Constable Andrew West of the Canadian Mounted Police is a serious young man, absorbed in his job. The mounted police officers responsible for security on the streets of the Yukon, the almost deserted, of bears, caribou and wolves populated territory in the north-western Canada. A red flag for the Constable are tourists who throw food out of their cars to get a wild animal in front of the lens.
“A fed bear is a dead bear” (“A bear is a dead bear lined”), warns the police – should read: If you feed wild animals, trained them in a dangerous behavior. Because if Bear, Wolf & Co. in their search for food the people get too close, the risk increases that they shoot – before it comes to a tragic for the people starting the encounter. Motorists who drive too fast on the highway, bring the Constable also in a rage. Maximum of 90 kilometers per hour are allowed on Canadian highways.
encounters with other road users is extremely rare, if you drive on the 713 km long Klondike Highway. Between Whitehorse, the 25,000-inhabitant town in the south of the Yukon Territory, and Dawson City, the once famous gold mining town located more than 500 kilometers. Only about a dozen vehicles – mostly trucks and a few pick-ups – come meet the Fulda convoy all the way
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have few encounters with a long heavy vehicle but it will be in for a few seconds to obscure adventure. Because the snow is extremely dry, it swirl as the wheels of trucks on icy dust cloud.
A good hour’s drive north of Whitehorse is the Braeburn Lodge. The rustic guest house once belonged to, how many roadhouses in the Yukon, to the classic Refreshments for mushers and coachmen on their vast and arduous journey to Dawson City. Steve, the owner, looks with shoulder-length silver hair and curls curly beard like Santa Claus incarnate.
The corpulentmid-sixties is Harley fan. While the hog hibernates in the shed, his driver enjoys the quiet season and the beefy heat in the cabin. Only once a week does the landlord of his Dodge, goes to Whitehorse to shop, so he can offer his trucker customers, which is expected from him coffee and cinnamon rolls, which have the format of a family cake, a thick, richly savory soup and oversized burgers.
immersed for hours, the low sun in the onward journey to the north, the landscape in a soft pastel hues. Extend to the horizon, snow-covered hills. A few thousand wolves to roam the nearly 500,000-square-mile Yukon Territory. From the highway you can see, however, rarely even an animal – but the endless Canadian Forest: alpine spruce, whose Astkränze are always sickly, the further it goes in the far north
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The temperatures are falling continuously. After a relatively mild winters with moderate subzero temperatures, meteorologists have announced severe frost. Dawson City nighttime lows of minus 48 degrees Celsius crunchy expected.
It is already dark, when achieve the Kia SUV, located on the Yukon River and Klondike gold miners town. Even the short walk from the car to the hotel puts back here, no one without a cap, polar jacket and gloves. Even the biting cold, Whitehorse was painful – and there is still more than 20 degrees have been warmer than the icy Dawson City
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- Press Inform, 14:01
© 2012 Financial Times Germany,
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