We’ve only been in The Yukon Territory a couple of days, but we’re beginning to sense something special about the little underrated territory.

OK, well “little” might not be an apt description.   It’s actually pretty big – around the size of California with a population about half the size of your average college football stadium.  And that gives you the first idea of what makes this place amazing: it’s empty.  Get out of Whitehorse or off the handful of major roads, and you’re lucky if you see anyone at all.

Add to the fact that the land is full of mountaintops, gullies, cobalt blue lakes, glaciers, boreal forests, bears, and canyons, and you start to see why it’s an outdoor fanatic’s fantasy land.  Locals don’t let the winters deter them either.  Rather it seems, they embrace the ice and snow, trading their hiking boots and rafting paddles for snowmobiles and dog sleds.

Yesterday we visited Whitehorse’s local ski resort, which has recently added a downhill bike course, zip lines (the longest in North America at 1.2 km with speeds approaching 100 km/hr), and a ropes course.

The spirit of the Klondike still resonates here and it’s not just on the license plates.  We were told that there are still thousands of gold claims every year – most of which are staked by your average hobby prospector hoping to hit the mother lode.

This is the land of the ice road truckers.  It’s full of hearty souls who think 80-degree weather is unbearable, and girls who still wear spaghetti straps in spite of the arctic chill. There are northern lights by winter, and endless daylight hours in the summer and it seems that you’re never far from a place where you can pull a fish out of a stream or lake.

The locals are welcoming enough, but you get the feeling they’re trying to keep a lid on what they’ve got.  Even the king salmon know it’s worth coming here to spawn.  They leave the Bering Sea, travel 2,000 miles up the Yukon River so they can make love once and die.