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Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon River Near Carmacks, Yukon, Canada |
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| Once the raft trip was begun it seemed almost too easy: a thousand miles of floating downstream, all the way to Dawson at the mouth of the Klondike River. But there were still two major obstacles -- the rapids at Whitehorse, near the beginning, and the Five Finger Rapids further north.
At Five Finger there are four islands of hard basalt that force the river to divide into five narrow channels. Through them the current runs swiftly and turbulently. Going downstream was dangerous, upstream much more so. The rafts were strictly one-way, but soon there were sternwheel steamboats, which plied regularly between Whitehorse and Dawson. On the upstream journey the boats had to be pulled through the narrows by cables attached to the shore. Five Finger Rapids are near the town of Carmacks, about halfway between Whitehorse and Dawson. Two hundred wooden steps lead down from the Klondike highway to the clifftops, to a huge viewing platform with interpretive panels and safety railings. This panorama was captured about a hundred yards further downstream. The discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek in the northern Yukon set off the last of the classic gold rushes. It was spring of 1898 when the Klondike rush hit its peak. The previous winter thousands of gold-seekers had struggled over the coastal mountains from Skagway, Alaska, then built rafts and simple boats. Once the ice melted they rafted down the mighty Yukon River. |