Perhaps you wonder why we are named “Uncommon Journeys”… Well there are 6 great reasons why!
Uncommon Journeys is known in the world of dog mushing as the "Club Med" for sled dogs. We treat our dogs to the best of everything. By treating our sled dogs as privileged pets, our guests' 
experience of working and bonding with our dogs is guaranteed to be unlike any other. Simply put, our dogs are treated as part of our family. Period. When you arrive in the Yukon at our Uncommon Journeys Wilderness Lodge, which we refer to as the “Homestead”, it is immediately apparent that we maintain a dog kennel unlike many others. It looks like a country club, not just a yard of working sled dogs. Each dog has his or her own house and each dog’s house is freshly painted with name plates artistically created by our staff to reflect the personality of each dog. The circles around the dog posts are covered in gravel and wood chips which make for an incredibly hygienic living space for the dogs. The chips reflect sunlight so it makes the dogs cooler in the summer months and there is absolutely no smell of urine or feces. The dog houses are mounted on pallets which trap air when they are covered with snow in the winter, and allow for air to pass under the floor to keep them cooler in the summer. Bird houses put in the surrounding trees attract swallows and bluebirds that devour any mosquitoes that enter the yard.
Our sled dog yard is incredibly clean. We scoop the yard a minimum of 2 -3 times a day in the winter, often up to 6 times on warm summer days. Over the past 12 years in which we have had
at least 50 dogs in our care, we have never had a case of any transmitted canine disease. It is an amazing claim and one that brings visiting veterinarians to our yard to see how we care for the dogs. In fact we were the first sled dog kennel in Canada to receive Mush with Pride's highest level of dogcare certification. We have a very special relationship with Dr. Rick Brown the owner of the Alpine Veterinary Medical Centre in Whitehorse. Dr. Brown personally looks after our dogs and as he lives just down the road, is often at our Lodge actually helping to train the dogs as well as care for them. We love our dogs and it is this attention to detail regarding their care that has created the stellar reputation we have in the dog mushing and tourism industry.
The area surrounding our our Wilderness Lodge has a series of three huge corrals in which different groups of dogs (based on age, personality and other criteria) are turned out into every day so they are off their chains and can play free. Once every week, we give our dogs giant beef bones for their teeth and for their mental health. In the summer, every couple of days we take up to 30 dogs to fun free up to Scout Lake where we all plunge into the frigid water for a swim. It is a bracing way to start the day for dogs and humans alike!
We do not euthanize any of our sled dogs just because they are too old. In fact we spend an 
inordinate amount of effort making sure our older dogs are adopted by families who will love them right till the end of their lives. We send them to be adopted by dog lovers all over North America in fact recently a woman in London England adopted one of our Uncommon Journey’s dogs. Of course there are some of our dogs we just cannot bear to part with so we usually have 7 - 10 retired dogs running free around the yard (and sleeping on our beds).
Rod and Martha Taylor are in the words of our guests "extraordinary people", who lead a team of dedicated guides and outdoor educators whose love of our dogs is surpassed only by their love of the pristine Yukon wilderness they share with our guests. Rod and Martha are leaders in the tourism industry in the Yukon and Canada. Collectively they have led guided adventures to wild Canadian places for over 35 years.
Rod is the current Chair of the Tourism Industry Association of Yukon, a member of the Senior marketing Council of the Yukon, and a member of the Wilderness Tourism Association Marketing Committee. Nationally, he is the Private Sector Representative for the Yukon and British Columbia on the Board of the Canadian Tourism Commission. He is also a Director of Northern Vision Development Corporation, one of the Yukon's largest tourism and real estate development companies. He has been a Course Director, Whitewater and Climbing Coordinator, and 
Professional Development Instructor since 1984 with the Canadian Outward Bound Wilderness School. He has been a Wilderness - Emergency Medical Technician for over a decade, and has served on numerous expeditions abroad in this capacity. Expeditions have seen him paddling across Canada's Barrenlands, kayaking in the jungles of Costa Rica, mountaineering on the highest peaks in the Western Hemisphere, skiing across the Greenlandic Ice cap, and leading the first commercial dogsledding trip on the Arctic Ocean to Hershel Island.
Martha was the Operations manager of one of Canada's best known northern rafting and canoeing companies and has personally led over two dozen paddling trips down the famous Nahanni River as well as many other remote rivers. While she is a back country skier and a seasoned hiking guide, her real love is tending to our four-legged partners and every new litter of puppies is trained by her nurturing hand. She is the lead guide of our canoeing program, the manager of the administrative functions at Uncommon Journeys as well as the creative force behind the incredible menus which our guests all rave about. In her “spare time”, Martha can be found with the staff up to her elbows in dirt, coordinating the planting and care of the beautiful gardens at the Homestead and taking care of their young and rambunctious Hayley (the resident head puppy trainer). Both Martha and Rod have degrees and diplomas in Outdoor recreation.
All of the staff at Uncommon Journeys are handpicked by Rod and Martha to ensure the professional standards which are at the core of Uncommon Journeys. Uncommon Journeys typically receives on average 50 applications for the four guide and dog handler positions we hire for each year, which allows us to ensure that our guides are true outdoor educators and that dog handlers are both enthusiastic and experienced. All of our staff meet or exceed the licensing requirements of the Yukon and are also chosen for their abilities to teach and assist our guests. All of our guests love our staff and inevitably our guides are invited to visit our guests in all the far flung places where they live. All Uncommon Journeys staff and guests share meals at the same huge, harvest table every evening and the conversations in the main cabin tend to outlast the candles!
At Uncommon Journeys we pride ourselves in the attention to detail we take with every aspect of our guests' experience. To that end, the accommodation, meal service and clothing and equipment we provide to every guest at Uncommon Journeys is the very best we can provide 
and is recognized in the industry as some of the best the Yukon has to offer.
Our cabins and yurts have been hand built by us and our staff and friends, our meals incorporate all of the local and organic food stuffs found in the Yukon. The berries in Martha's berry bundt cake are picked right around our Yurt basecamp under the protective eyes of our bear-sensitive sled dogs. The Arctic Char is caught in a lake owned by friends.
Our philosophy is to provide a world-class, authentic Yukon wilderness experience for our guests everyday, followed by an evening in a beautiful log cabin at our Wilderness Lodge or Mongolian yurt enjoying an incredible meal with a great glass of wine and stimulating conversation with like-minded people who are as excited about life as we are!. We call it "rustic elegance" and in our minds and our guests' - the combination is unbeatable!
We have some of the best trained and socialized sled dogs in the world. Our home raised dogs are never bred to be racing dogs. They are bred, raised and trained for one reason - to work with 
our guests. We believe that our dogs are some of the best trained sled dogs suitable for guest mushers in the world. The truth is if you ask our guests what kind of dog they want to work with, "responsive and friendly pets", always is given far greater importance than "crazy and fast racing dogs". We believe the ultimate combination is to begin by breeding dogs that come from a distinguished lineage, then train them to our standards and eventually breed the best dogs to the best dogs ending up with dogs with the "perfect" characteristics which we require for our guests.
The original sled dogs we bred at Uncommon Journeys were from Hans Gatt's 3-time winning Yukon Quest and 4-time winning Wyoming Stage Stop dogs. In fact we still have two of Han's most famous dogs "Tex" and "Fleece" with us as pets. By imprinting the pups and having children play with them over the early months of their lives, and combined with hundreds of hours of training we now have dogs that are so socialized that they will sleep on the beds of our guests during their stay with us.
We also have 8,000 - 10,000 summer guests that join us fresh off their Alaska cruise, for a dogsledding demonstration in the summer. Everyone of these visiting guests is encouraged to go into the dog yard and pet any dog they choose. To our knowledge, we are the only kennel that has insurance to allow this amazing occurrence to happen over and over again. The dogs are so well trained that if a guest feels that they have too many dogs for the terrain they are dogsledding on, they simply stop and unhook any dogs they want from their team and those dogs will run free "heeling" right behind their sled for as long as they like. When they want to reattach the dogs to their team, they stop and whistle and the free dogs will run up and allow themselves to be clipped back in. This is an amazing thing to experience on the trail! When we return after running 30 free dogs down to the lake for a swim, the dogs will patiently wait by the dogyard gate and will run into the yard one at a time, waiting to be clipped into their chain at their house.
Today approximately 85% of our dogs have been born and raised with us. The remaining 15% are dogs that we acquire from racers who want their special dogs to join us for "semi-retirement" knowing that the dogs will be cared for so well, and adopted out to loving families as they age. We only accept the most socialized dogs so that they are appropriate for our guests. Once you are touched by our incredible dogs we guarantee you will never be the same again.
Our Uncommon Journeys adventure tours range from catered, lodge-based options to expeditions in incredibly remote areas. Experiences include dogsledding to canoeing to hiking for novices and accomplished wilderness travelers and all of the above!
Some guests want a softer adventure experience that sees them sipping single malt scotch in
front of a cozy fireplace at the end of the day. Others yearn to travel on a famous Yukon trail, experience a frozen blizzard, and camp out in a cozy tent in an arctic sleeping bag.
We offer a range of active trips that meet all these desires and then some. All of our trips allow for guests of different fitness and activity levels to join us. And we often have groups of 6 or more book an entire week with us, allowing us to create custom itineraries that may combine lodge nights with camping, or plan a specific expedition itinerary or one on advanced trails.
On our scheduled Uncommon Journeys dogsledding trips, there is a progression throughout the week that sees our guests tackling more challenging terrain as their skills progress and forming a very special relationship with their dogteam. It really is this teaching element that is such an integral part of every one of our adventure experiences that differentiates us from other companies. By the end of every week our guests are amazed at what they can do whether on a dogsled, in a canoe or by their own steam - on a Yukon hike.
Our Uncommon Journey’s team has been trained in risk management at some of the premier outdoor schools in the world including at the Canadian Outward Bound Wilderness School, National Outdoor Leadership School, Seneca College school of outdoor recreation, and Capilano College's school of outdoor recreation. Uncommon Journeys has been recognized as being one of the safest and best managed adventure travel companies in the industry and have been recognized nationally for their "best practices".
Safety for our guests, dogs and staff is the number one priority for our company. Period. Well trained guests and dogs are our first line of defense against any accidents occurring, and our safety record reflects this commitment. Our guide - to - guest ratio at 1:3 is the lowest in the Yukon. Guides lead in the front and follow the back of the guest sleds and carry 2-way radios to ensure that everyone is doing well and comfortable on their sleds. Lead guides have advance medical training and we carry multiple satellite phones and comprehensive first aid kits plus Personal Locater Beacons on extended trips. We take safety very seriously and it is apparent from the very first safety talk you receive during the "Mushing 101" dryland training session on your first night at the Homestead, long before you even step on your sled.
The gear we provide is the best money can buy, and we provide absolutely everything you will need to stay warm besides your personal under clothes. Mukluks, parkas, insulated, bibbed overalls, musher's hats, expedition overmitts, insulated water bottles and thermoses, arctic headlamps, hollowfill booties for in camp etc., all is provided free of any extra charges. We have over 20 full sets of outer wear and 40 sets of boots to ensure that all sizes are accounted for in multiple sets. We are constantly replacing gear as well, so you can be assured that the gear you are wearing is first rate. So now that you know the six reasons why we are so “uncommon”, we hope you’ll consider planning your next vacation with us!
