The Alaska Highway, north of Haines Junction, Yukon. These are the St. Elias Mountains of Kluane National Park. My first visit. After spending most of the winter in and around Whitehorse, by March the deep cold had relented and it was possible to be outdoors for most of the day without freezing to death. I know, I know - what a greenhorn! A friend had told me back in January, in the midst of a minus 40 cold snap that lasted weeks, "Minus ten is warm!" I didn't believe her at the time, but she was right. It was only minus ten or so when I stepped out of the vehicle to make this shot. And it felt warm.

Scanned from the original Kodachrome 64 slide, March 1982.

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Tags:   landscape mountains Alaska Highway wilderness remote vast north northern snow boreal forest road wild winter white Kluane National Park Yukon Canada Kodachrome Explored

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A young Dall ram on the lower slopes of Sheep Mountain in Kluane National Park, Yukon, March 1982. I made a lot of Dall sheep photos in the 1980s and have recently been going through the files, scanning some of these old Kodachromes...

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Tags:   Dall Sheep Ovis dalli wildlife mammal ungulate young ram white wild wilderness nature mountains spring snow north northern Sheep Mountain Kluane National Park Yukon Canada

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I made this on my first backpacking trip into Kluane National Park, Yukon. It shows the confluence of three rivers: the Dezadeash, flowing in from the left, the Kaskawulsh, flowing in from the right, and the Alsek, meandering away into the distance. Muddy, silty, glacier-spawned northern rivers! And the scale of everything, so vast. I spent a year in Whitehorse, and made half a dozen subsequent trips to poke my lens into the Yukon wilderness throughout the 1980s. Amazing country.

Scanned from the original Kodachrome 64 slide, June 1982.

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Tags:   landscape river mountains valley wilderness wild north northern Alsek River Dezadeash River Kaskawulsh River Kluane National Park Yukon Canada 1982 CHRS

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Going wayback for this, a shot of my all-time favourite backpacking location. Where do I begin? The Burwash Uplands are at the north end of Kluane National Park in Canada's Yukon, accessed by a mining road off the Alaska Highway. It's a long drive from anywhere! After hiking the road past a series of placer gold mining operations, we found ourselves in a spectacular landscape of rolling tundra and beautiful mountains. *Note: I think there may be a better access route or trail today, but in the early Eighties this was the way in, via Burwash Creek.

Wildlife was everywhere: Dall sheep, woodland caribou, wolf, red fox, lynx, porcupine, willow ptarmigan, long-tailed jaeger, and much more. A long, rugged trek is possible over Hoge Pass and down into the Donjek River Valley and enormous Donjek Glacier - we did this on our first trip. On subsequent trips (three in all), I was happy to stay in the Burwash area. You can get some sense of scale when you notice my two hiking companions in this scene, Joe and Pauline, near the bottom of the frame. I made this shot on the evening of Day 2, on the lower slopes of Amphitheatre Mountain. We had pitched our tents on the other side of that dark, rocky outcrop - above the valley floor, above the mosquitoes - and had set out to explore our neighbourhood. We were out for 15 days; our adventure was just beginning...

Photographed in Kluane National Park, Yukon, in July 1982. Scanned from the original Kodachrome 64 slide. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 1982 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Tags:   landscape mountains tundra green hills blue wild nature wilderness northern north hiking backpacking summer adventure outdoor wow beautiful awesome magnificent vast old photo film scan Kodachrome 64 1982 Burwash Uplands Kluane National Park Yukon Canada copyrighted James R. Page

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Tags:   landscape sunset mountains clouds tundra golden summer wilderness northern north Burwash Uplands Kluane Yukon Canada CMWD_yellow

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