The landscape east of the Klondike Highway, between Log Cabin and Fraser, B.C., is a giant jigsaw puzzle of water and rock. Large, round rocky outcrops are surrounded by water, with scattered vegetation growing in-between the rocks.
Marcelle Dubé has written the fifth novel of her Mendenhall Mystery Series titled The Forsaken Men. Her Mendenhall isn’t a subdivision of Whitehorse, but rather a fictive place in Manitoba.
From “Don’s Descent,” the small hill behind our house, one can look as far as Haines Junction. Mount Decoeli and Mount Archibald loom on the western horizon when skies are clear. In front of Decoeli, I can clearly make out Paint Mountain. You might know Paint Mountain as the rock face towering over Pine Lake, …
I was just getting started on working with Hollywood, my horse, out in Mendenhall (our home) when my grandparents were talking about the weather one night. As I lay in bed I couldn’t help to listen in when I heard “30 below.” Yikes! Anyway, he sucked it up after 20 minutes of walking in a …
I am pleased to announce that I recently had my first encounter with a sandhill crane. I have never gone to the Crane and Sheep Festival in Faro, which is held in May, and the time and place when the cranes fly over the town. Years ago, I saw flocks of sandhill cranes in November …
Kinnikinnick’s Latin name, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, comes from arctos and ursi meaning bear and staphylos and uva meaning bunch of grapes. Amazing: the taste of those little grapes! I just tried something I had never tried before, but had read about several times. As it happens, I was treating a certain condition I had. I always …
Talking to my friend Mary Whitley, a fellow explorer, we started discussing how many trails we had found this summer that we did not even know existed. She was finding them on her side of town around Mount Lorne, and I was finding them on mine around the Mendenhall Subdivision. So, on one of those …
It’s a cold morning. While I’m writing, the twin deer are in the yard — last year’s fawns, without their mother now. May was full of summer weather and I often had breakfast outside. Yet, a deer never walked up to me during those quiet morning times. However, on one lovely morning in May, suddenly, …
All winter I worked on a trail going due south from the house. My initial goal was to reach a little hilltop in the middle of the Takhini Valley. First, I followed the firebreak to the highway, and some days that was as far as I went. If I saw fresh elk or deer tracks, …
The meadows lie like pearls on a string along the winding, muddy Mendenhall River. I live only three kilometres from the river as the crow flies. When there is no obvious road or trail to where I want to go, I will find one. Many years ago I created a small path for the first …
The history of the Jo-Jo Lake trail goes a long way back, as the people of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations can tell you. “It’s been a horse trail for hunting forever, since way before my time,” 95-year-old Alex Van Bibber tells me. According to the highly-respected elder and outdoorsman, there is an outfitter …
With all the snow now melting, it brings back memories of spring hiking, which is soon to start. The southern-exposed hillsides are starting to clear, and by the end of April our crocuses might bloom – along with a little yellow cinquefoil here and there. Some years ago at the end of May or early …
In most places the river is around 20 feet wide, making it a perfect thoroughfare, even for dog sleds and snow machines, although there are snags and deadfall. The people who use it have tried to cut the overhanging trees, but as the banks slowly erode, trees keep falling across and into the river. My …
Of all the mountains around the Mendenhall subdivision, I had never made it to the most prominent, Mount Vanier. I can’t see it from my house, but my neighbour Kathi had been looking at it through her living room window for seven years, longing to be on the top. Finally, in the last week of …
