The coronavirus, snow removal, and the Trek

Last weekend the Trek Over the Top event brought 150 snowmobilers over from Tok, Alaska for the weekend. Jeff and the guys from our local snowmobile club greeted them out near the border with a warm-up tent. It was close to -40 that morning when Jeff headed out before 7am with emergency supplies and firewood. He didn’t get back to town until about 9pm! What a cold day.

The weekend was a busy one for the club, selling stakes for the sled drop, organizing the poker run, and bbq. Here are some pics!

By the beginning of the week, it was becoming more and more obvious we were not going to be going down to the southern US for six weeks with our camping trailer at the beginning of April. I have a 3 month sabbatical from work, that I already have postponed for almost two years. Jeff had been able to save up 6 weeks of vacation so we were going to hit the open highway. We’ve been planning it for months.

But I guess it wasn’t meant to be. A few days ago we were thinking thoughts about what if travel was blocked, or borders closed, or if we were quarantined somewhere, or worse yet, catch the virus and be sick somewhere far from home, so we cancelled our house sitter.

Now it is all too real, and obvious we made the only decision.

You’d think we are way far away from the world, and any threat, but this is the exact time people return to Dawson from all around the world. They are gold miners or tourist operators, and spend their winters elsewhere. Even our Premier and territorial cabinet were all exposed at a mining conference in Toronto last week. An outbreak could happen here just as easily as anywhere else.

With a hospital that is basically just a nursing station, anything we can do to keep it from being overrun will be best for us all.

We think about hiding from the world for a bit, but waver back and forth, like everyone else. We still had dinner out on Thursday, Jeff works in an office with the public dropping in regularly, and we went shopping today. We always have a good supply of food (and toilet paper) just because we like to be prepared if the grocery truck couldn’t get here anyway. We even have plenty of soap and hand sanitizer from my chemo months.

By today the grocery store was asking people to limit their toilet paper but there was plenty still on the shelves, and still lots of everything really, no panic here, although at the last minute most of this weekend’s Thaw dis Gras spring carnival was cancelled. It brings hundreds of people from Whitehorse, but wasn’t cancelled until the last minute, so that didn’t prevent anyone from coming.

It has been quite cold here, and it is still very much winter. We have a record amount of snow!

Hank is keen on the returning sun though, so I decided I’d dig out his kennel run this afternoon. Doesn’t look too bad, right?

HA!! There is a metre of snow in it! But I did it! (I’m so crippled and broken now haha).

While I did that, Jeff started shovelling off the roof with the roof rake.

There is about a metre of snow on the roof too. Jeff kept at it for hours and got the south side of the house mostly cleared. It is now impossible to walk around that side of the house now, with the mountains of snow, on top of all the snow that was already there.

This area hasn’t seen this much snow since the great flood of 1979, so I guess it’ll be nice to be here to watch the spring progress!