Locale

Yukon Off the Grid

Not Truly Anywhere: Yukon Solitude

The seatback flight map indicates we are flying over the Yukon Range as Maxime Letendre and I attempt to identify the peaks below. We thought the cirque of Sawtooth Mountain, with its unique, fang-like formations rising from a glacial plateau, would be easy to spot. Same with the summit of 6,900-foot Mt. Taiya, the highest peak in the range. But they are lost in a sea of rock spires, pyramids and glaciers—a landscape that feeds the imagination.  

Twenty minutes later we land in Whitehorse, the capital of Canada’s northerly Yukon Territory, and join the rest of our crew to head into these mountains. It’s mid-April, but we can still feel the freezing bite of a northern winter. Leaving the airport, we find Julien Levesque waving at us—he’d flown in two days prior with Martin-Simon Beauséjour, who climbs out of a 22-foot-long motorhome. “Welcome guys! Hope you are ready to get cozy? It’s smaller than I imagined,” he says while exiting the RV in the airport parking lot. “But at least it’s functional.”

The back door opens to a tiny kitchen complete with microwave, oven and two-burner stove, and while the fridge and freezer seem to work well, water is a no-go in these temperatures, meaning no showers. There are two bedrooms—one in the back with room for two and another with a low ceiling on the second level above the cab—and a third spot atop a convertible dining table…

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