Hiking through history on Montana Mountain, Yukon, 1991-1995

    This is one of a series of hike reports written from 1991 to 1995 as I was researching the historic mines on Montana Mountain, Yukon, for my first book, "Fractured Veins & Broken Dreams." I carried a notebook, a tape recorder, and a camera on most of the hikes after this first one.

Dateline: December 30, 2023.

    I actually don't have a record of this hike other than photographs but I want to include this one because of its significance.

    I was driving lengthy tours of the Yukon and Alaska for Atlas Tours at the time, and on a couple of days off I had another bus drop me off at the Carcross railway station. By the time I got back there the next day, I had walked about 40 km!

Looking back towards Whitehorse, up the Watson River valley. Carcross is hidden below the ridge at centre right.

A Buddhist ashram!

The stone house that I would eventually know as the first stone house -
the first of 3 at various mining claims on the mountain.

Having a closer look at what would have been the entrance to the first stone house.
People in Carcross told me that Buddhists had built the stone house, and that they lived up there with their llamas.
That story was one of the spurs to finding out what happened up there.

The Arctic Gold & Silver property overlooking the Big Thing valley.

This was probably as far as I walked in this direction - this looks back towards the Arctic property.

On the way back, I took a detour to the south and got a look at Lake Bennett.

By the time I got back to the stone house, I was tired and had a nap. When I woke up it was too late to hike back to Carcross - in dim light in grizzly country. I spent a very chilly night in a sheltered corner of the stone house and hiked back down the next morning.

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I was hooked, though. The next summer, I showed some friends what I had been finding during my drives and hikes on the mountain. On August 1st, Celine (a co-worker at Atlas) and I did an overnight trip - I had now brought my car to the Yukon, making exploring the mountain much easier. This photo was shot at what I called Glacial Lake, above the Big Thing valley.