Sam McGee

The town of Carcross (short for Caribou Crossing) is a 45 minute drive south of Whitehorse and is home to Montana Mountain. In 1905, a mining boom town formed for 2 years while aerial tramways were built and mine shafts were sunk, but the sought after silver was nowhere to be found. The remains of the shafts, tramway towers and a stone cook house line the old mining road that climbs up Montana Mountain from Carcross. Near the tramway towers, a long, fast singletrack descent drops off of the mining road and takes you a long way down to the South Klondike Highway. This trail was built by Sam McGee, and the mountain bikers who reclaimed the 100 year old trail named it after the name made famous by Robert Service. Sam McGee was real, but he was not cremated on the shores of Lake Laberge. He was a road-builder by trade, and Service, a bank employee, saw McGee's name on a slip and obtained permission to use it in a poem, The Cremation of Same McGee. It made Service famous, and McGee a subject of ridicule. McGee lived on a farm near Beiseker, Alberta until his death in 1940, where he was buried in the ground. The trail that he left behind made me a very happy man on a fine autumn day back in September. The colours were at their peak and the weather was stellar the entire time. It took me about 5 hours to mountain bike the whole loop, and I did this ride solo, mainly because everybody I knew was in a team road running event. I'm glad I went biking instead.

Looking north while about 2/3 up the 2 hour climb.

This guy kept crossing my path on the long climb.

Just over the first pass at the end of the main climb is an area where the old mine shafts were sunk.

Left track.

Right track. The scar of road that I followed is in the middle of the pic.
Old mining camp cook house with the aerial tramway behind to the right.

Aerial tramway towers. In about an hour I'll end up at the lake in the distance.

The entry to Sam McGee's Trail...

Happy Belated Birthday, Charlie

Charles Darwin would have celebrated his 200th birthday this past Thursday, February 12th. Last night to celebrate, Jenny and I went to a talk by Dr. Charles Berger, a veterinarian and musher who has competed many times in the hardest dog sled races on earth -- the Yukon Quest and Iditarod. His talk "Big Bang to Sled Dogs" was an entertaining, funny and informative journey through time showing how evolution and selective breeding culminated in the planet's greatest endurance athlete -- the sled dog. These 50 pound dogs are descendants of gray wolves, can eat 12,000 calories per day, run the equivalent of 3 marathons per day for a week and have a vO2 max three times that of Lance Armstrong. This talk was timed to coincide with the start of the Yukon Quest, which is a 1000 mile race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks. Each city takes turns hosting the start and this year it was in Whitehorse. The record for the winning time is 9 days. Unexpected entries this year included a young Japanese woman and a Jamaican. Paralleling the rise of the Jamaican bobsled team, this fellow trained on the beaches of Jamaica with a team of strays and a sled with wheels. I wish all of the teams the best of luck over the next week or so.

The starting line.

Dog trucks are a familiar site around Whitehorse this time of year.

How to stay warm while watching the Yukon Quest at -25°C...

How to keep babies warm...