I’ve been back from Vancouver for 2 days now, and cold most of the time since: long live the northern summer! 🙂 In Van, it was hot and sunny, I liked the conference and got what I wanted out of it, and all in all just didn’t really want to come back. But that dissipated as soon as the plane approached Whitehorse. When the mountains started looking northern, I started getting excited… and as we descended to the airport, I looked out the window and saw this:
—which was actually MUCH closer than it appears. And moments after I took this (and got “talked to” by the flight attendant for not having powered down my electronics), we banked hard left, so much that I started to wonder if my affairs were in order—we might have been 50 metres from the mountain. (!!!!!) Made me think of this… 
(source)
Yet I lived to tell, so, back to Tombstone and the fabulous, successful hikes there…
Goldensides is easy. It’s also the most popular hike in Tombstone, because it’s at the highest point of the Dempster and also maybe a kilometre away from the interpretive centre. See the little point, the dot of white near the centre of this shot? By the backward C-curve? Maybe? Well, trust me, it’s there. 
I think we ran into maybe 3 other groups, which is *lots* for the Yukon. And so, to the photos. Are these getting repetitive? I… don’t care. For me, it never gets old. The fact that I think so surely is, however, ’cause I keep saying it…
On the way up… successive ridges in a row, and they’re all kinda different. Interesting! 
The view to the glacier, and potentially tomorrow’s rain…? 
From the summit! (NBD, however, easiest hike that took maybe 45 minutes…) 🙂
The views around the summit were amazing—all middle-earthy or something. (Oh, whatever, LOTR…) 
An inukshuk up top: is this just “how it’s done” and I’ve not hiked enough to know that you ALWAYS mark the end of a trail with an inukshuk? 
Finally: proof that I was there, wearing my ever-present, much-loved sun hat… 
And I have nothing to say about this, other than it looks like a Rohrshack test of sorts. Or, like the rocks are wearing camo… 
After the climb, we went back to our campsite for snacks—or, what was a snack to my tent-mate, and dinner to me: good lesson for future reference—it can be VERY helpful to travel with people who eat the same amount as you, so that you can both be hungry at the same time, instead of one person trying unsuccessfully to light the camping stove at 11pm while the other goes to bed with a splitting headache, right?
Anyway: before the crisis of “second dinner”, we headed back into the interpretive centre for a Coffee House. They served us bannoch and local “tea” (wildflowers and bits of the boreal forest), which was OK, but the water flavoured with wild roses and spruce tips was really good—didn’t taste like the end result of face-planting down a mountain at all! Honestly: I would try that again at home…
The real story, however, was the talent. WHO would have expected this?! From top to bottom, a 17-year-old award-winning fiddler, two gents you might recall from Aboriginal Day in Dawson City, Joe from Whitehorse who sang his own songs of the Gold Rush, and… two interesting dudes from Ontario, summering in Dawson. Crappy quality pics, I know, I didn’t change my settings. 😀 
And after that, back to the campsite to sleep… which was a surprisingly cold endeavour. Because finding cold in the Yukon can *only* be surprising, right?
waywayupthere 