Exploring Beringia

Departing Whitehorse, Yukon
Duration of Trip: 11 days

During the spread of the last Great Ice Age, a glacier free land corridor stretched broadly from Siberia across the Bering Sea and along the Northern Rocky Mountains. It was a refuge for the grassland communities of the day and was home to almost mythical beasts such as the sabertooth, giant beaver, giant ground sloth and mammoths. Then - and still now - orchids, berries, willows, and lichens proliferated.

Today the Ravens Throat River winds secretly through a shoulder of Beringia in the Mackenzie Ranges, the crown of the Rockies. Sapphire blue, it snakes between black shale cliffs that give way to radiant displays of reds, purples and yellows, with shapes that conjure images of Nepalese pinnacles to carved fortresses of Petra. This is a land diverse and complicated with canyons and wildlife corridors, ancient lakebeds, and staggering mountains that make their own weather.

It is also a land that is untrammeled by man. In an area the size of California, there are no roads here, no villages, no dams. Hiking on the ridges and valleys is tremendous. Fossilized corals, abandoned antlers and brilliant rhododendrons punctuate the landscape.

Modern large animal icons of this refuge wilderness include grizzly and black bear, moose, Dall’s sheep and wolverine. The Ravens Throat is especially rich with caribou and wolves.