Neva

Meeting Walt Gagnon turned out to be a big boon for me.  After we had dinner that first evening, he spent a lot of time showing me around.  We spent several hours in his shop where I learned a lot about trapping -- both the equipment used and the animals taken.  He showed me gold panning equipment and how to use it.  He had many, many books on mining, trapping, hunting and fishing.  And he had supplies for all of it.  He even had a certain amount of clothing essential to survival in the harsh northern country.

            Since it was so early in the season, he was able to leave his shop in the care of an Indian employee and took me on excursions into the woods.  He had a beat up old 4 wheel drive truck which went everywhere.  And we didn''t always stick to the roads. 

            The Yukon River flows through the heart of Whitehorse but he took me to other rivers and streams as well.   He confirmed all I had read about the dangers of these waters and how a person cannot survive more than a minute or two at the most in these frigid rivers.  Chunks of ice were still floating in most of the streams and thick shelves of ice still clung to the edges.  We fished some of the smaller streams and finally met our first bear.  It was a good sized grizzly standing by the edge of the water.  It was still too early for berries but he must have been looking for fish.  He didn''t notice us at first.  The hair on the back of my neck was crawling and Walt whispered for me to stay calm.  The large beast turned toward us and stood to his full height of twelve feet.  He was sniffing the air to find out who and what we were.