Yukon and Alaska: Winter Wonderland by Richard Newton

These are people who walk on water. Yukoners. On Marsh Lake, and on Lake Laberge, and across the great Yukon River itself, they stride confidently where, for much of the year, choppy waters threaten even the strongest swimmer. There are no waves in winter.

Today the temperature hangs ten degrees below freezing and is blasted colder still by stinging gusts from the Arctic. “It’s unusually warm,” they tell me without irony. We stand together on the thick, featureless snow that blankets the ice covering the water. Below us, unseen, fish swim; life goes on. Here on the surface, the firm grip of winter holds everything in frigid suspension. Only the bundled people move. And the piercing wind.

It is a northern sky above us: pale, pink-tinged, and cloudless. The glaring sun has at last curved above the frosted pines fringing the small city of Whitehorse. This is Canada’s Yukon Territory in the middle of February. The severe darkness of December and January has been relieved. My companions contend that this is the best time of year, with everything looking brand new under hard light and unblemished snow.

Whitehorse is a young city, to the extent that it is still possible to recall every winter it has weathered since a tented community was established here, on a bend in the Yukon River, in 1899; a staging post for gold seekers trekking north to stake a claim in the Klondike.

For the first part of the Twentieth Century the settlement thrived as a terminus for paddle steamers and huffing locomotives. The place was originally called Closeleigh, in honour of the financiers of the railway, the Close Brothers Company of distant London. The name was suited to suburban England but sat awkwardly on a rugged frontier community. Before long the settlement was rechristened after the violent rapids which raged as a galloping mane of white water a mile upstream: White Horse. The rapids have since been harnessed to provide the city with hydroelectricity.

I have visited the hydro dam in summer. What a different place this land is then, with the warm air textured by pollen and insects, the hills green, the car park full, tourists everywhere, the river boiling, and glinting king salmon scaling the fish ladder that provides them with a route upstream. Now it is stark and frozen. Another, thoroughly beautiful, world.

Downtown, on Main Street, parked cars shiver, their engines left running to fight off the chill. In the dazzling brightness of midday, people kick their boots free of snow before entering the shops. Inside, gloves and mufflers are removed, quilted jackets are unzipped. For those of us wearing glasses the transition from sub-zero sidewalk to sub-tropical interior is a foggy one.

Here I am, stamping through the entrance of Mac’s Fireweed Bookshop with misted lenses and my face ringing gloriously from the bitter wind. My stiffened lips slowly work into a smile. “It’s wonderful out there,” I say to the assistant, and mean it.

Leaving Whitehorse, the nine-seat Air North Beechcraft climbs through thin wisps of cloud. The snowy city recedes. We fly south over mountains blushed in the final glow of the afternoon. To our right is a distant view of Canada’s highest peak, Mount Logan.

Five thousand feet below us, Canada becomes the United States. The plane descends over Auke Bay and banks steeply, approaching Juneau, state capital of Alaska. The snow has been left behind. Alaskans, with what passes for humour, call this relatively temperate south-eastern corner of their state ‘the banana belt’. The temperature is a balmy –3C.

We drive into town under a full moon; the best light by which to see this city of 30,000 people. The reflected, pinpoint lights of the many houses across on Douglas Island shimmer in the narrow Gastineau Channel. On the mainland, Mount Juneau rises to our left and Mount Roberts lies ahead. The sparkling city nestles between them. It is quite a sight. Tonight it is possible to believe Juneau’s billing as a ‘little San Francisco’.

In town, the Taku wind sweeps down off the glacier of the same name. Banana belt indeed. I bury my face deep into the collar of my winter coat and walk blindly, leaning heavily into the glacial blast. Shop signs swing rustily, the streetlights tremble. Juneau residents tell you with glee that when meteorologists decided to measure the strength of the Taku, the wind gauges they erected were blown away.

Fortunately, the wind is occasional and usually short-lived. When it finally runs out of breath, our buffeted ears take time to adjust to the stillness. “Where shall we go?” we can now hear ourselves ask. “How about the Alaskan?” And so we troop into the smoky bar of the Alaskan Hotel, which retains traces of the early days of a city which came into being when two prospectors, Joe Juneau and Richard Harris, found gold in a nearby creek in 1880.

Daytime. Franklin Street is deserted; its many souvenir and outfitting shops luridly proclaim the flip side of the highly seasonal cruise ship trade. BIG DISCOUNTS. 50% OFF EVERYTHING. SALE! SALE! SALE! Other shops bleakly announce: CLOSED FOR WINTER. Not until May, and the beginning of the annual influx of 370,00 cruise ship passengers, will this thoroughfare live again.

In the absence of the tourists, Juneau’s true vocation is easily apparent. First and foremost, this is a government town. You can see it in the architecture. Amid the characterful pioneer buildings, municipal eyesores have risen. The split-level State Office Building (or the S.O.B., as locals prefer to call it). The Alaska State Capitol, with its incongruous marble-pillared entrance. The city library, tucked away in a multi-storey car park.

Modern draughtsmen have not been kind to Juneau. But the city’s natural setting remains unrivalled, and for that reason it has gained a reputation as one of the most liveable cities in the United States.

We drive out of the city, heading north on the Glacier Highway. This is a road without an ultimate destination. Forty miles out of town, the highway stops dead. Drive south, the same thing happens, only sooner. Go east, and the road terminates at the foot of the Mendenhall glacier. Go west, across the bridge, and all you’ll find are the suburbs of Douglas Island. Juneau, you quickly discover, has no road link with the outside world (a fact which continues to stoke the long-running debate about moving Alaska’s capital to a more accessible location).

We arrive at the Temsco helipad, where we pull on warm gumboots, listen to a brief safety lecture, and clamber into a waiting chopper. Then we fly over jagged ridges and between close peaks to a fantastic landing on the Mendenhall glacier. We get out and shuffle cautiously on the slick surface. We do not wander far. The previous day, a nine-year-old girl had to be rescued after falling twenty-five feet into a crevasse. She was lucky; she was pulled out relatively unscathed. Many of the alarming blue fissures in the ice plunge deeper than can be imagined.

Later, in white-blanketed Anchorage (the state’s largest city, with a population of more than a quarter of a million), the Anchorage Times reports the full tale of the glacier drama. Sharing the front page there is another headline illustrating the natural perils of this northernmost state: ‘Anchorage Resident Attacked by Moose.’

In downtown Anchorage, a digital display blinks the current temperature: -8C. Taking into account the wind chill, it is effectively below –30C. Fortunately, I’ve come prepared: thermals, thick shirt and trousers, chunky sweater, Michelin man coat, a hat with ear flaps, padded gloves, snow boots. Properly clothed, and with the knowledge that I must be wary of both glaciers and moose, I am well equipped to survive the Alaskan winter.

As in Juneau, so in Anchorage the streets are eerily quiet. I have seen these same sidewalks thronging with people in T-shirts and shorts. Here, each summer, the scent of suntan lotion wafts on the warm breeze. But I suspect that the tourists who flock here then, during the peak season, return home weighted by the vague sadness that Alaska was not quite the place they had imagined it to be.

To see it in February, when the snow lies deep and flurries of ice particles glitter in the swirling air, is an altogether different experience. Only at this time of year can you truly claim to have been touched by the cold magic that is invoked by the mere utterance of the word ‘Alaska’.

AFTERWORD

How Cold Will It Be?

Occasionally the temperature in the interior plummets to below –40C. On average, you can expect January/February temperatures to be between –5C and –25C (south-east Alaska tends to be warmer – average winter temperatures in Ketchikan are above freezing). As long as you dress warmly, in layers, the climate should not hinder your enjoyment.

How Short Will the Days Be?

The shortest winter days in Anchorage and Whitehorse (in December) provide around 5 hours of daylight. By February, you can expect more than ten hours of daylight – on a par with UK. It’s a different story in Barrow, in the far north, where the sun sets on 18 November and doesn’t rise again until 24 January.