The night of August 1, 2024 we visited the Sourdough Saloon to celebrate arriving in the town of Dawson City (our 785th km of the trip). The saloon is most famous for its unusual (understatement of the century) whiskey shot called the “sour toe”. You are sat down at a table in the back of the bar and an elderly man named “The Captain” takes a mummified human toe out from a ziplock container with tongs and puts it in the shot. To get into the Sour Toe Club you must touch the toe to your lips while drinking the shot. “You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips must touch the gnarly toe”. All four of us were able to get into the Sour Toe club and luckily none of us accidentally swallowed the toe as that would have resulted in a $2500 fine and being ran out of town like the last person who ate the original mummified toe.
The next morning we awoke in the hostel and surprisingly, none of us had any nightmares after drinking the sour toe shot. After a quick coffee and breakfast at a local cafe we packed up the canoes and headed on our way downriver again. As we got further out of Dawson City we saw the landscape change into more rocky terrain, which was a change from all the silty/sandy riverbends we had witnessed before. The mountains became much larger and we finally felt like we were in the classic wilderness of the Yukon. We paddled until the evening and set up camp along a beautiful clear creek (Coal Creek). The landscape was exactly what you think of when you imagine the Yukon. mountains covered in skinny black spruce, the large silty Yukon River speeding by, and a clear water salmon stream with a large gravel bar where the two rivers meet. We set up our tents on the gravel bar and Megan made a Mac and cheese dinner while the rest of the gang fished for grayling. The gravel bar had large moose, grizzly bear and wolf prints present and we even spotted a few chinook salmon making their way up the river to spawn.
During the night it rained heavily but when we woke up in the morning we were greeted by a bit of sun and some low hanging clouds rolling over the mountains. This was definitely one of our favorite camping spots on the trip so far. After taking in the views one last time we packed up and began to paddle our last stretch of the Canadian Yukon River. At 1pm we paddled over the Canada/ USA border which had no markings of any kind. We had read online that there was a line cut through the trees but we didn’t see anything to signify a border or anyone to check us in. We did however see a little porcupine lumbering around on the shoreline welcoming us to America. We continued our paddle into the town of Eagle and hauled our boats onto the shore in the middle of the very small town (only 45 full time residents).
We were informed that there was no phone service in town and only wifi at the small town library, so we headed there so we could do our phone call check in with the USA border patrol. What should have been a straightforward phone call to the border ended up being an hour ordeal of trying to reach a border agent and not just an automated message. We stood scorching in the sun in our river gear trying to get a phone call through. It was extremely confusing when we tried to call the Alcan border number and instead reached a Holiday Inn in Kelowna BC! Finally we decided to try calling the border on Rina’s phone and the number went through right away. The border agent asked for our information and then we were on our way back on the river… this time legally in the USA! In the evening We found a nice gravel bar and camped for our first night in USA along the Yukon River.
Our first full day in Alaska started off at 5am. After an oatmeal and bacon jerky breakfast we packed up camp and got back on the river. We passed a few nice private cabins and even an active volcano that was in the distance. We took a float nap break and after, had some lunch as we continued to float downstream. At this point in our trip we were ~213km away from our end destination of Circle, so we weren’t in too much of a hurry and were enjoying our last few days on the river. The day was incredibly hot so we ensured we had lots of protection from the sun.
It was almost too hot to paddle so we mostly floated, napped, and read our books while on the river. We floated/paddled 110km in total for the whole day (our biggest day) and went to go check out a public cabin that was marked on our map. We ran into some people from Florida and Michigan and chatted with them about their experience on the river. The cabin ended up being pretty buggy inside so we instead headed a kilometre down river and spent the night on a gravel bar and enjoyed the sunset.
The next day we set off on the river knowing it was going to be a +28 degree day. We paddled in the morning until it became too hot and then floated till we reached the Slavens Roadhouse cabin. The historic cabin was not only a beautiful historic building but it was quite a bit colder inside than the outside air temperature. We made lunch inside and then all of us had a nap on the bunkbeds available throughout the cabin. In the late afternoon we said goodbye to the lovely “air conditioned” cabin and got back on the river and paddled a couple hours more. We set up our final camping spot on a gravel bar and flew the drone at sunset to admire the winding Yukon River for our last night. We drifted off to sleep to the sounds of the silt in the river and a very upset beaver slapping his tail on the surface of the water.
The next morning we arose early to attempt to beat the heat again and be off the river in Circle by early afternoon. We saw a salmon come to the surface near one of our canoes which was very cool to see. It’s amazing to think how far they have come from the ocean in such murky/silty water! Around 20kms out from Circle the landscape flattened out dramatically and we finally reached a more sub-arctic environment. We tried to find a couple of small tributaries to fish at one more time on the river, but all were either too small or no longer connected to the main river. We heated up some soup on the fire and then got back to paddling the last kilometres of our 16 day paddle. The last couple of kilometres we paddled strongly and excitedly and made it to Circle just before 2pm.
We did it!! 16 days and 1200kms of paddling and we were done! We hauled our canoes up onto the shores of Circle and went for a walk around to check out the town. We walked over to the gas station to get a celebratory ice cream and saw a man filling up his small plane with gas before he was going to go Dalls sheep hunting. We talked to a couple locals and they gave us a wifi password and a spot where we could pitch our tents for the night. We camped that night in town at the top of the bank overlooking the Yukon River. It felt so good to be done our paddle but strange at the same time to watch the river continue onwards without us… Maybe one day we will be back to finish paddling the river. Our next journey was still to come... We still had to make our way back to Finn’s and Rina’s car which was (hopefully) still parked and waiting for us at Yukon Crossing…
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