Ski Touring Day on Crow Mountain

I could lie and say I'm a dog whisperer, but the truth is that I'm holding a bag of raw meat

The descent down Crow Mountain

Today I did something I have wanted to do since arriving in Old Crow. I skiied up (and down) Crow Mountain. Four humans and four dogs made the trek, two people on skis and two on snowshoes. Two of us were teachers and the other two were researchers, one doing a phD on muskrats and the other conducting research on H. pylori (a bacteria that causes ulcers and potentially stomach cancer and is common is Old Crow).

Ayla, (far left) with her husky friends

Huskies in their element on the mountain

The first point of interest we got to was a gravel pit quarry that has been mined for gravel to be used for roads in town. Again, I was amazed by the massive machinery in a place that brings everything in by plane. We then saw that exact plane land and take off, which was quite neat. When watching it land or take off from town it is quite huge and impressive. From part way up a mountain it looked small and insignificant.



Gravel pit machinery

Gravel pit part way up Crow Mountain

The next impressive view was of Second Mountain. Most of the snow on Second Mountain was gone and it gave us an impressive view our entire way to the top. There were patchy spots on Crow Mountain. It was quite neat to step over beautiful lichen with my cross country skis. At the end of April too!

The crew for the day, with Second Mountain in the background

Kiss from a malamute pup

Never thought my Sudbury skis would see Yukon lichen :)

The view from the top of the mountain was beyond stunning. Picture a 360 degree view of mountains, with oxbowed rivers, river banks, and lakes in front of the mountains. The sky is massive and surreal. A few white ptarmigans flew down the mountain beside us. A massive raven sails on the thermals above us. Is he hunting, or do they do this for fun?

The Porcupine River from partway up Crow Mountain

Two researchers and a teacher eating lunch on top of Crow Mountain

Caribou antlers at the summit of Crow Mountain

Skiing down was unreal fun. Although on cross country skis, I was able to make some incredibly fun turns. The snow was lightly powder on top and just soft enough to not fall through but to be able to carve. I could have played up there all day--hiking up and skiing down time after time. At one point I couldn't resist trying to take a little jump with my cross country skis. It went well until I hit soft snow and my skis dug in and I literally fell face first into (luckily soft) snow. Lots of laughing.

Nonstop play fighting for the dogs

Just seconds before the most epic faceplant of my life

Tired pups resting at lunch

Old Crow and the Porcupine River from atop Crow Mountain

Crow Mountain gave an incredibly veiw of the town of Old Crow and gave a good idea of why the put the town where. I was able to see where Culture Camp happened, and where I had gone skidooing and skiing on the Porcuipine River. I found a few caribou antlers sticking out of the snow on my ski down. Absolutely breathtaking. I am so thankful for good company, good conversation, sunshine and a summit.

Thanks for reading.

Warm Regards from Old Crow,

Haley

Skidoo Trip to Crow Flats

I was asked by a well regarded Elder in the community to go to Crow Flats. This is very much an honour, as this is the area that the Vuntut Gwitch'in (People of the Lakes) have been trapping and hunting at for thousands of years. Crow Flats is to Old Crow as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. It is the place to go and see while in Old Crow. We went by skidoo on Saturday and it was one of my favourite days here yet.

Panoramic View of Crow Flats taken from King Edward Mountain

Crow Flats is a 6172km squared wetland surrounded by mountains. It is one of the oldest archaeological sites of human inhabitation in North America and consists of over 2000 ponds and marshes. It is considered an Important Bird Area in Yukon because it is a breeding area for peregrine falcons and allows a habitat for water fowl and other species of birds. Southern Crow Flats is a Special Management Area and the Northern part is a part of Vuntut National Park.

Crow Flats from King Edward Mountain

Crow Flats is a very important breeding area for aquatic mammals. Muskrats are the most commonly trapped mammal here. There is a guy from Montreal doing his Masters on muskrats in Crow Flats. He spends a lot of time in Crow Flats with local trappers doing his research. He is known in Old Crow as "Rat boy" (muskrat boy) or "That rat bastard."

As we stood beside the skidoo and overlooked Crow Flats, my friend who took me to Crow Flats told me they call Crow Flats "Old Crow Bank" because of how much money people used to make selling muskrat furs to the Hudson Bay Company during the fur trade. My friend has been going to Crow Flats since he was a kid. They used to use dog teams to take their equipment and they would walk. The trip would take 2 or 3 days. We got there in a few hours by skidoo.

Stunning mountain views amazed me the entire trip

Three skidoos and 5 people were on our trip to Crow Flats

Highlights of my trip to Crow Flats include:

-Seeing a gorgeous and healthy looking red fox run across a lake beside us.
-Making a snow angel on a lake in Crow Flats
-The Mountains we rode beside to get to Crow Flats
-Eating roasted corn on the cob at the fire we made in Crow Flats over lunch
-Being outside all day in the bright sunshine

Snow angels on a lake at Crow Flats

A friend of mine asked in an email about fruit availability in Old Crow. I eat mostly frozen fruit that comes in my food order from Whitehorse. I buy fresh bananas and apples from the Northern Store. When I was in Dawson I brought back as many fresh fruit as I could.

While I'm on the topic of fruit, I might as well mention my birthday. My birthday was a few weeks ago and a friend of mine here had a BBQ to celebrate. He BBQed steaks for people, we had prawns and I brought the ingredients for a sundae bar. If I couldn't have wine on my birthday, (Old Crow is a dry community if I haven't mentioned that yet) I was going to have to have ice cream with chocolate candy and fresh fruit as toppings. It was a really fun night and I felt lucky to have friends here to help me celebrate my birthday.

I'll post about caribou fences tomorrow. My class is doing an English Language Arts writing piece about them and they are quite fascinating to learn about.

Thanks for reading. Hope everyone is well and happy.

Warm Regards from Old Crow,

Haley

Duck Soup



On a walk up Crow Mountain Road Today

In my last post I described the plucking, singing and gutting process of preparing a duck to eat. This was done on Tuesday. On Wednesday afternoon, the students in my class made the duck into soup. The ducks were kept in the fridge over night. When we pulled them out, the educational support worker taught the students how to slice the duck to be put into the soup. Now that the duck was gutted, the entire duck (head included) was put into the soup. It was boiled with soup base, rice, cauliflower and broccoli.

We ate the soup at the end of the school day that we made it. The Elder who shot them came to eat with our class which was really special. It was my first time having duck soup and it was quite rich and thick. There weren't big chunks of duck, but the broth was thick. I prefer caribou soup and caribou meat to duck (caribou is so tasty!) but I was am really happy to know how to make duck soup and to have had the chance to try it.

Old Crow and the Porcupine River seen from Crow Mountain Road

I organized a pizza dough cooking class for my class this past week. When I opened the fridge to put perishable pizza making supplies in, I found four muskrats almost staring back out at me. Quite a unique experience that I enjoyed. During the pizza making time there was a moose head (yes, a massive and real moose head) in a box at the end of the kitchen. I think it is made into a soup as well and it was put here before being made into a moose head stew. It is so wonderful to have so many traditional foods in the school these days. It is one of the very exciting things about spring time here in Old Crow.

Bannock is a popular traditional food of Old Crow

Bannock is a bread like bun made from flour, butter, milk and salt. One of the events over Easter weekend was a bannock making competition. This is where the above photo was taken. Bannock goes deliciously well with caribou stew or duck stew.

I am honored to have been asked by a local of Old Crow to go to Crow Flats by skidoo tomorrow. Crow Flats is the area North of Old Crow that has been used as a hunting, fishing and trapping grounds of the Vuntut Gwitch'in peoples for thousands of years. The Vuntut Gwitch'in are "People of the Lakes" because of Crow Flats. I am going by skidoo tomorrow and could not be more excited. It apparently takes two hours to get there.

I am really enjoying my time in Old Crow. The light is amazing. The people are amazing. The melting of the snow has people using skidoos, bikes, and four wheelers for transportation. There is enough snow in some places to ski still, but it won't be for long. It has been in the pluses for temperature and has been sunny every day since I can remember.

The land is stunningly beautiful here. I hope my photos are doing it justice. It is so vast, open, wild and free. I will take photos tomorrow on my trip to Crow Flats and do a post about Crow Flats as soon as I can.

Mahsi Choo (thank you) for reading my blog. Hope you are enjoying spring wherever it is that you are.

Warm Regards from Old Crow,

Haley

Spring in Old Crow

It's not every day that you learn to pluck, singe and gut a duck. Today I learned to pluck and singe a duck with my class. An elder in town had shot two white-winged scoder ducks a few days ago and the educational support worker at the school taught the lesson. We plucked and singed the duck outside (in the sunshine and without coats on!) this afternoon. Plucking involves pulling out the feathers, first from the belly side and then from the top. There is quite a technique to this, (which one of my students taught me) that involves using your thumb to pull out as many feathers at once as possible. Then you remove the tail feathers and the duck is ready to be singed.

The duck is still whole at this point, head and all. It is just featherless. A fire was made in front of the school. Lots of flames are needed to burn the feathers off (I got a few for a pair of earrings before the duck was brought to the fire). The ducks were placed directly on top of the sticks and left there until all the feathers were burnt off. Burning feathers smell a lot like burnt hair. The singing part was my favourite part of the process.

Gutting the duck was next, or else the duck would rot between the time we singed it and the time we make soup from it. Gutting is pretty self explanatory, so I won't go into detail. Our ducks are in the fridge and we will eat them as soup (with the elder who shot them) tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait! It was a really neat process to watch and learn.

Ayla on the Porcupine River before our trip to the School Cabin 12km upriver

I have never experienced light returning so quickly. It is absolutely amazing and puts everyone in good spirits and has given me much more energy. It is now light as midday when I go to sleep and when I wake up.

The river is starting to melt and the places I used to walk and ski aren't accessible anymore. Kind of sad, but really exciting too.

Patches of earth are starting to appear. Ayla my pup is incredibly intrigued by the ground and all the smells and doggy treasures (pieces of dead animals--yes she found a small rodent skull and a scapula of an unknown animal) that appear when the snow melts.

Ayla and I walking home from Easter festivities at community hall

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The air strip late at night

The school cabin, 12km upriver at a place called Caribou Crossing, or Thoh

I spent this past weekend in Dawson. I was there for a fiddle residency that was put on by Robert Service School and instructed by an amazing fiddle instructor from Victoria, B.C. The purpose of my trip was to brush up on my violin skills and learn teaching techniques that will let me start up a fiddle club here in Old Crow. I will post more about this later.

Fiddling is a big part of the culture here in Old Crow. Up until this weekend I thought that fiddle music would have been brought to the North by fur traders. Not the case though. This weekend I learned it was whalers who brought the fiddle to Northern Canada and that it began in Northern Quebec. Fiddle music and jigging were a very fun part of Easter weekend in Old Crow

Ayla on the river (before it began thawing)

Thanks for reading my blog. I apologize for the lack of posts and photos. I have borrowed a card reader, so more photos to come. Hope you are all well.

Warm Regards from Old Crow,

Haley

Easter Weekend in Old Crow

Easter weekend in Old Crow was so much fun! From Friday to Monday there was nonstop activities, games, feasts, food and fun community events. There was a talent show with fiddle playing and singing and juggling. There were jigging competitions with live fiddle music.

Someone shot a caribou on the Saturday and it was cooked up on the Sunday to be eaten. My piece still had some hair on it, but was really tasty anyways. The ultimate fresh I guess.

I can't remember the last time I played musical chairs until this weekend. So fun! There were tape-unwrapping dice games (don't know the real name of this one). I got second place in a sled pull, where I was pulled on a sled and then pulled someone.

There was an old fashioned tug-of-war and egg tossing and egg-spoon races that were really fun to participate in. Maybe the most fun of the activities was the log push. The log push is two teams of two people each (on opposite ends of a large log) who are trying to push the other team outside of a circle. My team got pushed out of the circle in about 3 seconds, but it was fun to watch the rest of the events.

Yesterday I skied 11km upriver to a cabin that the school has for school trips. It was warm (-15 at coldest) and beautifully sunny all day. The trail was hard packed from people skidooing on it. At the school cabin we ate grilled cheese, (with sprouts that I grew in a glass jar on my kitchen table :) )  tomato soup and drank coffee. This was Ayla's longest adventure yet, and she did really well! At the school cabin she slept, zipped up in my down jacket. So cute! The 11km back was fun and still super sunny.

I was hoping to see a caribou, as the school cabin is at atop a hill called 'Caribou Lookout.' No such luck, but I had an amazing bum-toboggan down to the river from the cabin.

I am totally loving Old Crow and the Yukon. The return of the light is absolutely amazing. Everyone is in high spirits and I find I need so much less sleep. I am wide awake in the morning and almost have to force myself to go to sleep at night. In not too long it will be 24 hour of light.

I was up at 3am to let the dog out to go to the washroom and saw some of the most amazing Northern lights I have seen here.

Hope everyone had a good Easter weekend. Saw some beautiful daffodil photos near Chilliwack (Thanks A-M!) and it looks like spring is in full force everywhere.

My camera cord still is not working, so I will have to post photos later. For now I will post something I saw and really liked. Take care, everyone.

Warm Regards from Old Crow,

Haley

Loved this

Skidooing on the Porcupine River



Old Crow from the air

Yesterday I went on a skidoo adventure up the Porcupine River.   Picture untouched powder, sun, open and vast land as far as they eye. It was beautifully sunny. I went with four friends from Old Crow and we were trying to make it to a cabin that was 61 miles up the Porcupine River.

 It was incredible to be on the land that I look at from the plane and to see the steep cliffs on the shore of the river flying by. I'm not much of a skidoo person, and this was my longest trip by skidoo byfar. I have to say that contrary to what I thought before today, skidooing is much more physical than I thought.

Oxbow River tha isn't the porcupine but that gives an impression of the land I was skidooing on yesterday.

I was surprised to be so sore today. Good old Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness (human kinetics degree taught me something :p) probably from holding onto the skidoo and from all the suuuuuuper fun bumps that we went off on the river. My friend let me drive her skidoo and driving fast was insanely fun. The rest of the time I was a passenger which was also a blast.

Our trip was cut short when we got to a spot where a creek enters the river. The lead skidoo didn't see the overflow and flipped his sled. We stopped at another cabin instead and had a nice lunch. Everyone had smokies (hot dogs) and I had hobo-style soup out of the can, heated on the stove. The trip back to town was uneventful except for stopping to talk to a few other skidooers out (mostly out to cut wood).
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Northern Store which has groceries, post office and bank.

Ayla, my new husky pup

The photos I have uploaded aren't taken yesterday. My camera cord isn't working as of now, so the photos from yesterday aren't up.

I am really loving Old Crow and the Yukon. Although the Yukon's population is way smaller than other provinces, the people who do live here make up for it in character, adventurousness and sense of humour. There are few people I have met in Old Crow who don't like to laugh, play practical jokes and who don't have a sensationally good sense of humour.

Thanks for reading! Enjoy spring everyone. Those of you on the Island, smell a blossom for me and those in Ontario harvest some fiddleheads and eat them for me when they come up.

Warm Regards from Old Crow,

Haley