Along the Mount Nansen Road nearer Carmacks than not

Sunny day just up the road about 10 kms from the village.

Mount Nansen area west of Carmacks

The Nansen road is plowed in the winter and gives access to the old mine site, some placer mines, some heritage and trailheads. Went out for a ski a few weeks back. Low snow conditions on a prospecting cutline that lead up to a hill top that was cairned and had a whiskey bottle for the summit register. The paper was frozen into the neck of the bottle so no getting it out, which speaks to the integrity of the bottle's seal.
Variable snow down the west side allowed for some cautious turns, missing most, not all, of the rocks under the thin snowpack. Saw two moose on the way up , who watched me for a while before heading through a low pass and down to tree line

some evening light on the frost / snow covered trees on the way back down to town. Lots of inversion here with temps easily ten and sometimes fifteen degrees warmer than in the valley by the river.

Yukon ice climbing, skiing on the river, and a not often done traverse near Carmacks

There is a guidebook for ice climbing in the Yukon, though I have been told it is now a little dates. The seepages along Fish Lake Road appear to be no more as the diversion pipe from the dam has been slip lined or replaced in a similar fashion to what happened at Grassi Lakes when Trans Alta upgraded their Spray hydro electric project. So.. that lead to a bit of a quest to find some of the other routes in the guide. I went down to Carcross as there are several lists climbs there and I noticed a seepage along the road while hiking there in the Fall. The route at km 20 past the Carcross bridge is an actual creek and is high enough volume to still be flowing. There are two nice looking routes across the lake but are currently only accessible by boat - looks to be a straight forward paddle. The aforementioned seep was frozen so it provided some diversion to the day - nice ice actually too bad it wasn't ten times higher. Mild day, above freezing, poor conditions down by the border so I opted not to drive past the border control

the lake and the routes on the other side

Met a trapper the other day and was able to tag along on a traverse from the Mount Nansen Road on over to the Freegold Road. Lots and lots of willow bashing. The Trail on the Freegolsd side is heavily overgrown.

and before it got warm there was some decent skiing to be had on the river ice