Yukon Expedition in Extremely Cold Winter

In early November 2022, James, Eric and I embarked on the Yukon Winter Road. During the trip of 5 days and 4 nights, we experienced the baptism of snowstorms, endured the extreme cold temperature of minus 35 degrees Celsius, and also witnessed the magnificent scenery of the snow-capped mountains and ice lakes at the night of the aurora.

*Moon Ring - Most of the moon rings of snow mountains are caused by wind and snow.*

Approaching the Yukon

The Yukon Mountains have been a popular destination for many outdoor hikers and photographers in recent years. There are unique landforms and magnificent scenery, especially in autumn, where the mountains and plains are full of colourful colors. But I seem to yearn for the Yukon's extremely cold winter more. As an extension of my DeepMountain photography theme, starting in early 2019, I set out to research winter hiking and camping in the Yukon.

*I was fascinated by the Yukon Mountains in winter.*

Surprisingly, there was little information on hiking in the Yukon during the winter months. Almost all professional mountain guides in Canada do not go to the Yukon Mountains in winter (except for specific routes for Yukon skiing in winter). There are two main reasons for this: First, the winter there is extremely cold. From the end of October, it begins to freeze and snow, and the temperature can reach minus 40 degrees Celsius (Note: the coldest record in Yukon in the past ten years is minus 58 degrees Celsius), survival in the wild itself is a great challenge; the second is that there will be deep snow everywhere in winter, and in many cases almost the entire valley is under the threat of avalanches, let alone climbing there.

After several twists and turns, finally with the help of the Canadian Mountaineering Association, I got in touch with professional mountaineer and guide James. James not only has nearly 20 years of experience in mountaineering and mountain guides, but is also an avalanche expert. Although James himself has never been to the Tombstone Mountains in winter, with his rich snow mountain experience, he expressed his willingness to try it.

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic broke out around the world, and my trip to Yukon was also stranded. However, after two years of frequent exchanges, James and I have established mutual trust. With the opening of travel borders, we finally decided to schedule the trip in early November 2022. Afterwards, Eric also joined us on the expedition.

Dawson City is the gateway to Tombstone Territorial Park (TTP). We stayed at Dawson Hotel for one night, and took a helicopter from here to enter the TTP camp early the next morning. Every year from the end of September, all public facilities in the TTP camps have been closed. To go to TTP in November, we need to build our own base camp.

Survival and Photography in Extremely Cold Environments

Warm Clothing and Camping Gear

Hiking and camping in the snow-capped mountains at minus 30-40 degrees Celsius, first of all, has almost extreme requirements for outdoor clothing and camping equipment. In order to be fully prepared, James made a long list of preparations for Eric and me. Because of the experience of climbing snow-capped mountains in recent years, most of my current alpine winter clothing basically meet the requirements proposed by James. However, I have never camped outdoors in extreme cold conditions of minus 30-40 degrees Celsius. To be on the safe side, I updated my base layer, warm sleeping pad, and some related auxiliary equipment.

All my gear for the Yukon’s arctic winter is summarized below:

Base Layer

Icebreaker 260 merino longsleeves
Icebreaker 260 merino leggings

Middler Layer

Lightweight fleece
Kathmandu 800 fill lightweight down jacket
MontBell 800 fill down pants

Outer Layer

Kathmandu X-series 750 fill alpine down parka outer shell (windproof and waterproof)
Kailas hard shell winter pants (windproof and waterproof)

Boots and Leg Protection

La Sportiva Nepal EVO GTX
Macpac down booties (soft sole)
Sea to Summit snow gaiters

Socks

2 pairs of Smartwool thick merino socks
2 pairs of Kathmandu thick merino socks

Gloves

Snow gloves
Lightweight gloves

Head Protection

Neck gaiter
Knit cap
Balaclava

Tent

RedFox 2-3 persons 4-season mountain tent (provided by the guide)

Sleeping Bag and Liiner

The North Face INFERNO 850 fill -29 degree Celsius down sleeping bag
Sea to Summit reactor thermo liner

Sleeping Pads

Nemo tensor alpine sleeping pad
Lightweight foam pad (this pad was used as the first layer of sleeping pad, while the Nemo pad was put on the top of this layer)

So, can such equipment withstand the test of this Yukon's extremely cold winter?

During the day, my head-to-toe gear did a good job of keeping the cold out without major issues. Especially my hiking boots, withstood the test of such ultra-low temperatures. Every day, except for sleeping at night, our feet are in direct contact with the ice and snow ground all the time, and most of the time people are in a static state, so keeping the feet warm is very important, and the requirements for boots are naturally very high. During these days on Tombstone Mountain, I put on two pairs of thick wool socks first, and then put on hiking boots, so that my feet are always well protected. Although sometimes there will be a short-term numbness of the toes, but there is no long-term numbness and pain, and there is no frostbite.

Things are more complicated at night.

On the morning we arrived at the campsite, the temperature was minus 17 degrees Celsius. But from 3pm onwards, the snowstorm started and the temperature continued to drop. The blizzard became more ferocious at night, and the temperature dropped below minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Our RedFox tent was strong enough to withstand the ravages of the gust. My backpack and Eric's were both placed under the vent outside the tent. While my backpack was half covered in snow by the next morning, the camera, batteries, etc. inside were well protected.

Sleeping in the tent at night, I wear two pairs of wool socks, all layers (including hard shell outer layer pants) on the lower body, and all layers (including the fleece and 800 fill lightweight down jacket) on the upper body except the outermost parka down jacket. Even so, I didn't sleep peacefully that night, my feet were never warm, and my upper body began to feel cold in the early morning.

With the lessons learned from the first night, from the second night onwards, I began to add a layer of warm liner to the sleeping bag, and at the same time put on down booties in addition to two pairs of socks on my feet. In this way, on the second and third nights, the feet and body basically did not feel cold all night, and I slept more peacefully. However, on the fourth day, the temperature continued to drop. During the day, the temperature outside the tent was as low as minus 30-35 degrees Celsius, and at night the temperature was even lower. In such ultra-low temperature, on the fourth night, i.e., our last night, we obviously felt that the upper body and feet were not warm enough all night, and this was also the most restless night of sleep.

After this experience, I came to the conclusion that: Yukon winter camping, we must prepare sleeping bags at minus 45-50 degrees Celsius. In addition, if possible, it is best to prepare a hot water bottle, so that the night will be much easier. Warmer, while useful, doesn't keep warm for long enough. Both James and Eric use sleeping bags at minus 45 degrees Celsius, which are warmer than my sleeping bag, but their feet still need special warming measures in the sleeping bag.

Building Base Camp

Before the start of this trip, James and I discussed and decided to make this activity a base camp mode instead of the usual backcountry mode. Different from the backcountry method, we first need to build a base camp and use it as a base for our daily activities. The biggest advantage of this is that we can use the helicopter to carry more food and warm equipment, and resist the extreme cold weather more effectively. Of course, the disadvantage is that we have to use this as a base for several days, and it is impossible to carry all or most of the equipment to another place to build a second camp, so we can only do day hikes every day.

*Because we chose the base camp camping method, we can use the helicopter to carry enough materials into the mountain.*

However, it turns out that our decision to choose the base camp mode was correct, because in the 5 days we were stationed, only the weather conditions on the second day allowed us to carry out some limited hiking activities, the snowstorm that started in the afternoon of the first day, and the high winds for the last three days prevented us from doing any long snow mountain hikes.

*Our pyramid-shape tent, as our kitchen and common room, is where we spend the most time these days.*

In the base camp, we set up three tents in total, a 2-person tent for me and Eric, a single person tent for James himself, and a big pyramid-shape tent which serves as our kitchen and common room. Due to the snowstorm and high winds, this kitchen tent became the safest shelter for the three of us for a few days.

The space in our kitchen tent is relatively large, and a stove with a chimney can be set up. It took us a long time to dig out a depression with a diameter of 3 meters and a depth of half a meter as a base for the tent. James secured the tent securely and withstood the blizzard and wind.

Photographic Equipment, Shooting, and Frostbite

For this operation, I brought two Nikon D850 and D810 camera bodies, two lenses 14-24mm f/2.8 and 24-70mm f/2.8, 6 pieces of Nikon original batteries EN-EL15c, two original Nikon MC-36A shutter releases, and two tripods - one big and one small.

In this extremely cold environment, my D850 camera, battery and shutter release did not have any problems. I also didn't take any special protection for the batteries. All the batteries were packed in the backpack with the camera and placed outside the tent at night. There was no leakage of electricity from the batteries.

But I keep my iPhone in my body pocket at all times and in my sleeping bag at night.

My large tripod had a problem on the last day: after shooting in the river, I didn't dry the legs of the tripod in time, and the then two legs froze quickly. So in the rest of this trip, I could only use another small tripod for shooting.

In addition, shooting in an extremely cold environment is a very challenging thing. Especially in the last two days, the temperature outside the tent dropped to minus 30-35 degrees Celsius during the day, and even lower at night, with strong winds.

*On November 3, after the snowstorm, we took advantage of the short period of good weather to hike up to a commanding height on the slopes.*

As I said before, my boots are very warm, and I wear two pairs of woolen socks. Although my feet are cold, I have no frostbite. But it is very difficult for fingers to operate the camera at such ultra-low temperature. We all wear two pairs of gloves: a pair of warm lightweight gloves and a pair of thick ski gloves. Since the camera can only be operated with light gloves, we had to remove our ski gloves for every shoot. But at such a low temperature, my hands with light gloves could only hold on for about 1 minute, and then fingers start to hurt sharply. I had to put on big ski gloves immediately to relieve the pain. I had to repeat this to complete the shooting process one by one.

In Eric's words, "I feel photography is a very painful thing for the first time".

Since we were stationed at the campsite, James has reminded us many times to prevent frostbite. Hands and feet are always the first parts of frostbite, and many times, frostbite happens without noticing it.

*Although the snow has stopped, the wind blows the snow on the ground flying all over the sky, and the surrounding visibility is still very low.*

While we all have used warmers, they didn't protect our fingers while operating the camera. The pain in my fingers was worst on days 4 and 5 when I was shooting, which were also the two days with the coldest temperatures.

After the Yukon trip, I have been having some dull pains in the tips of 5 fingers on my right hand and the thumb on my left hand, but it doesn't look like anything unusual. I thought the pain in my fingers would go away naturally in a few days. But a week later, I was back in Sydney and the pain in my fingers was still there, and all the sore fingers were starting to peel. That's when I realized my fingers were probably frostbitten. Fortunately, after more than a week, new skin began to grow on the fingers, and the pain gradually disappeared completely.

*After coming out of TTP, we returned to the small town of Whitehorse and stayed here for another day, enjoying the sunshine and high-quality coffee under the severe winter.*

Exploration Continues

Although the Yukon is below the snow line and has no glaciers, its winters share important similarities with high mountains: cold and the danger of avalanches—making exploration the Yukon extremely challenging in winter.

My original plan was to climb to one or two commanding heights under Mount Monolith, but we had to give up due to strong winds and the danger of avalanches.

However, it is precisely because of its uncertain challenges that the Yukon in the extremely cold winter has become an integral part of my Deep Mountain exploration.