks the city. Once again, the cloud formations were amazing. And you can also see some of the massive sand dunes that are all over the area. We started to notice them as we approached the Yukon. They are the result of glacial melting that deposited sand and gravel and rocks throughout the region.

For our second hike, we drove out to the Yukon Animal Preserve. This is a large area about 25 minutes out of town that is kind of like a zoo but not exactly. There are large natural areas where northern animals live. They are in the same type of area that they would occupy in the wild. That being said, I'm not sure about the musk oxen. I thought they were from the arctic which is a bit north of here. 
This is a wood bison, like the ones we encountered on the highway.

These are mule deer.

 This is a thin horned sheep. I was using my 300mm lens so was able to get some good close up shots.

The next couple of pictures are of arctic ground squirrels. We thought they were gophers or prairie dogs, but no! They were all over the place, having a field day gathering food dropped by the bigger animals. They reminded us of meerkats.

This caribou was sitting close to the fence and let us get quite close. It's interesting how it matches so well with the background. Most of the caribou we saw were shedding and looked a bit ratty.

The mountain goat habitat was, predictably, on a cliff. They had a large space but were all on the rocks. 

This guy was in a really tight spot but seemed quite content just to stay there. 

The musk oxen, wherever they come from, are amazing creatures. They stood like statues most of the time. You can see how they are made to withstand the arctic winter, but it's hard to imagine how they handle the heat. Most of them were shedding but I wonder how much good that would do with the 30+ degree weather that they've had up here recently. 

The last animals we saw were elk. I didn't realize how big they are! We've seen them from a distance at the zoo but today we were maybe only 15 or 20 metres away. 

Here he is from a bit more of a distance.

Tomorrow, we're off early to Skagway, Alaska. We'll spend a few hours there before boarding a ferry to Juneau. We don't get in until 9:30 pm so there might not be a post tomorrow, but, you never know.