Get Lost North America - get lost Magazine - Page 23

Ride the Wild Yukon Trails

“Always look where you want to go,” Ziggy yells as we whip along the single-track mountain bike trail above the mighty Yukon River. It’s sage advice, particularly as there’s nothing but a deathly 30-metre drop between the river’s raging torrent and us.

Legs pumping, I’m dodging tree roots, trunks and jagged rocks, all while trying to stay focused on the track ahead. And yet, despite this, I find myself snatching glances of the craggy cliff walls, the wildly frothing water and the wide-open sky that’s cobalt blue smeared with bruised rain clouds.

Soon we stop for a breather, and I take the opportunity to safely drink in the surroundings and, just quietly, thank the gods I didn’t go careening over the edge. Illuminated by a golden rush of sun, it’s larger than life and insanely beautiful.

At times like this, in places like these, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by Mother Nature’s grandeur. But instead, I feel myself firmly rooted: a small and intrinsic part of the world.

It seems most people drawn to Canada’s Yukon feel the same way. They’ve found a place where they fit and thrive; where the rules are malleable and people dictate the terms of life, not vice versa.

Ziggy, my mountain-biking guide, is testament to that. A dyed-in-the-wool Yukoner, she grew up riding the 700 kilometres of tracks that chequer the region’s capital, Whitehorse. In summer she bikes and all winter it’s cross-country skiing (and I do mean all winter – they last for a while above the 60th parallel). She knows just about everybody in town, and everywhere too. A night at the Dirty Northern Bastard’s bar wouldn’t have been quite the wild ride without her – but more about that later.

A little further along we stop again. The muddy track is gouged into the sloping clifftop and slippery from the morning’s rain. It’s hairy going, so we get off and push until… Ziggy’s foot slides perilously close to the edge and shows no sign of stopping. Her bike’s following fast behind. She laughs and somehow halts the descent. “At least one person dies each summer in the river,” Ziggy says. “But it’s not gonna be me. I’d never live that down!”

And that’s another mark of a true Yukoner – irreverence. You see signs of it everywhere: on spray-painted buildings and locally made T-shirts and in conversations overheard on street corners in Whitehorse. Maybe it’s in reaction to the long cold winters, when temps drop to –50°C and romances blossom, only to wilt come the first warming rays of summer. “You’re a long time cold,” one old-timer tells me, “and a short time frisky and free.”

My week-long ride began here, in the ‘big town’ (population 26,500). Equal parts white settler and First Nation terrain, Whitehorse is perched on the banks of the Yukon River, named after the indigenous word for big river, youcon. Their ancestors used the river and the valley through which it flows as a meeting place and food bowl.

A two-hour flight north of the west-coast city of Vancouver, and bordering Alaska and the Arctic Sea, the Yukon Territory is home to 14 indigenous peoples and eight different language groups. The same size as South Australia, it has one-fiftieth of the population (30,000 people). In fact, you’re more likely to run into a moose than a person here – the antlered animals outnumber Yukoners two to one.

This wasn’t always the case. The Yukon population was higher in the gold rush years of 1898 and 99 than it is today. The Klondike Gold Rush began in 1897 and is the single biggest event – in terms of historical significance and population growth – in the Yukon’s history. When two ships docked in San Francisco and Seattle carrying miners returning from the Yukon with bags of gold, newspapers carried the story to the masses, and the masses responded in droves. Within six months, approximately 100,000 gold-seekers, called ‘stampeders’, set off for the Yukon. Only 30,000 completed the arduous trip.

There are fine Yukon ales on tap, a mummified cat in a glass box on the bar and rumours of ghosts swirling around like Casper himself.

The most common route was by boat from the west coast of the USA to Skagway in Alaska, over the hazardous Chilkoot or White Passes to the Yukon River then a hundred kilometres by boat to Dawson City.

Steep and perilous, the trail through Chilkoot Pass – 1500 steps carved out of snow and ice – was known as the ‘golden staircase’. Stampeders were required to take a year’s worth of supplies with them and, with the trail too steep for packhorses, they made up to 30 trips up and down the staircase, until all their goods were at the top. Many gave up, abandoning their equipment on the trail.

The White Pass track was even more challenging. More than 3000 pack animals perished here, causing it to be renamed the ‘dead horse trail’.

Stampeders who survived the passes reached Bennett Lake, where they wintered in tents waiting for the spring thaw. Then they would row their hand-built boats down the Yukon River to Dawson City. During the three-week trip miners rode killer rapids. Many lost their possessions, or worse, their lives, when their boats broke up.

Fortunately, my trip to the goldfields is far less taxing. From Carcross, an hour’s drive from Whitehorse, I jump aboard the historic White Pass & Yukon Railway. Built in 1898 to ferry miners, it offers a spectacular journey alongside pristine lakes and vertiginous mountains.

The snappily dressed train conductor welcomes me to the train. Then, in the comfort of my carriage, which features on-board wood-burning stoves, we chug along, drinking in the magnificent scenery – shimmering water, towering rock walls and lush greenery – through vast glass windows. The station in Bennett sits on the banks of the same lake that was choked with timber boats jostling for position in the gold rush race downriver.

During the stampede, a town sprung up around the lake. There were shops, saloons, a church and hotels, including the salubrious New Arctic Restaurant and Hotel built by opportunistic young businessman Friedrich Trump, who recognised that miners needed somewhere to spend their earnings. The fortune he made here in humble Bennett Lake gave rise to the famous Trump family empire, now known the world over.

Today, the remnants make for an intriguing historical site and the view is breathtaking – heavily wooded hills, cloud-tickling mountains and an exquisite turquoise lake. As I wander around, I imagine the lives of the stampeders, surviving what were undoubtedly some of the harshest conditions on the planet. Did the spectacular surroundings help pull so many of them through in the frozen winters spent in tents?

A day later I’m back in Carcross (short for Caribou Crossing) and hurtling down Montana Mountain, a mix of rugged terrain, pine forests and rock.

I’m warming up my cycle legs on the green and blue trails (rated similarly to ski trails), before steeling myself to tackle Upper Wolverine – a rock garden maze with raised wooden features and natural airs. If I have any pedal left and am willing to throw all caution to the wind, I might even visit Grizzly Bear. As aggressive as its namesake, Grizzly is a steep descent along smooth rock faces and buff dirt, with some hair-raising lines.

Here, there is a combination of historic trails, mining-era routes and a single purpose-built track (35 kilometres in total). All are maintained by dedicated trail builders, courtesy of the Yukon government.

So passionate are locals about mountain biking that it’s not only adults who ride, build and maintain trails. The owners of Boreale Biking, through whom I hired my bike and hooked up with guide Ziggy, run weekly kids’ mountain-biking days.

“We teach the kids how to ride and also get them involved in building trails and maintaining them, so they’re giving back to the community,” owner and mountain-biker Marsha says. “It’s an involvement they’ll carry through to adulthood, we hope, along with a passion for getting out among it. As we always say, any day in the saddle’s a good day!”

It’s a great program and the kids love it – throwing themselves down trails all morning, switching handlebars and helmets for shovels in the afternoon, and rounding out the day with a barbecue under the midnight sun.

The 20-plus hours of daylight in high summer mean there’s plenty of time for trail riding and a multitude of other outdoor sports in the Yukon.

After my morning on Montana I trade saddles – bike for horse – and head into the high alpine. Slowly and sure-footedly we climb through dense forest to emerge above the tree line and gaze out over shimmering Fish Lake. Behind me, to the north, a line of jagged mountain peaks iced with snow claws its way to the horizon and, beyond that, Alaska.

The following day I hike to the top of another mountain range, and the day after that am pulled along behind a team of newbie sled dogs in training for the winter season. Like the locals, I’m making the most of the summer.

Also like a local, I’ve developed quite a thirst, and so Ziggy and I head to the Dirty Northern Bastard in the heart of Whitehorse. There are fine Yukon ales on tap, a mummified cat in a glass box on the bar and rumours of ghosts swirling around like Casper himself.

“The story goes that the original hotel, the Capital, closed down years ago in the winter and everyone moved out,” says Ziggy. “In the spring, people started smelling something rotten and when they investigated they found a former guest thawing out in his room. And the cat, well, it was found in the walls of the hotel when it was being restored. It had been there so long it was completely mummified. Today, it’s said they wander the halls and rooms of the hotel.”

Ziggy’s stories are a blast and soon other locals join in with tall tales and truths about Yukoner life.

It is here I first hear about the ‘colourful five per centers’, the local term for the quirky, out-of-the-box Yukoners who are the heart and soul of the place. You see them marching to their own beat, their eccentricities on display in the clothes they wear (picture camouflage hunting jackets and lumberjack beards), the goods they’re spruiking (handmade beaver- and moose-fur slippers), and in cool art installations that adorn the city, like the huge bicycle-wheel dome near the entrance to town. Sitting beside a bright red house, it’s eight metres tall, held together with plastic ties and crawling with larger-than-life spiders and bugs also built from wheels and spokes.

Ziggy says the creator of this ‘five per center’ has been around
forever, riding bikes, running the local cycle shop and loving his free-wheeling life. “He retired a while ago,” she says. “I guess he wanted to keep sharing his passion.”

Passion, I’ve discovered, is high on the agenda for both native Yukoners and visitors alike. For some, it’s a passion for mountain biking or exploring the territory’s magnificent landscape. For others, it’s making First Nation jellies from native wildflowers or elk skewers after a successful hunting trip. And for others again, it’s living a life completely off the grid.

For renowned author Jack London, whose visit to the Yukon coincided with the gold rush – and whose bronze bust adorns Whitehorse’s main street – it was a passion for writing. “You can’t wait for inspiration,” he wrote. “You have to go after it with a club.” And so he did here, the influence of the north defining his five novels and 665 short stories, including To Build a Fire, which contains one of the most moving descriptions of the cold ever written.

Then there’s London’s The Call of the Wild, which in the early twentieth century drew worldwide attention to the Yukon. The very same Yukon – with its staggering natural beauty, golden history, embarrassment of wildlife and colourful characters – that now inspires me, too.

After Dark in Vancouver

On most weekends, Downtown Vancouver’s neon-lit Granville Street teems with giddy young party monsters ever on the verge of their next vomitous episode. But ask discerning locals where to drink and, if they like you, they’ll tell you to avoid ‘the Strip’. Vancouverites have a hot list of favoured night-time haunts, from craft beer charmers and under-the-radar dive bars to tiny live stages and steaming dance floors. All are within easy reach, as long as you know where to go.

6.00pm
This is the home of Canada’s best craft beer scene and new microbreweries are popping up in Vancouver every few weeks. But despite the frothy clamour, one ale-maker stands out from the crowd. Since opening in 2013, Brassneck Brewery has concocted more than 50 different beers and hooks drinkers with an ever-changing chalkboard of intriguing libations with names like Magician’s Assistant and Passive Aggressive. Arrive early for a seat in the tasting bar – holes punched in the wood-plank walls reveal the brewery beyond – and couple your sampler flight with cured sausage from the jars on the counter. Still hungry? There’s often a food truck parked outside and you’re encouraged to bring your grub into the bar.
Brassneck Brewery
2148 Main Street, Mount Pleasant
brassneck.ca

 

7.00pm
Check the online calendar of nearby Hot Art Wet City gallery to add an early-evening side event to your big night out. One of Vancouver’s most eclectic art spaces, HAWC opens late on the first Thursday of every month and hosts regular night-time happenings, from artist talks to burlesque-themed sketch classes. But the best way to meet local artsy types is to grab a few drinks at a gratis show opening. New exhibitions kick off monthly and there’s always something fun and fancy worth rubbing your chin at – recent shows have covered embarrassing teenager art, disembodied dolls’ head paintings and clever designs applied to bike saddles and beer bottles.
Hot Art Wet City
2206 Main Street, Mount Pleasant
hotartwetcity.com



8.30pm
Hop on the number 3 transit bus outside the gallery and you’ll be downtown in 10 minutes. But you’re not heading for the Strip. Tucked above a 7-Eleven, the sticky-tabled Railway Club – launched as a respite for train workers in the 1930s – is Vancouver’s best old-school bar. Now a laid-back, all-embracing hangout for everyone from red-nosed old lags to penny-pinching students – plus those easily tempted office slaves who couldn’t resist dropping by for an after-work brew three hours ago – there’s a hole-in-the-wall food hatch and a generous array of great local-made booze. The hoppy Driftwood Fat Tug IPA comes recommended. But the Rail’s main attraction is a small, sweaty stage with a near-nightly roster of bands of the emerging and obscure variety.
Railway Club
579 Dunsmuir Street, Downtown
therailwayclub.com

 

10.00pm
The frayed-around-the-edges Railway Club flirts with the whole dive bar aesthetic, but Pub 340, with its aroma of stale beer, is the real deal. A 10-minute downhill walk away, it’s home to a gaggle of glassy-eyed regulars during the day – where else can you find dirt-cheap booze sans a side order of communicable diseases? – while a younger, hipper crew rolls in as the night unfolds. Few, however, are here for the greasy floors and grubby beer-hall ambience. Instead, they purchase pints to take to the front-of-house pinball room. For a dollar a game, you’ll have your choice of 11 tables, including the ever-popular White Water and the bells-and-whistles Wizard of Oz. Need to rest your flipping fingers? There’s also a console programmed with 1980s video games.
Pub 340
340 Cambie Street, Downtown
pub340.ca

 

11.00pm
Move swiftly along Hastings Street – heart of gritty Downtown Eastside – then turn right onto Main Street’s Chinatown stretch; you’re keeping your eyes peeled for the faded awning of the Brickhouse. Echoing a 1970s family room, this bar’s eye-popping interior is lined with dog-eared books, fairy-lit movie posters and neon-bright fish tanks twitching with aquatic life. Crammed with more knick-knacks than a jam-packed junk shop – from vintage 7UP fridges to dusty Bakelite radios – it’s the physical extension of owner Leo Chow’s eclectic mind. “We’re 60 per cent British pub and 40 per cent American tavern,” he’s fond of saying as he pours well-priced draughts for the friendly young folk and international backpackers who regard the room, with its sagging sofas and ever-busy pool table, as their personal den.
Brickhouse
730 Main Street, Chinatown

 

12.00am
Main Street noses uphill as you aim for the intersection with 3rd Avenue and a red light bulb mounted above an otherwise anonymous doorway. When the light is on, the Narrow Lounge is open. Descend the graffiti-lined stairway and you’ll suddenly emerge in a cosy, subterranean speakeasy no bigger than a train carriage. Grab a perch at the glowing bar and order from the list of traditional martinis and classic cocktails – you can’t go past an Old Fashioned – or snag a tiny table beneath the antler horns and garage-sale artworks. There’s also a secret Mexican-themed garden out back, complete with piñatas, painted picnic tables and a kitsch Jesus shrine flickering with candles, making this one of Main’s best hidden hangouts. Hungry? Order the Guinness mac and cheese for a late-night fuel-up.
Narrow Lounge
Corner Main Street and 3rd Avenue, Mount Pleasant
narrowlounge.com

 

1.00am
You’ve now looped back to Brassneck territory, but it’s long past the brewery’s closing time. Luckily, there’s still plenty to do nearby. The popular Biltmore Cabaret (biltmorecabaret.com) once had a nightlife monopoly in this part of town – its dance floor, band nights and burlesque shows are still hot items – but a challenger arrived on the scene in early 2014. Formerly one of North America’s last-remaining porn cinemas, the new owners of Fox Cabaret have transformed (and fully pressure-washed) the venue, ditching the dodgy flicks in favour of live music, DJ nights and Sunday night comedy. Far friendlier than the characterless Granville Strip clubs, it’s the perfect spot to end your Vancouver night out.
Fox Cabaret
2321 Main Street, Mount Pleasant
foxcabaret.com

Weightless in Seattle

Luke Skywalker may have been a little short for a Stormtrooper but I have always been a little tall (and much too short-sighted) for an astronaut. Yet here I am, floating and tumbling midair in the very plane NASA uses to train men and women destined for outer space. I snap at a bubble of water floating in front of me and marvel at the sensation of utter weightlessness.

Although there are both rocket scientists and billionaire space tourists on board, I am neither. I’m just a boy with stars in his eyes, grown into a man who still occasionally dreams of diamonds set in a pitch-black void and the moon rising behind a curving Earth.

Space agencies have long used zero-g flights to simulate the microgravity of orbit without the danger and expense of a rocket launch. A jet flies steeply upwards, rising three kilometres in 30 seconds. The pilot then carefully steers the plane into an arc – or parabola – like that of a thrown ball. If they get it just right, everyone and everything inside the plane becomes completely weightless for 30 seconds, before the pilot pulls the nose up again.

On our specially modified Boeing 727 flying high above Seattle, Captain John Benisch II gets it right time after time. All but the rear 40 seats have been stripped out of the commercial jet, leaving a long, empty tube padded on every surface. My heart has been racing ever since I signed up – for less than the cost of flying business class from Sydney to LA. I’ve watched videos, read books and even signed a waiver absolving the Zero Gravity Corporation of any responsibility for “injury or illness caused by physical contact with floating objects”. But as I lie on the floor awaiting our first parabola, I realise nothing on earth can truly prepare me for the absence of something I’ve felt unnoticed for every second of my life: gravity.

“Prepare for zero-one,” says Captain Benisch, and suddenly, miraculously, I’m up and floating. It’s like scuba diving without the gear, hang-gliding without any fear of impact or, for this rapidly regressing flier, the realisation of a thousand childhood fantasies. The first parabola is over almost before I even realise it – my weight returning with a vengeance, the plane pushing me to the floor with twice the force of gravity as we line up for another.

On the zero-two and zero-three parabolas, I experiment with slow-motion somersaults. All of my fellow passengers are wearing the same flight suit and the same moonrise-wide grin. Two words fill the air: “sorry” as we inevitably tumble into one another and “awesome” as each parabola ends (yes, the majority are American).

As we fly parabola after parabola, my confidence rises. I dart after flying M&Ms, hover in a suspended raincloud of water droplets and spin through the air like Superman. As this isn’t an extreme NASA ‘vomit comet’ training mission, with 50 parabolas in roller-coaster succession, we level out after 12 and start our descent. Even so, by the time we touch down, ecstatic, exhausted and exhilarated, my stomach is roiling. My boyhood dreams have come true but my adult self realises that perhaps I never really had what it takes to be a spaceman.

Hey Bear

Serendipitous. That’s the word that best describes my present predicament: standing face to face with a six-foot female grizzly. She’s so close I can smell the salmon on her breath and see the leftover chunks of meat between her teeth.

We stand, eyeballing one another for a moment longer – me marvelling at her beautiful face, its fur dripping with mountain meltwater; her eyes are so endearing I find myself anthropomorphising her. She is, quite surely, the most majestic ‘woman’ I have ever seen.

“Hey bear,” says my guide Blakeley, calmly reassuring the behemoth mum and her yearling cub, standing slightly off to the side, that all is well in her wilderness, the pristine Great Bear Rainforest (GBR) on the remote west coast of Canada.

Serendipitous. Six months earlier in Sydney I stood face to face with another extraordinary woman who also calls the GBR home: Australian Marg Leehane. She runs Great Bear Lodge, located 80 kilometres by air from Port Hardy in British Columbia. She lives and breathes bears here, and while a guest in her floating lodge, you do too.

Up at dawn, guests – only 16 at any one time – head out in boats to watch the bears feeding on spring sedges (flowering rushes) and visit viewing blinds from where they can see grizzlies fish for salmon.

Which brings us, serendipitously, to the exquisite lady standing before me. Her cub has grown restless of our encounter and is mewing, like a lamb, for more food. Mum turns and, within a moment, is body deep in rushing water. Salmon splash by – flipping flashes of green, yellow and burgundy. Mother bear lunges, swipes and comes up trumps, a 50-centimetre fish impaled on her claws.

She moves to the other side of the river, drops the salmon and tears at the flesh with her teeth. The cub noses in for a feed. Nearby, a bald eagle lands then hops closer, hoping for scraps.

I watch all this mesmerised. Upstream, at a bend in the river, another grizzly appears, then one, two, three more. Mother bear turns her head, sniffs the air, and decides to move on. But just before she disappears into the forest, she looks back.

“Hey bear,” I say, bidding her farewell and reassuring her once again that all is well in her Great Bear Rainforest.

 

United States of America

From Manhattan to Malibu and everywhere in between, there’s more to America than Starbucks and faux pas-making politicians. There are also vast tracts of breathtaking wilderness, cutting-edge arts and culture, and the supersized glitz and glam of Hollywood and Vegas.

Tap your feet in New Orleans, gorge on barbecue in Texas, swish down mountains in Colorado or get in touch with your inner hippie in San Francisco. And don’t forget about that little island group called Hawaii, or the remote natural beauty of Alaska.

There’s so much to see and do, you can (sort of) understand why many Americans never holiday abroad. So strap on your fanny pack, grab your peeps, and lap it up in the Land of the Free.

Mexico

Mexico is many things – good, bad and ugly. The upside: most of it is good. Very good. From snowy volcanic peaks to warm azure waters, mysterious ancient wonders to fast-paced city living, this is a country of contrasts, colour and intrigue.

Head to the northern state of Chiapas to explore the Maya city of Palenque in the jungle or combine temples and tans at Tulum, with its magnificent thirteenth-century walled city and clifftop castle. While you’re in this part of the world, take a dip in the Yucatan’s cenotes, underground caves with pools of turquoise water formed when the porous limestone bedrock collapses.

Spend some downtime chasing waves. Small beachside towns like Sayulita and Puerto Escondido offer decent breaks and a low-key vibe. Elsewhere you can hike, kayak, zip-line, horse ride and take on just about any other adventure you can imagine.

For urban adventurers, Mexico City is a goldmine. Huge and chaotic, it offers incredible history, outstanding art, extraordinary cultural experiences (the Arena México hosts lucha libra, the country’s own form of wrestling, each week) and thriving hip neighbourhoods. Check out Condesa, Roma and Juárez for cool bars, restaurants and shops.

If you’re willing to give the well-worn tourist traps a swerve, Mexico will reward you with some remarkable travel experiences. Bring your phrasebook and a sense of adventure and you’ll find this epic country has an incredible allure.

Where the Wild Things Are

Wild-eyed Kent lurched towards the cliff edge and yelled: “I’ll jump for ya!”

I must have given him a look that screamed CRAZY CANUCK because he quickly qualified his offer: “I’ve done it plenty of times. I grew up around here.”

And then he leapt, arms flapping like rotor blades, off the 20-metre cliff and into the foaming sea below. It seemed an eternity before his head popped, cork-like, out of the brine, and the breath I’d been holding was finally granted its exit.

Cape Breton Highlands National Park, on the northern tip of Canada’s island province of Nova Scotia, is no place for the faint-hearted. It’s a wild concoction of spectacular scenery – vertigo-inducing highlands, Tolkien-esque river canyons and craggy cliffs that plunge (like Kent) into the icy sea. I’d come halfway around the world to explore this earth’s-end landscape, on trails that snake along exposed mountain tops, through peat bogs and into coastal fishing villages, complete with centuries-old lighthouses that, it seems, time has mislaid.

And then there’s the wildlife. Moose roam free here, and spotting them can be nigh on impossible or ridiculously easy – I saw two ‘hiding’ in a sapling forest a stone’s throw from a perfectly groomed golf course (Highland Links – yep, there’s sophistication amid the wilderness). I’d spent the two days before that trekking up hill and down dale, and mired in peat bogs following moose tracks that afforded me not even a glimpse of an antler. Still, hiking boots covered in muck and legs stinging from the unrelenting exertion, it was worth every step.

Access to the park is via the Cabot Trail, without doubt one of the world’s most scenic drives and a favourite with motorcyclists. It’s 300 kilometres of smooth, bitumen road that hugs the rugged coastline and skirts a seemingly endless azure sea (the Gulf of St Lawrence on the north-western edge of the island, and the Atlantic Ocean in the east). Heading inland, it wends through spectacular Canadian maple forests that morph from lime green in summer to waves of red, orange and brilliant yellow come autumn.

When Kent finally made it back to the top of the cliff he was deliriously pumped. “Did you see that? Cool, wasn’t it? Buddy, I can do it again if you want… You wanna jump too?”

Despite the voice in my head screaming “Do it! Do it!” I declined. I had somewhere else to be, I explained. The Skyline Trail. Kent nodded his approval. “That’s cool. It’s a brilliant walk. Look for moose! The big guys hang out around there.”

The 9.2-kilometre Skyline Trail is one of the most popular tracks in the park, and loops atop an impressive coastal headland. I followed a grassy path through fir trees and over roots and rocks to a bog surrounded by sweetly scented pines and earthy peat moss. There were moose tracks everywhere. Promising, Kent, promising.

As I walked west towards the coast, the forest thinned to reveal expansive views of the sea. It was spectacular; the frothing waves of the Gulf of St Lawrence – the world’s largest estuary and the outlet of the Great Lakes of North America – lapped at the horizon.

Roughly halfway along the track I joined a boardwalk that traced the spine of the mountain. The panorama was sublime: to my left, row upon row of pine-clad peaks, and to my right, nothing but deep blue sea. At the boardwalk’s end – a viewing platform at the edge of the cliff – I pulled off my pack and sat, watching the waves roll and roll and roll. Amazingly, I spotted a pod of long-finned pilot whales not too far offshore, flukes slapping on the surface (a practice known as lobtailing).

Difficult as it was to drag myself away from such beauty, back on the Skyline loop I became immersed in the plant life – the pines were stunted from years of being lashed by wind and the peat bogs were a drawcard for all manner of animals, from the snowshoe hare and white-tailed deer to the black bear. I’d stopped to check out a golden dragonfly hovering over a pitcher plant when I heard the press of heavy hooves on soil and looked up to see a moose. It was a male, with antlers as wide as he was long. He took one look at me and ambled away. Breathtaking.

The park is littered with walking tracks like this – scenically stunning and not too hard on the heart. But if you’re looking for one that really gets the blood pumping, try Franey, a steep 7.4-kilometre loop to the 425-metre peak of craggy Franey Mountain. From here the 360-degree view takes in the impressive Clyburn River Canyon, which cuts a path eastward to the Atlantic Ocean. For moose spotters, the three-kilometre Benjie’s Lake trail is most likely to deliver the goods, while beaver lovers should tackle the 1.7-kilometre Freshwater Lake trail, on the southeast edge of the park.

In total, Cape Breton Highlands National Park has 26 designated hiking and mountain-biking trails, as well as eight campgrounds. It’s a wildlife haven, and tucked up in my tent at night I’d hear the forest rustle with movement. A moose? A bear? A cheeky lynx trying to sniff out treats from my dillybag, which was hidden away in a nearby bear-proof food locker?

There are also sleepy coastal villages in which you can rest your weary bones (away from the wildlife) and soak up the island’s rich maritime and Scottish heritage.

Scots first came to the island in the 1770s, and today it’s home to the largest Gaelic community outside Scotland, which continues many fine traditions from the homeland, including Celtic fiddling, step-dancing and producing the best melt-in-your-mouth shortbread I’ve ever eaten. Drizzled with the ubiquitous Canadian maple syrup, it’s fuel for all-day adventuring.

The towns of Inverness on the west coast and Baddeck on the east both brim with Gaelic-inspired food and culture, and in homes, restaurants, pubs and community halls, céilidhs raise the roof pretty much every weekend. Informal social gatherings featuring Scottish dancing, music and storytelling, they’re as much a part of the fabric of the island as the word ‘eh’ is to Canada as a whole.

After a week in the wilderness I stopped in Baddeck to sample a local delicacy pulled straight from the sea. “So what is planked salmon?” I asked of my host at Baddeck Lobster Suppers. While my friends dug into steaming bowls of seafood chowder then a bucket of freshly steamed mussels followed by lobster (a steal at roughly $22 per kilogram, compared to $65 in Australia), I watched as my thick fillet of salmon was laid on a plank of timber in an outdoor cooking hut 15 metres away and drizzled in maple syrup over and over again, before being skilfully squeezed between two grill plates and sizzled over hardwood coals. It was well worth the wait; the sweet and fishy flavours danced a delicious jig in my mouth.

Later that night, in the jovial embrace of the Thistledown Pub, I listened to the lilting voice of a local Scot who reeled off song after song in praise of Nova Scotia and, more specifically, Cape Breton. “Music is central to our lives,” he said. “You’ll find most families play the fiddle or the bagpipes or sing or step-dance. It’s just who we are.”

Renowned for its music, Baddeck is equally celebrated as the beloved home of inventor extraordinaire Alexander Graham Bell. Born and raised in Edinburgh and most famous for inventing the telephone, Bell moved to Baddeck with his family in 1885, looking for “a place of salt water, mountains and valleys” where he and his wife Mabel could “put [our] little girls in trousers and live a simple, free and unconventional life”.

Located in Baddeck, the Alexander Graham Bell Museum, a national historic site, is an intriguing place. Bell was a prolific inventor (according to one of his biographers his work ranged “unfettered across the scientific landscape”), and his countless creations are on show here, from a metal jacket used to assist in breathing (a precursor to the iron lung) to a device for locating icebergs. There are also composting toilets, air-conditioning units and the biplane Silver Dart, which, in 1909, made the first powered flight in the British Empire. It took off from the ice-covered waters of Bras d’Or Lake, over which the museum presides.

His ever-enquiring mind and appreciation for the raw beauty of nature allowed Bell to see the value in a geographic journal of record, and in 1888 he became one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society.

A small plaque in the museum sums up Bell’s thoughts on the society and, I suspect, his move to wild and untamed Cape Breton. It reads:

“We should not keep forever on the public road going only where others have gone; we should leave the beaten track occasionally and enter the woods.”

Kent, the moose and I couldn’t agree more.

Slurp Mexican mezcal

Like its milky, viscous cousin pulque, mezcal is made from the fermented sap of the maguey plant, a form of agave. It tastes smokier than tequila and can sometimes be found with a large larva worm floating near the bottom.

Some believe drinking it can help control hypertension and diabetes, while others would rather think it’s an aphrodisiac. In Oaxaca, it’s traditionally served with a side of fried larvae.

There are many bars and stores selling mezcal in Mexico but the most popular and trendy spots are in Mexico City and Oaxaca, a region where many of the finer spirits are produced. You can take a tour of a distillery to find out how small-batch, artisinal mezcal is produced (yes, sampling is encouraged!).

Check out Corazón de Maguey, Los Danzantes, La Botica, Mexicano and Muruka in Mexico City.

Aspen Gay Ski Week

Ah, Aspen… Loved by celebs with private jets and people with so much money they could buy the whole mountain if they so desired. But for one week each winter, this mountain resort turns into the biggest LGBTQI party you might ever encounter, and at Aspen Gay Ski Week there’s as much action off the slope as there is on.


Après-ski hot-tub ragers, friendship dinners, art nights and dance parties take over when the hikes, downhill costume parties and bootcamp classes are done for the day. There’s also a (slightly) serious side: all money raised during the festivities goes to the Roaring Fork Gay and Lesbian Community Fund, which supports ventures promoting tolerance, understanding and diversity.

Summer ski loving

No matter what time of year you get the bug to strap on the skis (or the board), you can take to Oregon’s Mount Hood. Here, you’ll find Timberline Lodge at about 1,200 metres.


During the summer months (from June to September) you’ll find plenty of skiers higher up the mountain at Palmer Snowfield. The best part is you can get up early to do a bit of skiing, then head down to Portland for some craft beer and doughnuts, or go a bit further to enjoy the amazing coastline. Take in artsy Cannon Beach, wander the promenade at Seaside or catch a wave at Indian Beach.

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