Klondike Country

This was the place at the heart of the famed “Klondike” gold rush in 1896, and is still filled with remnants from that rich history.  Along the ‘Top of the World Highway’, 200 miles along a mountaintop from Dawson City, Yukon to Tok, Alaska, the artifacts are as plentiful as the amazing auroras.  I also spent some time bushwhacking through Tombstone Territorial, and another trip back there is high on my list.

Choose your own adventure!  Finally got to see some of those elusive purple auroras.  Had to shoot this sign dark, otherwise you’d be able to read all the dumb chicken related town names, found in Chicken, Ak of course..

I found this curious Grey Jay, aka. Whiskey Jack aka. Canadian Jay, along the Top of the World Highway.  She even came in for a landing, had me feeling like Snow White.

An enormous gold dredge beached in Chicken.

Tombstone Territorial Park has some of the most impressive mountains I’ve come across. Unfortunately circumstances and time restraints stopped me from exploring around here as much as I’d like, but that’s for another time I suppose.

I loved the little line of autumn following a tiny stream down the mountain, though bushwhacking through alders is the pits.  About 10 miles, I ran into a grizzly.  Part of me would have rather been eaten than find my way back through this devilish undergrowth.

These are tailings, the raw earth dumped out the dredge after its done its thing refining out the gold.

They stretched on for miles!

Another gold dredge, and why preservation of historical structures is important.

 

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Kennecott, Alaska

A collection of shots that I’m still catching up on from last winter’s trip, this bunch from around Wrangell-St. Elias, a remote national park in Alaska, as well as the remains of a lot of mining history and abandoned structures dotted along the Alaskan and Yukon wilderness.

The remains of an old roadhouse somewhere along the Yukon highway.

The ruins of a concentration mill, 7 stories into a hill, overlooking a serene frozen lake.

It’s wonderful the gov’t stepped up to preserve this amazing slice of American history, the Kennecott copper mining town, overlooking a massive glacier.

A trestle towards an old mining town hangs on to its last legs in the remote Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska. 

Icy Abstractions

Even the microscopic landscapes of Iceland were diverse and spectacular.  Here’s a bunch of macros of the of the abstract art created by strange ice formations.