Inn-hopping through the Yukon Territory, where the summer sun never quite sets, you can pack a month's worth of fishing, paddling, trekking, and biking into a single week

By Robert Earle Howells
Photographed by Sean Dungan

Sean Dungan

Tincup was actually my third stop; I'd spent the previous four nights farther south at two other lodges that participate with Tincup in an inn-hopping arrangement. The air approach to Whitehorse, the territorial capital that's home to 75 percent of the Yukon's 31,000 or so residents, had given me a preview of the mind-boggling geography that surrounds these lodges: When we eased down out of the clouds, we emerged over the awesome expanse of the coastal ranges—a jagged, snowy demarcation line between the arid Yukon and the maritime realm of southeast Alaska. Beyond the sharp peaks and narrow, glaciated valleys, I could see the broad basins and lower mountain ranges that characterize the southern Yukon. Apart from Whitehorse, civilization had ceased to exist.

First stop was Inn on the Lake, about 35 miles south of Whitehorse on the eastern shore of Marsh Lake, last in a chain of huge lakes that drain the Juneau Icefields and flow into the Yukon River. I imagine that during shorter days or crummy weather, the spruce-log inn's soaring atrium windows could induce gaze-at-the-view languor, but not when the sun's shining—it was, after all, only 9 p.m. when I arrived. Owner Carson Schiffkorn, a Yukon native and mountain-bike/sea-kayak/telemark-ski jock in his midthirties, quickly whipped up a gourmet snack—puff pastry filled with mushrooms in a red-wine roux—when a PowerBar would have sufficed, and led me off on a leg-stretcher of a hike in the spruce- and alder-covered hills. Two miles later we were at Caribou Lake, one of a cluster of small lakes where I, woefully bereft of fly rod, observed a number of monster rainbow trout rising.

Sean Dungan

I squeezed in two more outings that same day. The sightseeing flight over those vast Juneau Icefields proved to be one of the most dazzling on my life list of amazing flights: The three-hour tour winged us over the stark white icefields; Llewellyn, Gilkey, and Taku glaciers; and ice-melt lakes. And still there was time afterward for a five-mile canoe trip down the Yukon River through Myles Canyon, where 40-foot cliffs of columnar basalt hem in a narrows that once plagued Klondike gold-rush stampeders. The canyon is still spectacular but the danger is gone, tamed by a downstream dam. It made for a somnolent float to the outskirts of Whitehorse, where we took out and proceeded into town for Mexican food and local brews.

The next day we grabbed our paddles again and drove about 40 miles southeast from Marsh Lake to the Teslin River, a slow-moving Yukon tributary that drains one of those broad valleys. It's also the front yard for Schiffkorn's other enterprise, Inn on the River. We reached it by canoeing downstream from Johnson's Crossing, but it's also accessible by a bumpy, two-mile spur road off the Alaska Highway. The spruce-log structure, which opened in July 2000, has just four rooms, each equipped with hot tub and river-view balcony. Solar panels power the off-the-grid lodge sans noisy generator. It's an ideal place to fly-cast or paddle lazily, take a sauna, or poke around some of the old trappers' cabins on the grounds. The surrounding woods lack trails per se, but by following (and frequently losing) some old blazes in the sparse spruce forest, we made our way up a steep bluff and across a broad plateau. A couple of hours later we reached a spectacular chasm and a series of roaring cascades collectively called Squanga Falls.

The next day was transfer day. The Alaska Highway, which hugs the hem of the permanently snowy St. Elias Range most of the way from Whitehorse to the Alaska border, resembles an RV park on the move, but driving it is one of the quintessential Yukon experiences. In Kluane Wilderness Village near milepost 1118, after three hours on the road, I met up with Tincup co-owner, pilot, geologist, and erstwhile gold miner Larry Nagy for the 15-minute flight to the lodge. Banking in the Vietnam-era Helio Courier H-295 (an amazing workhorse that can fly as slow as 34 mph), we came over a ridge of the Ruby Range and could see the red-roofed main lodge, three cabins, and the wood-fired sauna clustered on the shore beside a stream and the lake.

Tincup is a place where tales are told over long meals or trolling sessions on the water. Nagy has his stories of seeking (and finding) gold all over the world; Janssen, his partner, is an expat Hollander who turns out amazing meals (fresh trout, Indonesian curries, Alaska seafood paella, chocolate-cranberry muffins) and paddles a touring kayak as if she'd been born in it. Guide Ron Chambers is the ultimate Yukon native son, an official of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations. His 88-year-old mother is a trapper who prospected the Tincup area in the 1930s; his Mountie grandfather is the one who named the lake, after a tin cup (a valuable possession) left hanging in a tree at the water's edge. In the course of 20 years as a warden in nearby Kluane National Park, Chambers climbed 19,524-foot Mount Logan (North America's second-highest peak), plucked untold numbers of hikers out of danger, and got to know pretty much everyone in the Yukon, which he describes as "a small town the size of two Californias."

Chambers dispensed local lore and natural history as we fished and hiked: "Watch out for the long, lean grizzlies. They're the meat eaters. They'll eat other bears' cubs." "Seems to me the reason climbers climb is so they can hear the wind blow through the hole between their ears. It works out, though. The local helicopter rescue pilot is also the coroner."

In this remotest of settings, I spent hours fishing, mostly for lake trout with Chambers and fly-fishing from shore with Nagy. I hiked from the lake at 2,686 feet to a spot simply called, in topo-ese, 5361. In fact, none of the peaks or streams in the area has a name. No trails exist. I saw a few moose, one griz, a beaver, and several bald eagles, who kept a you-know-what-kind-of eye out for filleted trout carcasses.

And still we had time. Back down below, almost precisely at midnight, I reeled in a 15-inch grayling and kept casting until dark. Or was it dawn? I couldn't tell.