I believe one hasn’t fully lived on Earth until one has visited Tombstone. It should be on everyone’s bucket list. Words and pictures cannot capture the wild beauty, pristine Arctic air, the sounds of Arctic birds that gently call throughout the 24h days and the delicious woodsy, floral, and slightly spicy scent of the tundra in the morning air.
We quickly got used to the 24h of bright sunlight—sleeping in a 2 person backcountry tent left us no choice! Night and day became dictated by the weather and our fatigue rather than light and dark. We became familiar with the Arctic weather; it was rather predictable with short, cool showers passing through the mountain ranges late morning and early evening. Late afternoons were often sunny and very warm (dare I say hot). It felt too hot to sit in the sun and I’d cool down by wading into the North Klondike. The North Klondike is COLD and anything above the knees might induce instant hypothermia!
We did a lot of hiking in Tombstone: up high mountains (gaining approximately 800m on some summits) and also along the North Klondike River. We camped right beside North Klondike River and were lulled to sleep by its rushing waters each night.
Every turn of the Dempster reveals an entirely new and unique vista that demands veneration. Within Tombstone Park there are areas of past glaciation and also areas of Beringia (where the last ice age missed). Many of the plant species in Beringia survived the ice age and exist no where else on earth. The area has been home to Canada’s first peoples for 8000 +years.
The sun is this amazingly bright at 9 PM in the evening—about the time this pic was taken.
We gave a Swiss woman, Suzanne, and her teenage daughter, Jessica, a lift to the trailhead. Later, Suzanne ran into us at the campsite outhouse
. She invited us for a glass of wine in her camper. It was kinda cool meeting new friends for a glass of wine, in the back of a camper, in the middle of the Arctic!
My Arctic adventure is thanks, in part, to the Canada Council For the Arts—I received a grant to return to the Arctic to gather information for my next novel
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