These are the Chronicles of Famous Surf Writer Ben Marcus and his trip into the Wilds of the Alaskan Frontier.
Latest Update: October 17, 2000

17:22 YUKON TIME A PIZZA PLACE IN DAWSON CITY, YUKON, CANADA

Dawson (City) really is kind of quaint, as German Frank argued a few days ago. Outwardly it is a tarted up little tourist town that borders on Skagway or Fisherman's Wharf yucky cuteness. The town plays up the whole 1896 Klondike Gold Rush theme with Bombay Peggy's Bar and Grill and Peabody's Photo Parlor and Dawson City General Store. There's lots of Old West fonts and false fronts and there are plank boardwalks running along unpaved streets. It's hard to tell if the streets aren't paved and the sidewalks are boardwalk for the tourists, or if the town really can't afford it.

It's all a little Frontier Village-ish but scrape away that new paint and just underneath you'll find the skeleton of a true Western frontier town-the most important town in the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896.

Dawson City is where the Yukon and Klondike Rivers come together, and it is half artificial and half for real. It's too far north and too remote to be a full-time tourist place, and this time of year you see the real side of it come out. The streets aren't paved and the sidewalks are boardwalk but it feels real. It's also pretty obvious that many of the buildings housing stores and bed and breakfasts and gift shops and pizza places have been reconstituted from back in the day. This place is still an outpost and it is still connected to the gold industry.

In the lobby of the Downtown Hotel there are two aerial photos of Dawson, one taken in 1900 and one taken recently. There appears to have been more of Dawson back then than there is now.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Yesterday (debate Tuesday) was another sedentary, indoor media day. Frank spent the day walking around Dawson and I joined him a couple of times, but there really isn't all that much to see here. Dawson is small and most of the tourist shops are closed. I met Frank in this same pizza place yesterday and pasted up all my receipts in my white book. I also called back to Sequim to explain why I wasn't in court on the 16th. I may still be able to protest the ticket by mail. I have a strategy. I'm going to use a little humor, as Yen Lo suggested in The Manchurian Candidate.

I'm going to argue that I was ticketed for an expired license one day after it expired, and that I was intending to take care of it. I'm going to argue that I did take care of it, and I'm going to send a digital photo of my hideous Washington Driver License photo, and argue that it should be punishment enough. Sometimes humor works with judges. We'll have to see.

Anyway, walked around Dawson a bit yesterday, checked out some whopping big gold nuggets in one of the tourist stores, and tried to find a Neil Young CD. Spent the rest of the day in Room 210 of the Downtown Hotel, gearing up for the third and final debate.

While cruising the internet I pulled up the transcript of the second presidential debate and read about half of it. George W. Bush may present himself okay, but when you read him in paper, he sounds like a guy quoting from the encyclopedia. Gore is a hundred times smarter, but for some reason, he just doesn't come off very well. Bush comes off as the underdog and the battler, and Gore is the bully. Ain't that a switch? The Republican is getting bullied by a Democrat?

While waiting for the debate to come on we ordered dinner from the hotel restaurant and ate it in the room. I had Klondike Chowder and bruschetta, and it was all really good.

Anyway, watched the debate, and I realized why there hasn't been much mud-slinging between the two candidates. Gore and Bush agree on a lot of things outwardly, but I think they are also in collusion to restore the dignity of the presidency. I'm sure they are equally appalled by Bill Clinton's slimy behavior in the office they crave, and I believe neither man wants to do anything more to drag the office through the shit. That's why the debates have been so civil. There's been enough crap in the last four years. People are tired of it. I mean, Gore got in trouble just for scoffing and sniffling and pulling faces.

Imagine if the shit really started flying:

"Coke-head!"

"Pot-head!"

"Harvard preppie"

"Yalie frat boy!"

"Rich kid!"

"Rich kid!"

"Draft-dodger!"

On and on and on.

After watching the debate there was a really good Frontline profile on both of the candidates, taking both Bush and Gore back to infancy. There's plenty of dirt under both of their fingernails.

Dirty debating between Gore and Bush could have been the shit-fight of the century, but they spared us all by choosing to cool it.

That's just my opinion. As kind of dull as this election is, it's also a cliff-hanger.

Frank gave up on me after the debates and borrowed the Ford E150 Econoline van to go track down a Czech friend who knew the comings and goings of Trapper Pete, who Frank is hoping to visit up the Dempster Highway. Frank came back all smiles, and said that Trapper Pete was due into Dawson on Thursday. After that Frank went downstairs to go drink beer with some Germans he had met, while I spent the next several hours online, playing gin and trolling the internet for nubile innocents.

Just kidding. I actually really enjoy some of the conversations I get into online. It's amazing what people will talk about, under cover of anonymity.

Stayed up until very, very late, playing gin and chatting. It's addicting, I admit it.

Today we cruised around Dawson City, which doesn't really offer a whole lot of options. The whole town is no bigger than downtown Half Moon Bay, and there is only one road in and out.

It was foggy and gloomy at river level in town, but just outside the fog disappeared as we drove up Bonanza Creek Road, into one of the richest goldfields in the Klondike. The valley of the Klondike is littered with miles of "snakes," the wandering piles of gravel tailings left behind from the big gold operations. These snakes are as high as 20 feet and they are everywhere, deposited by a hundred years of gold mining, some of which continues.

There is a lot of scenery and a lot of history up Bonanza Creek. This is where the original Discovery Claim was made that started the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896, and brought Jack London and a lot of others up this way.

Bonanza Creek isn't a maintained road this time of year, so it was slippery and snowy and icy. Although this was the gold road, it looked like the diamond road, as the snow granules were glinting like diamonds under the blue sky and warm sun. On the CBC they were talking about the Oz series of books, and that made me think we were on the White Diamond Road. Very scenic, with gravel tailings and abandoned equipment and functioning equipment and history all around.

There were historical signs explaining the original gold find at Discovery Claim, and the geological history of Bonanza Creek and how gold mining went from simple panning to sophisticated hydraulics, from single men staking claims to huge companies buying up huge tracts of land.

The Guggenheims were one of the main gold mining corporations in the Klondike. The town at the entrance to Bonanza Creek is called Guggieville.

While reading one historical sign, which explained how miners staked claims officially, the van got stuck in about two inches of icy snow. It was ridiculous. The road was an icy place where my crappy Cheechako tires could get no purchase, so Frank had to shove on the back as I over-revved the engine and tried to get out. Took awhile, but we pulled it.

Have I mentioned that I want a Humvee? I do. A black one, please. With a CD player that doesn't skip. Thank you.

A few miles up Bonanza Creek Road, Dredge Number Four appeared like one of those outlandish, early-nineteenth century contraptions from The Wild Wild West. Dredge Number Four is a historical monument, a giant gold dredge that could scrape huge buckets of paydirt from the bottom of the creek below, and use hydraulics to blast the cliffs above.

The Power of Gold. Dredge number four.

I read how much Dredge Number Four weighed and how big it was and how much it displaced, but I forgot those numbers. But it was huge, a couple of stories high, maybe 200 feet long all together. Walking around this thing I wondered hw the hell they got it to the Yukon a hundred years ago, and how they got it so far up Bonanza Creek. It was the equivalent of taking a steamship up the San Lorenzo River in summer.

After reading all the signs and seeing the extreme lengths that miners went to to extract gold, you can only shake your head. Getting over Chilkoot Pass and building a boat must have been a pain in the ass. Floating down the Yukon was most likely a pleasure, but once you got to Dawson and the gold fields, the real shitty work began.

And all of this 100 years ago, way before the North Face or even Patagonia, I think. Some big clothing company should do an ad campaign showing how they would have outfittted various historical, doomed, ball-freezing expeditions from the past: The Donner Party, those guys who got lost in the Antarctic (mental block), the Battle of the Bulge and the defense of Moscow. Just a thought.

There isn't any water around this thing. I have no idea how they floated it in this far and it is large.

After Dredge Number Four we drove on, into the Diamond Highway and beyond. There were a few people and cars around, and a lot of equipment, some of it rusting and abandoned, some of it actively digging for gold. This place was a lot like Dawson City: some of it was touristy and historical, and some of it was digging for gold.

I had another mission beside sight-seeing today. I desperately wanted to take the van apart and organize it, and was looking for a clear spot in the snow to do it, under the blue sky, in the relative warmth.

We hit the end of our road at a creek which cut across the road just before a fairly steep, very icy ascent. In a black Humvee with CD player, piece of cake. In the van with Cheechako tires, no way.

End of the road for vans with cheechanko tires.

"I'm coming back here with a Humvee," I said for the millionth time, to which Franke Hoppe said, "Yah yah," for the millionth time.

We could go no further, which was good as I probably would have pushed on until we got stuck in the snow a million miles from anywhere.

I turned around, passed the Dredge and then stopped by the side of the road to sort out my hobo life. It took two hours to pull it apart and put it back together and it sucked. I have way too much stuff in that van. Why I have all my scuba gear with me, I do not know. Half of the flotsam and jetsam in that van is just that. But I've been on the road a couple of months and have figured out what I need and what I don't. Frank walked around and smoked and did this and that while I packed, then he admonished me.

Snorganization.

"You are havingk too much shit, I think," Frank said, then pointed at his backpack. "Zees ees all ein man needs, yah?"

And I could only agree.

Around 2:00 we made it out of Bonanza Creek, with me vowing, internally, to read all the Jack London I can get my hands on. Now that I've seen all this, I really want to know it was to struggle up here, back in the day, and freeze your ears off all winter long, while grinding away at the earth.

"Ve go visitz my Czech friend, yah?" Frank pleaded, so I turned right and wound through the huge, 25-foot high gravel "snakes" to find a cabin set in a glacial little ice field.

This was the Czech friend, also named Frank, who lived in a cool, thrown together Klondike Cabin, circa 1996.

The Czech Embassy.

Czech Frank has been in the Klondike since 1976. He's originally from Prague, and later tonight I might try to get his whole history out of him. He came up to the Klondike from Vancouver way back then, worked for a couple of years, tried to live in the city again and decided the Klondike suited him better. He has lived just outside of Dawson ever since, working as a welder, according to German Frank.

Inside the cabin we talked about this and that. Czech Frank had a collection of bullet casings set on top of a picture frame, so I showed him Mr. Walther and his sons. He wasn't all that interested in the gun, so I asked him about current gold mining and what it was like to get through a winter in the Klondike.

Czech Frank and his cabin.

Frank knew how Dredge Number Four worked. It was transported to Dawson piece by piece and assembled. It moved up river essentially by carving a path in front of it, and leaving the "snake' behind.

Frank was just as awed by Dredge Number Four as I was. "That thing is amazing," he said. "The amount of dirt it can move in an hour, I have never seen anything like it. Not the biggest modern Caterpillar can move the dirt that that machine did, and it is almost 100 years old."

Frank had seen the Discovery Channel program on the Troll Natural Gas Platform, and we agreed that science and engineering had their moments.

Frank said there really wasn't a lot of gold mining in the Klondike anymore, and those that did do it did it cheap, using cyanide to separate the minerals.

And then we talked about the weather. "It gets to 50 below here in the middle of winter, but, you know, how do I say this, 'You learn how to swim, or you drown.' You learn how to live with it."

Frank pulled out a pair of beaver-pelt gloves which looked like a child's hand puppet, but they were purely functional.

Frank's beaver pelt gloves.

"I know a lot of people think this is wrong, to make clothes of animals, but these beaver gloves are the only thing I will wear when it's forty below outside. I have tried all the modern materials, but these gloves are the best. There is something about beaver hair, because the hairs are tubular and hollow, that makes it such a great insulator. I love these gloves. They cost $250 in Dawson, but I got them as a present."

It was time to go, so I pulled a bullet out of the clip of Mr. Walther and added it to his collection. One of the bullets on the picture looked like it had been misfired, the casing was all torn up, like the side of the USS Cole.

Little Walther on the left. The fire-shell third from the right.

Czech Frank shook his head and told a story: "That was a trapper friend of mine. He came in and emptied his pockets into the fire, and forgot he had some .30-30 bullets in there. We were sitting here all peace and quiet, when all of a sudden it was World War II all over again. I got a little mad at my friend for that. He should be more careful."

See what I mean? Still the Wild Wild West up here.

Showing us out of his cabin and around the grounds, Czech Frank proudly showed off his outhouse out the back, which cost him a box of doughtnuts. He also explained that he could heat his cabin all winter for only $25, using the stove he had welded himself.

The Czech Embassy Outhouse.

We had been talking about technology and toys for a few hours, so I asked him if he had ever seen a Humvee. "Yah, I know this vehicle. I think it is very, how do you say, cute. Yah! But expensive."

Next summer, when I come up here in my black Humvee, I am taking Czech Frank for a ride.

We drove out of there, and now we're in the pizza parlor at around 6:00. It is blue skies outside as the sun is setting, and there are a few people moving around.

German Frank is going to stay with Czech Frank tonight. I think he's had enough of this disorganized, media-addicted, cyber-American he hooked up with. Trapper Pete is coming tomorrow, he thinks, and German Frank isn't sure if he's going to stay with the trapper or not.

I want to wow Czech Frank with some more technology tonight. I'm going to show him Saving Private Ryan on the DVD player, and see if he can translate the lines of the two Czech conscripts who come out of the trench with with their hands up, only to get shot by the Americans.

And tomorrow, who knows? I'm kind of hoping German Frank stays on for the whole ride. It's more fun to travel with someone else, than alone, and maybe he can do some of the driving. I doubt I will go farther north. If I head south I'm going to take that Campbell Highway detour, and end up at Watson Lake. From there, I'll either head back down the Cassiar, or maybe go farther east and come back through Montana or some such.

Or maybe I'll just drive to New York, hop a plane and spend the winter banging around in Czechslovakia and Germany. Hanging with Czech Frank and German Frank has got me wanting to see those places.

Ve szhall zee vat happens, yah?