Mountain biking, hiking and fishing in Carcross, Yukon

July 21, 2017 by Catherine Forest in Camping spots, Yukon, Hiking, Mountain biking

Getting ready to ride on Montana Mountain.

Ending our ride right on the beach by Bennett Lake.

Her first catch! A beautiful 5 lbs lake trout! She got a second one that was a little smaller!

Hiking up Nares Mountain. Steep, but beautiful!

Mountana Mountain is a mountain biking mecca and people come from far away to ride these beautiful trails. Be warned though, that this is not the best place for a beginner rider. The riding is technical and steep in places, but there is plenty to keep the comfortable intermediate busy. For a longer ride, ride Mc Donald Creek or Nares View. For a quick afternoon ride we like to combine Maggie's Run, Sporting Wood, upper Dei Kwan, Sam McGee and AK DNR (then Mossy all the way to the beach on a nice day). Another good combo is Holey Roads, upper Dei Kwan, Lower Wolverine and Fox. Upper Wolverine will delight the more advanced riders, so will Black Bear and Goat. You can shuttle up or ride the nice uptrack (or do a bit of both!). Get more info on the trails here.

There are two places to camp in the area (on top of an ugly pricy RV park): the Carcross campground is right in town, but in a nice wooded area (that's where we like to stay, riding and walking distance from everything, good cell signal, free wood, included in our Yukon camping pass). There is also a new territorial campground 10 minutes out of town called Conrad. It's also treed and more quiet, but there is no cell signal and you need to drive to get anywhere.

There is the famous Carcross desert where every tour bus coming from Skagway (AK) stops, but there are also some beautiful (and hard!) hiking trails that rewards you with beautiful views of the area after only 10-15 minutes of hiking (no need to go all the way to the top, but we highly recommend it!). I especially recommend you hike Nares Mountain, Caribou mountain or Sam McGee (also called Mountain Hero), 2 km passed Conrad Campground. Bring your bear spray and make lots of noise, we have seen bears on these trails every year we came to hike them.

Carcross is a really cute little town with one of the most beautiful (although often very windy) beaches in the Yukon. The new Carcross Commons is a cluster of tiny houses with Tlingit-inspired facades featuring artisans, an amazing coffee shop, a gelato shop, an authentic maple products shop, a bike shop and lots more. There is also a delicious restaurant called The Bistro.

There isn't much in terms of supply in Carcross. A corner store with pricy crappy food, a laundromat at the RV park (and that allowed us to fill our water jugs there) and dump and fill for $10, no propane, so make sure you come prepare and grocery shop in Whitehorse before coming.

By the way, for those interested, I think my love affair with the Fujifilm x-100t is already over. I miss the bokeh of my Nikon 24-70 mm (on the D700). I know I cannot ask this little camera to do it all well (as my friend Michel says, it's not a grand piano, it's a synthesizer, it doesn't do everything, but what it does, it does well). It's a great second camera, but since I cannot afford 2 cameras, I'll go back to my super heavy work horse. Maybe the xt-1 + the 56 mm f 1.2 would be the answer, but I would need at least another lens (23 mm?), which adds up...

A weekend of riding and eating (and blueberry picking) in Carcross, Yukon

August 23, 2016 by Catherine Forest in Yukon, Mountain biking

Calling the teams for the last day of riding of the season, on Montana Mountain, in Carcross.

Waiting to find out in which team she will be...

Endind a perfect biking day at Benett Lake!

Covering the potatoes with moss to keep them from drying out.

Peach and cranberry cake in the dutch oven

The trick is to have a 3 to 1 ratio of coals (3 on top, 1 at the bottom) and to have the bottom on a trivet or a rack so it is not sitting on the coals.

Apple crisp in the dutch oven. Success!!

Picking blueberries in Fraser, BC (45 min from Carcross towards Alaska).

Early blueberry (aka blue huckleberry or Vaccinium ovalifolium) on the left, dwarf blueberries on the right (Vaccinium caespitosum) — Early blueberry (aka blue huckleberry or *Vaccinium ovalifolium*) on the left, dwarf blueberries on the right (*Vaccinium caespitosum*)

Do you understand why we call huckleberries "black mouth" in French (gueules noires)?? — Do you understand why we call huckleberries "black mouth" in French (*gueules noires*)??

Fall is definetely here. The willow and alder leaves are turning yellow, the fireweed are a rainbow of green to dark red, often on the same plant, and the berries are incredibly abundant!

Riding on Montana Mountain in the fall light is nothing short of magical: the way the light filters through the trembling aspens and the glowing green mossy trails... It feels like such a treat to be part of it all.

As Rachel who lives in the Colorado mountains says it so beautifully:

"Here is a place where weather is an animal that will never be tamed.

Here, being human feels like just the right size, appropriately small amongst the stout spruce and fir trees, and the ancient, storytelling rocks. For a brief, wondrous time you may find your desires shrink into something manageable, a small parcel that you can put in your pocket and examine later.

Here, the flavors of happiness may begin to look different, less about accomplishments and acquisitions, and more about the privilege of walking this beloved earth. You may allow yourself to be schooled by the resident teachers, the living things who seek only what they need. Maybe life need not be so complicated."

An incredible weekend in Carcross, Yukon (overnight hike + bike)

June 20, 2016 by Catherine Forest in Yukon, Hiking, Mountain biking

We went just below that snow patch that we can see higher up in the middle.

Beautiful arnica flowers everywhere on the trail!

The beautiful beach in Carcross along Lake Bennett.

We wanted to do one overnight hike before leaving on our 5 day/4 nights hike on the Chilkoot trail next week. We decided to combine a bike ride on the awesome trails of Montana mountain in Carcross (45 min from Whitehorse) with a hike up Sam McGee/Mountain Hero trail. This trail was originally made to service the tramway built in 1905 by Sam McGee for a silver mining operation. There are many remnants of the tramway and mining artifacts along the trail.

When we arrived in the alpine after a slow 3 hour climb in the forest, we quickly found a great spot to set camp. The view from the top is fantastic, with Windy Arm of Tagish Lake below, and all of the surrounding mountains. We all sat in silence, in awe of this incredible wild land, thankful for it all. And thankful for all this amazing nature, from the scraggly moss I used to scrub the pots and dishes in the freezing creek, to the beautiful arnica we collected to make a healing oil for our sore muscles, the deliciously sweet wild rose petals we ate along the way and the chewed up yarrow leaves we put in Mathilde’s nose to stop a nose bleed.

And yes, it was every bit as idyllic as it looks... Except maybe for the sleeping part, because, well, sleeping in a tent on a ridge over the tree line 3 days before summer solstice is a challenge! Let’s just say that I could read my book at 2 am without a headlamp… And there was the full moon... And by 6:30, we were dying in the tents because the sun was so hot! Oh my beautiful Yukon!

*Photo note: these pictures have all been taken with my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S7) with the Camera FV-5 app and imported into DXO Optics Pro (a photo enhancement software that I LOVE). I’m pretty happy with the result! It’s nothing like my Nikon, but it works.

Mountain biking on Montana Mountain, in Carcross, Yukon

August 09, 2015 by Catherine Forest in Mountain biking, Yukon

Isn't that Unimog the coolest shuttle vehicle ever?!

It was Java's first ride (we took him on a fun 5 km loop) and he did awesome! He never was in the way and followed very well (he even whined every time we stopped because he wanted to keep going!). He's gonna be a great riding partner!

How do you turn a big sandpit into a major tourist attraction? You call it The Smallest Desert on Earth! I am not kidding... this sandpit is undeniably the most visited sandpit in the world...!

Since I never bring my camera on our bike rides, you haven't seen many pictures of our outings here (I have posted some phone pictures on the Facebook page). Today was an all-day meet of the girls' bike team at Montana Mountain in Carcross (one of the amazing bike trail systems in the Yukon). They had shuttles going up all day and they had a blast! As for me, well, let's say that even with the beautiful scenery, the nice people and the great coffee, it still ended up being a pretty hard day... The trails in Carcross are challenging for my skill levels (which are, in all honesty, pretty basic...), and I don't really like being outside of my comfort zone (and being scared of hurting myself), so I am glad the pictures were taken before the tears and the swearing... when I was still smiling... I hope that next year we will be back in the Yukon early enough so I can take Boréale Biking women's skills clinic, feel more confident and beat that fear!

Caribou Mountain

August 05, 2014 by Catherine Forest in Hiking, Yukon

There are not many places in the world where you can do a short (but steep!) hike and have such an amazing view... and with nobody else on the trail. After a mere 20 minutes, we had a stunning panoramic view of Bennett Lake and Montana Mountain. We kept climbing and climbing through the alpine vegetation. The descent was slippery, but fun!

Half-way up, Mathilde found a rock with what looks like a petroglyph of a mountain goat (there are lots of mountain goats on Caribou Mountain). We'll bring it to the Tourism and Culture Department to have it assessed. She is so proud of her rock!

Moutain Hero

July 28, 2014 by Catherine Forest in Yukon, Hiking

We woke up at 10 am on Sunday morning to a grey sky. We had had a nice evening in town at our friends Elise and Ludo's and were planning a slow day when Elise and Ludo showed up on their way to Carcross, where they were going hiking. We quickly packed a lunch and decided to join them. On our way there, it started raining... It's been that kind of summer here... So we ate our lunch in the rain, putting on all the layers we had, then sat in the car to wait for the rain to stop. Ten minutes later, we were good to go! As we started ascending, the sun came back and we stripped down to shorts and t-shirts!

Mountain Hero is a gorgeous hike that quickly has very rewarding views. It once was a copper mine and there are still cables and artefacts from the mining period. It is all ascent, however, so half way through, JF, Ludo and Aïsha decided to keep going to the top, while Elise and I went back down with the other girls.

It felt great to be in the wild again and the forest smelled amazing after the rain. Elise had the girls do singalong songs to signal our presence to the bears. They were hilarious! It makes my own heart sings to see my girls connect with their Yukon friends so easily.

We then met up at the new café in Carcross after the hike and the girls had homemade lemon and passion fruit sorbetto. It was such a wonderful spontaneous day!