Words Tom Bradshaw
Images Peter Wojnar

The idea was simple: fly to the Yukon, arriving at 11:59pm on Friday night. Greeted by the midnight sun of the summer solstice, we’d leave the bike bags somewhere and start riding. We’d ride the stunning Whitehorse trails until the 5pm flight on Sunday night, returning to Vancouver in time for work on Monday. No accommodation, no vehicles—just a big ride with plenty of stops and the occasional nap under the midnight sun.

It was ambitious to say the least.

Landing at Whitehorse airport ahead of schedule at 11:30pm on the Friday, we feverishly built up our bikes outside the terminal, in a twilight haze of disbelief and—to be honest—tiredness.

The Yukon is known for its remoteness; the gold rush, the Arctic Circle, and beautiful, expansive terrain.

It’s five times the size of New Zealand and, more than once, we would find ourselves “Yukon’d.” If you were to look up Yukon’d in the dictionary, it would be a verb describing the moment of realisation that, three hours into a climb towards a mountain top, it appears no closer than when you started.

The Yukon is less well known for its mountain biking, however, it is outstanding. The soil is a blend of water-sapping loam and near-sandy alpine dirt. The tree line stops at 900m of elevation, providing “easy” access to the alpine. The vastness cannot be underestimated.

Immediately, our plan was derailed. Unable to simply leave our bags in the bush by the airport as we had planned, we dragged them with us to the local bike shop. I-cycle, arguably the best named bike shop in the world, fortunately has a perfect covered patio where we left the bags. We began pedalling, into the darkness—and the rain.

As it transpires, even during the actual summer solstice the sun technically sets for about one hour. At this point it was 1:30am on the summer solstice and, because of the rain, clouds and technical twilight, our mood matched the unexpected darkness of the forest around us. There was no traffic and as we left the city limits, we realised how dark, wet and dumb this idea actually was.

Three hours later, at 4:30am, we finally broke the tree line. The 1000m climb had taken it’s time, as we paced ourselves and got lost a handful of times up the ever-expanding forestry road network. The visions I’d had of a four-hour-long twilight, painting the alpine and expansive Yukon landscape shades of a Picasso art piece, couldn’t have been more than a fever dream at this point. It was lightish, however, a grey misty cloud had settled, enveloping not only the sunrise but the view of Whitehorse entirely. At least we only had another 20 hours to go, a chance for the weather to clear.

As soon as we started heading downhill, the first bonk of the day disappeared. The low angle 800-metre descent was delicious, albeit spicy with the wet slick roots ready to catch a front wheel. The dirt was perfect, though, and held the moisture well.

The final 150 vertical metres was such a treat that we pushed back up and did it again. By the time we got to the bottom, it was 7:30am, and thoughts of hot, fresh coffee were pulling myself and Jacob to town. Fortunately Peter, who was also lugging around a camera, wisely told us we were being cowards and our short-sighted goal of hot coffee would add another 25km of road to our ride.

The mountains and their bike trails completely encircle Whitehorse. We had headed out to the west, and our next trail lay northwest of town. If Jacob and I were left to listen to our caffeine addiction, we would drop 400m elevation and have to ride back up the same road; it was a dumb idea inside a dumb idea. Instead, we listened to our bodies, and all promptly fell asleep. It’s amazing what 24 hours awake can do. We found a shelter, and passed out on the gravel like it was a California King. Some 20 minutes later, refreshed, we started climbing again—this time aiming for our second 1000m climb for the day: Whitehorse’s downhill track. The climb flew by; the proper daylight, improving weather and incoming fresh singletrack had us moving.

Haeckel Hill DH did not disappoint. Dropping in at about 10am we were treated to a handful of steep chutes with beautifully placed catch berms. The trail then went to that outstanding Rotorua- esque low angle, off the brakes gradient. We were riding like we hadn’t been moving for nearly 12 hours with 2000m of climbing under our belt.

After the 700m descent of beauty we had earnt a coffee. And a beer. This turned out to be a near-fatal mistake. Rolling back into downtown Whitehorse sometime after noon, we had been moving for about 12 hours and were all completely soaked. The bottoms of our feet resembled the contours on a topo map. They did not look pretty, nor did we. We were accepted to the local pub and found a table amongst the locals enjoying a rainy Saturday lunch. Fortunately, the people of Whitehorse could not have been more welcoming. They all seemed unperturbed by our soaking wet carcasses, and we celebrated the halfway mark by toasting to being inside and warm. The consequences of that lunch beer were almost immediate. It was all we could do not fall asleep in the warm, dry pub. Knowing we couldn’t afford to totally piss off the locals, we settled up and promptly fell asleep on the park bench across the road.

This was not the alpine wildflower bed sunshine nap I had envisioned when scheming this mission. But at this point, none of us could care less. Awaking to rain falling on us again, and seeing that it was 2:30pm, we decided we should really get going to climb up Grey Mountain, a 1400m mountain to the east of town.

Over the next three hours, we learned the hard way about the term “Yukon’d”. By 5:30pm it felt like we hadn’t even made a dent on the climb, however, it was starting to make a dent on us. We needed to stop to air our now trench foot-like feet every hour or two—the downside of our plan to only wear our riding gear on the plane. This travel light strategy was really starting to backfire on us as I considered pedalling barefoot for a spell. The fire road was pleasant enough, with a gentle gradient, and the three of us kept each other cheery while reminding each other of previous indiscretions over the past 18 hours. The animals of Whitehorse were clearly taking shelter, wiser than us; our only sighting was a small black bear, jumping out a few hundred metres up the road, glancing at us then deciding he had better things to eat than three smelly, tired, wet humans.

Fortunately, the higher we climbed, the clearer the skies got. The cloud broke as we reached the summit of Grey Mountain. It was 7:30pm when we were gifted our first proper view of the Yukon. The mountain had taken five or so hours to climb from town, but paled in comparison to what lay beyond. Mountains, lakes and the mighty Yukon river stretched as far as the eye could see. It was beautiful. And so was the descent.

Money Shot was the most technically challenging trail yet; steep, rocky and exposed as it descended through the alpine. Again, the descent gave us all a shot of life. All three of us rode like we’d just jumped off a chairlift, passing each other on inside lines and cackling at the trail. This was our first of two descents off Grey Mountain. We’d lost 600 metres on this descent and started climbing to the top for a second time, knowing midnight was getting close.

We knew we had to be at the summit by around 11:30pm. The light was fading and rain clouds were forecast to roll back in. We had ambitiously decided not to pack any riding lights, believing that “of course we won’t need them; it’ll be light the whole time”.

Regardless, we pushed on knowing this would be the final descent of our longest, longest day. We started climbing the final alpine ridge at 10:30pm. The cloudy, murky twilight wasn’t the hours-long beautiful golden hour sunset I had envisioned, but it was still breathtaking. The climb was also breathtaking. By this point, we had climbed well over 3,500m and ridden over 120kms on about 50ish minutes of sleep. The bonk was hitting us all hard.

It was only fitting that this final 1000m plus descent was called “The Dream.” A beauty; blue flow trail, hand-built by volunteers from the local mountain bike club, descended through the alpine back to the Yukon River and into town.

Naturally, we didn’t make the summit quite in time. As we dropped in at 11:45pm, the fading light and cloud made ‘The Dream’ a true and proper dream. Hooting and hollering like the delirious children we were, we scared any wildlife out of the way, the descent once again bringing us all to life. Twenty-four hours in, we were riding like it was lap one; the sandy alpine dirt providing unlimited grip despite the rain. The lights from town steadily got brighter as we got closer, and our grins were ear to ear.

As we rolled back to town at 1am, some 11 hours after we had left from our lunch nap, we realised how hungry and tired we were.

It’s fair to say we had drastically underestimated the logistics. I had planned this trip thinking we’d be riding through the hot summer sunlight, taking rests in fields of alpine wildflowers, and riding all the way through to our flight back on Sunday afternoon. Due to this overly ambitious plan, we had failed to book or bring any accommodation with us. We hadn’t really thought about that until this point, however, food was our number one priority. Whether you are in Whitehorse, Wellington or Warsaw, the golden arches of McDonald’s will always provide. The crispy, salty fries and magic Big Mac sauce filled a void we didn’t know we had.

Considering our options, sitting outside, soaked and bonked, we decided going back to our bike bags under the sheltered porch of the bike shop was our best move. And by god it was. To be honest, we probably could’ve booked a hotel, but we weren’t ready to drag our soaking wet carcasses back to society just yet.

Cozying up in a bike bag might not seem like the comfiest bed to you, if you’re reading this from the couch or the coffee shop, but at 1:30am in the twilight of a rainy Whitehorse morning, it couldn’t have been better.

A successful end to the longest, longest day ride. As the sun properly rose on Sunday morning, we sought shelter in the local coffee shop, promptly falling asleep again, but caffeinated, dry and relatively warm.

We spent Sunday testing out the local BMX track and jumps close to town, then rode back up to the airport, but only after a crucial stop to buy clothes for the flight home. Our strategy of packing only our riding gear had worked out so far, however, by now we were a biohazard. We would not have been allowed to board a commercial flight in the state we were in, so Walmart provided a pair of jandals and enough clothes to let us board the flight home.

Sitting down on the flight back to Vancouver, I felt relieved that the Yukon had let us get away with this atrocious lack of planning. The vastness was real, and a place I cannot wait to revisit with the bike—and perhaps a vehicle and accommodation. Nonetheless, we left feeling successful. We did it, but it wasn’t pretty. We had spent the entire midnight to midnight exploring the outstanding trails, people and town Whitehorse has to offer.