This dog sledding adventure begins just south of the Arctic Circle on the world famous Dempster Highway, traversing through alpine terrain surrounded by beautiful mountain peaks. The legendary spires of the Tombstone Mountain Range fade from our view as we travel by dog sled into the heart of caribou country and the Hart River Valley.
Once April arrives in the Southern Yukon the quality of our dogsledding trails begins to become inconsistent. It’s time to load up our dogs for our Tombstone Range Dog Sledding Expedition and drive north following the old Dawson Trail which takes us to the convergence of the Klondike and Dempster Highways, about a hour’s drive outside of famous Dawson City. Our guests fly to Whitehorse and are picked up at the airport and driven to the Uncommon Journeys Lodge. Here you are outfitted in dog sledding finery (top equipment and warm apparel), given a “Mushing 101” lesson and enjoy a delicious meal in the main Lodge and a hot tub under Aurora Borealis, before retiring to your cozy log cabin for the evening.
The next day you are driven to the airport to board a plane and fly an hour and a half north to the historic gold rush town of Dawson City. Here you are met by your guides and driven one and a half hours up the Dempster Highway (one of the most northerly highways in the Western Hemisphere) where we find ourselves just south of the Arctic Circle dwarfed by the spectacular alpine peaks of the Tombstone Mountain Range in the central Yukon Territory. Here winter is still found in abundance, and while the spring days are warm and the days are long, the snow is still several feet deep, making for ideal dogsledding conditions.
The first two days of our dog sled trip find us mushing on the Yukon Quest Race trail on the famous Yukon River. This is one of the most famous dogsledding routes in the world and a superb location to get to know our sled dog teams and learn the skills necessary to drive our sleds safely. On the third day we drive further up the Dempster Highway to the start of the Tombstones portion of our trip where we will spend the next five days dog sledding to our heart’s content.
Our route follows the West Hart River trail, wedged between these awesome peaks which we will be travelling on by sled for the duration of the week. This is the wintering grounds of the woodland caribou of this region and it is very unusual to not see these majestic creatures as we glide by on our dogsleds. We will break camp and mush most days stopping in the afternoon with plenty of time to set up a comfortable camp and enjoy our favorite beverages in the “snow lounger” chairs we carve out of the snowpack. After relaxing and sun-tanning for an hour or so, we will enter the huge cook tent where we have a delicious dinner and recount the tales of the trail of that day. After dinner we relax in our chairs under the aurora borealis until retiring to our sleeping tents. If it is cold, each tent has a small stove which we run for a couple hours, reading books and drying any damp gear, eventually getting into our arctic, double sleeping systems for a well deserved night’s rest.
On our last day, we mush back out to the Dempster Highway and drive into Dawson where we will spend the evening at famous Bombay Peggy's hotel, have dinner and sample the colorful local nightlife. The next day guests board their flight back to Whitehorse. Here guests are met at the airport and driven to the homestead to change and are then driven to their hotel for the evening, flying home the next morning. The incredible mountain scenery and long, warm days combine with our amazing sled dogs and famous Uncommon Journeys hospitality to create a once in a lifetime dog sledding adventure in one of the last truly wild places left in North America.
PREPARE TO GO:
