Putting down roots all over the place!

We are enjoying the last few hours of an incredible week, with the late-evening sun shining brightly through the windows, and a tasty Sunday meal in our bellies. We are both really enjoying the ritual of writing about our adventures, and love to get your notes and comments. You don't feel so far away!

This week has seen us move from the Gulag (the local name for the old hospital residence) to the new building (we have heard it called the Shan-gri-la), which gave us a working oven, and a million-dollar view of the Yukon River and the mountain ranges along the west of Whitehorse. We're living in style for another 2 weeks, then we're moving to Mt Lorne to live among the black spruce! It can now be called 'official', since the landlord gave us a signed contract. We met with Drew and Kelsey (the current tenants) at the house and arranged to take over their PO box, phone, and most of their furniture. They didn't seem to mind our joke that we were taking over their lives, and even gave us good advice about hiking trails nearby :)



Oh yeah, there were also two snowstorms this week! Calling the first one a 'storm' was a bit of a stretch, since it melted by the afternoon, but the one on Thursday afternoon stayed for a day and made it look like winter.

Our belongings arrived from Toronto this week, and are safely living in storage in Whitehorse until June. I never really had any doubts that it would all be delivered safely, since Colin made the arrangements, and I was happy to be right.

the road to our new home. yes, it is dirt. so every day when we are returning home from work or other such ventures we can drive/bike into our every-day cottage road.

the neighbourhood bulletin board- this is where we will post our sign for carpooling requests into Whitehorse

The first snow 'storm'. we don't have photos of the second storm in the computer, only on the phone

Colin here. This weekend we have been taking a whitewater canoe training course.  Most of you probably know that we love to canoe and that our favorite vacations (minus those visiting family/friends) are spent in a canoe paddling from site to site in the beautiful waters of Ontario. But the waterways in Yukon are much different then the waters of Ontario, and therefore so is the canoeing. Back home we are famous for having large, beautiful, still lakes that seems to be in endless supply. Sure, some storms come in but every day, early in the morning, there is still water that you can blissfully paddle. More often then not, you have wonderful sunny afternoons ideal for swimming and hanging out on the dock or beach. Here in the Yukon, the lakes are not very big because of the mountain topography. Instead we have valley after valley that drain snowmelt and ice into decent-sized rivers. Also, the water here never really warms up ever- not even in the middle of the summer. We have got fairly good at lake paddling and navigating oddly-shaped archepelagos, but we knew nothing about paddling very cold moving water.

We found the two fantastic instructors/guides in the Yukon News. A father/son team who are very comfortable in their Yukon lifestyles of traveling on the land by foot and paddle power, hunting, fishing and camping on the sides of mountains. We really lucked out with them and the other 6 students in our weekend group who were a lot of fun. Friday night from 7-10pm we paddled the Schwatka Lake (up stream from the dam in Whitehorse) and in Miles Canyon. (There is a big story why this canyon is the reason for Whitehorse' existence - before the dam this canyon was a wild maze of rapids that stopped every person (First Nations or gold rusher) in their tracks. I digress)

The evening started with the basics on canoe and paddle anatomy (same as Ontario), but then we learned how to put on a dry suit.  This is something that neither of us have done before, it was fun. You end up being totally waterproof from your toes to your neck and wrists. We got into the canoes and stopped every few 100 meters for a lesson on a maneuver or a drill/exercise to practice- time few by, (not that we could see our watches or observe the sun setting). At the furthest stop of the night some people (me included) climbed up a rock outcrop on the canyon and jumped into the Yukon River. We returned home super excited to get our skills into faster water with some turns and obstacles (sorry, no photos this day)

Saturday we we were in the Yukon River, srarting from the dam and ending in downtown Whitehorse. The paddling is much different- far more precise and technical. We practiced ferrying from side to side while heading up river in fast water and tucking into little eddys to get out of the flow and planning the next move before we would put the nose of the boat back into the current. We stopped for lunch (lunch kip photo below) and then we pulled our boats to the bottom of the dam and did the whole trip into town with an added bonus of dipping into a smaller channel that looked like the Arctic. There were large walls of ice and snow on either side of the river (stunning sight and sound of long ice crystals falling into the water). We were then asked if we wanted to try sliding? Sure, that sounds like fun... Well it was, but we had no idea that we were going to jump out of the canoes into the water, climb the ice walls, pull our canoes up the ice and push them over to a broken piece of ice that created a steep ramp from the ice field into the water in the channel. A few people climbed into a canoe and the rest of us gave them a running start at the ramp and into the river. Everyone either dumped their canoe or were sitting in a canoe filled with water - such a hoot! The weird thing about these suits you don't really get cold - at all. You can feel the water on your body, but other then your head and hands you never get wet. Under our suits we had wool long johns, a fleece sweater, light pants and two wool socks on each foot. We got used to referring to our dry suits as our invincible suits. That night for a change of pace we went to see a coworker of Lauren's who plays on the local roller derby team. Big hoot, but that is a rough game, and some girls are mean. I'm sure there was lots of ice on those ladies that night.

 Today we paddled the Takhini River. We meet the bus and boats at the last truckers' stop north of town and jumped on. We drove towards Haines Junction for about an hour passing a huge herd of elk on the way, until we turned onto a very bumpy dirt road. We put our coffee mugs away and held on tight.

The bus arrives with our rides

At the start of the day

Ha ha, I just noticed that I am looking away from the lesson

The lunch room

An elk killed by wolves

Elk Woman!

Watching and learning

A happy time (the instructors joke that they offer discount couples' counselling after these trips)

Fishing a fellow paddler out of the rapids

Smiling after the 5th try :)

Trying, trying...

Born!

Back at the pull-out

Gunnel bobbing

The snow does the neatest thing here

A Yukon Tan

We practiced our strokes and manoeuves all day, stopped for lunch in a beautiful spot by a sandy cliff, and traveled along the river until we reached The Jaws Of Death (or alternately, The Gums Of Worry, according to our instructor). We tried and tried to get through the grade 2-3 whitewater in a manner that would give credit to our weekend of instruction, and made it by the 5th try. But the 4th try saw us bail on a submerged rock, and allowed us to demonstrate to our group what 'wrapping a canoe around a rock' looks like. Luckily we were trialling the Coleman plastic boat, and Bob banged the piping back into place with a river rock. A few knees were bruised, and a float down the river was enjoyed by one of us, but we walked back upstream, got back in the boat, and sailed down in style at last.

As you can probably guess, we are now in the market for a canoe. Dry suits would be nice too! 

Hope you have a great day,

Love Lauren and Colin