Snowmobiles: Surprisingly easy to drive.Credit: Guy Wilkinson
When it comes to recreational vehicles of a high horse power, my track record is less than stellar.
On a buck's do, I somehow managed to roll a quad bike over the lip of a sand dune, tumbling helplessly beside it as gravity took hold. While visiting my ex-girlfriend's family farm in New Zealand, her brothers looked on in horror as the dirt bike they'd lent me vanished into a drainage ditch with me on top of it.
So as I straddle a beast of a snowmobile in the wilds of Canada's north-west, I'm hoping history won't repeat itself.
Our guides Scott McDougall and James Barber – two blokes who look like they'd happily fist fight a bear if it looked at them twice – offer a few succinct words of instruction and then we're off, tearing single file down a narrow snow trail into the wilderness.
We're at Haines Junction, a village off the Alaska Highway some 150 kilometres west of Whitehorse on the fringes of Kluane National Park and Reserve. This is wild country, home to Canada's highest peak, the 5959-metre Mount Logan, as well North America's most diverse grizzly population and some of the world's largest non-polar glaciers.
Though I'm tentative at first, driving a snowmobile proves surprisingly straightforward.
With confidence escalating, I'm soon cranking the throttle, speeding down woodland trails and out on to expansive snowy plains, past abandoned wooden cabins and frozen forests.
Occasionally we test our mettle navigating trickier hill sections, eking our way up steep gradients only to bomb down the other side, grins masked behind balaclavas and crash helmets.
We pause briefly for hot chocolate and a bite while McDougall regales us with tales of summer kayaking adventures (the other half of his business) but there's little time to waste; having experienced this region by land, it's time to take to the skies.
A 10-minute drive east at Haines Junction Airport, our lightweight Cessna 206 aircraft awaits on the runway beside a simple airport hut. Moments later we're flying deep into the mountains, high above an eerily still glacial landscape.
Beneath us, sprawling glacial plains snake their way through the intricate alpine landscape of the Saint Elias Mountain Ranges.
At lower elevation, thousands of spruce, poplar and aspen trees scatter the land like so many iron filings tossed against a crisp sheet of paper, while further ahead, jagged snow-dusted mountain peaks stab at the underbelly of a pale blue sky.
In summer, this region offers some of the most spectacular hiking trails the Yukon has to offer – the 65-kilometre Slim's River West Trail to the summit of Observation Mountain among the best – but trekkers must share the territory with bears, lynx and even timber wolves, not that a close encounter is likely.
Heading further over the Kaskawash and Kluane Glaciers, our course follows Slim's River, its waters a viscous turquoise thanks to mineral-rich glacial deposits.
Banking steeply, I watch elongated fingers of sunlight fade behind the peak of Mount Logan, my mind blown at how much I've been able to experience in the space of a single day.
Looking down, I can't help but speculate on how long I might last, even in thermal gear should I be airdropped Bear Grylls-style into this wilderness. A day or two? Perhaps less? One thing's for certain; this is nature at its rawest and most powerful; it's an inspiring place to be, and a humbling one at that.
TRIP NOTES
MORE
VISIT
Kanoe People offer guided snowmobile excursions, dog mushing tours and a range of other adventures in the Yukon. See kanoepeople.com
Rocking Star Adventures offer a number of glacier flight-seeing tours around Kluane National Park. A 30-minute flight over Donjek Glacier starts at $CA160 pp. See rockingstar.ca
FLY
Air Canada operates frequent flights from Sydney to Vancouver with ongoing connections to Whitehorse, Canada. See aircanada.com
STAY
The Westmark Hotel offers comfortable rooms in a central location in downtown Whitehorse. Rooms from $199 a night. See westmarkhotels.com
Guy Wilkinson was a guest of Tourism Yukon.
Sign up for the Traveller Deals newsletter
Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up now.