Last night as we stood around a hot fire just above the lake waiting for the northern lights to show, the snow began to fall quite heavily delighting the four Aussies who hadn't seen snow before. In the morning there there was a thin skiff of snow covering everything.
As I turned from taking this photo I found a very large coyote passing just beside me. Being downwind he couldn't pick up my scent and he didn't realize I was present until he was almost on top of me. I asked in the lodge and they thought it might be a wolf, given it's size. However, I had it confirmed as a coyote elsewhere and I must say that it was much larger than the urban coyotes one sees these days in our urban environment. It more sensed me rather than saw me, and then it stopped and reversed course, but not before I took a nice series of photos.
We ended up just a few metres apart. To this point our only large animal encounter. Knowing there are many moose, elk, caribou, bears and other animals we've been surprised by their absence. Perhaps it's due to the massive areas available for them to wander without human interaction. After all, there's only about 40,000 inhabitants in the Yukon with 25-30,000 located in Whitehorse.
Today we had an opportunity and the time to walk along a fairly remote forest trail to Sucker Bay which is so named for the boats that got stuck there during the gold rush days in the 1800's. Something to do with the winds.
As we progressed, we started to see many different tracks in the snow and mud ranging from coyote, to bear and even some moose and elk.
Coyote tracks.
In spite of our efforts we only saw this wee fella.
We continued down the trail and found something unexpected along the way.
And then something, or some things also unexpected. This big fella began to check us out from a long way away, and slowly advanced towards us.
Then a second beautifully marked horse showed up, and I figured that I'd walk over and introduce myself.
They came right up to me and checked me out. Then we began to hear the dogs barking in the distance and realized that we were very close to the fellow we'd met the day before who had his sled dogs...66 of them! He was out on a training run with them and pulling around a couple of Aussies to boot!
We continued along through some remote countryside. A beautiful walk. We marvelled at how small the trees are here, this far north with a very short growing season.
Wolf tracks in the snow...but then we finally reached the lake.
Chilly, but a great view in spite of the cloud.
A beautiful beach! Lots of drift wood pushed up by high winds during the spring snow melt, as this would be completely frozen over through the winter, thick enough to take a dog sled team outon, or ice fish.
A different selfie.
A few of the smaller details.
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