Day Six
At the crack of dawn we peek out the window of our Prince George hotel room
It looks good but the weather briefer warns us that there is extensive fog at MacKenzie - the base of the trench
and of course he was right - lots of fog
We manage to skirt the edge of the fog down at the south end of the trench and near the midpoint of
Williston Lake it begins to clear
That's good because the trench narrows and deepens as we get further north
There are actually about half a dozen landing strips up here along the way
Eventually it starts to look like this on both sides so there's really nowhere else to go and if the weather blocks you
you have to go back the way you came. Weather reports from this area are few and spotty so you need a lot of gas
Here are two different colored rivers meeting
At the north end of the trench is Watson Lake
There were a lot of bugs here
After Watson Lake you pretty much just follow the Alaska Highway
After the trench it's kind of comforting to have that road below
The mountains just keep getting bigger and more spectacular as we continue north
This is Haines Junction where the Alaskan Highway and the Cassair Highway meet up
The view out all windows leaves you in awe
The lakes below are really wild colors too
The scale is hard to comprehend
and it's freezing at 6500 ft
We were headed for Northway Alaska but just past Haines Junction we encountered this so we decided to
turn back to Whitehorse and leave the dark clouds behind us
We won't be making it to Alaska today
The later in the day, the worse the weather gets so we'll try again at the crack of dawn tomorrow
More pictures of the return to Whitehorse
of course the pictures don't do it justice - you had to be there
Leaving the nasty stuff far behind us
There's a lot of water up here
Safely back at Whitehorse we have a couple of cold Yukon Golds and get a room at the Yukon Inn
which suprisingly has free wireless internet service
Hopefully tomorrow - day seven will see us reach our goal
wish us luck!