Day 5 - Frantic Follies

We began the day with a hearty breakfast (indeed, a Breakfast of Champions; three-egg omelette with bacon, cheese and mushrooms, with hash browns and two rounds of brown toast), because we knew we had a lot of walking to do today.  The sky was blue and moderately cloudy when we stepped out of the hotel, but it was all a feint; within seconds we'd put our coats on, it was very fresh.

We walked down to the roundabout at the end of 4th Avenue, and onto the Millennium Trail loop that would lead us, eventually, to the fish ladder I'd spotted online when trying to find a selling point to convince Sandra that coming to Whitehorse would be a great idea.  It was wonderfully invigorating walking along the path by the side of this huge, fast-flowing river, nodding a "good morning" to the occasional jogger, dog-walker, or fellow tourist.

The trail is dotted with points of interest and interpretive signs, making it all the more interesting if the nature wasn't enough for you.  For 50 years, from the start of the Gold Rush in 1897, the Yukon River was clogged with more than two hundred sternwheelers moving supplies and ore between the rapidly developing communities.  Some, like the S.S Klondike in Whitehorse, and the S.S. Keno in Dawson City where we will be next week, have been restored by Parks Canada, and are national monuments.  Others were not quite so fortunate, and only pieces of them remain, such as the Canadian, which, after an ignominius retirement as a children's playground, was finally sunk in the river to prevent erosion of the bank before a more permanent solution could be applied.

Nature is in abundance as you would expect, but what I didn't expect was the number of seagulls we've seen here.  Admittedly the Yukon isn't landlocked, but its only exposure to the sea is the Beaufort Sea far, far to the north.  Yet as we walked along the edge of the river we saw Arctic Terns and Herring Gulls.  Climbing a short rise we came across a "Welcome To Whitehorse" sign, and a German couple (there are loads of Germans here) gesticulating up at the tree tops.  There sat a bald eagle, preening itself far above the ground, presiding over a nest that looked far from natural.  An informative sign told the story; years before a storm had blown the nest, and its two young occupants, from the top of the tree.  In response, conservationists (and Yukon Electrical) erected a pole with a nest-shaped cup at the top of it, placed the original nest back in it, and waited.  The eagles returned to look after their young, and have come back ever since.  The canny conservationists even set up a webcam over the nest.  You can see it here (don't forget this camera is 8 hours behind UK time though, so it might be dark when you look).

It had warmed up by now, so, coats off, we continued with our quest for the fish ladder.  I didn't really know much about this ladder, other than that it was something to help salmon get back up the Yukon River to their spawning grounds.  The truth, when we got there, was a bit more complex.

The path wound through the forest near the edge of the river, past a camp ground (the Robert Service camp ground - a lot of things are Robert Service-based around here, more information to follow when we're in Dawson City next week), and eventually to the Rotary Centennial Bridge, where we got our first glimpse of the ladder... and the hydroelectric dam that required the ladder to be built.

If you're a Chinook salmon spawned in the Yukon River, life deals you a nasty blow in the last few months of your life.  First of all you have to return from your feeding grounds in the Pacific Ocean and swim over 2,000 miles against the current of the river, using up all your stored fat reserves, even absorbing your own internal organs to supply you with enough energy to get back to where you were born.  Then, when you finally get there, you produce your own spawn, and, having done so, you die.  Imagine getting almost all the way home, and finding someone had built a hydroelectric dam in your path.  But that's what happened when Whitehorse started to grow in size and needed more and more electricity.

Engineers dammed up the river and put first one, then later two, three and now four turbines into the facility to generate electricity for the growing town.  But in doing so the Chinook salmon's migratory path was blocked, and it also meant that First Nations people were no longer able to harvest the salmon as they had done so - responsibly and sustainably - for hundreds if not thousands of years.  Therefore engineers also constructed, from wood and reinforced concrete, at almost 1200 feet long, the longest wooden fish ladder in the world to enable the salmon to make it past the dam.  A series of underwater baffles guide the fish up the ladder, where a few can be filtered off and measured in order to monitor the population.

The young salmon swimming down the river to begin their life in the Pacific are also affected by the dam.  According to the helpful stewards at the information centre, between ten and thirty percent of the young salmon (known as fry at this stage) are lost as they pass through the turbine complexes, so a salmon hatchery has been set up to breed extra fry and feed these into the ecosystem.

Unfortunately we were too early for the salmon migration, which is not expected until mid-August, so the observation posts were empty apart from a few grayling.

The other interesting thing at the fish ladder was something called "One Fish, Two Fish".  Schools in the area were given wooden fish to decorate, and these have been set out as part of a community art project, lining the observation areas for the ladder.

I said the truth was more complex.

From the fish ladder we walked back to the S.S. Klondike, completing the loop of the Millennium Trail.  We spent some time exploring this Parks Canada monument, learning of the work of the sternwheelers during and after the Gold Rush, until the building of permanent roads made them redundant.

Lunch was a ham sandwich with "fixins" taken at The Deli, then we spent some time at a couple of establishments trying (and failing) to convert GB Sterling traveller's cheques into US dollars for our trip to Skagway tomorrow.  We ended up converting some of our Canadian dollars, it was easier.

We then spent a little time at the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre.  I had thought that this was going to be more like a museum dedicated to First Nations in the local area, but it is actually what it says it is, a community centre where First Nation peoples, displaced by the arrival of the white man and his town of Whitehorse, can reclaim some of their heritage.  They showed us a video about the tribes of the Whitehorse area before the arrival of white men, it was both moving and informative.

Then this evening it was off to the Frantic Follies Vaudeville Revue.  This is a show that's been running in the summer season for over 40 years, and, in its own words, "is a turn-of-the-century vaudeville revue that depicts the entertainment seen by the pioneers of the Great Klondike Gold Rush of 1898".  Like the "Oh Canada, Eh?" show we saw in Canmore in 2008, it was cheesy, amateurish, and quite an enjoyable night out.  And Sandra, thanks to subtle positioning of me between her and anyone from the show who might get to her, was not, on this occasion, picked on.

Tomorrow we visit Skagway, Alaska, our first ever trip into the USA.