“The word adventure has gotten overused. For me, when everything goes wrong, that’s when adventure starts” – Yvon Chouinard.

Scott Gilbertson describes very eloquently why most people no longer experience real adventures when they travel. We plan everything, and we know what we are getting into because we’ve researched all details of our trip on Tripadvisor and guidebooks, or have asked a travel agent to arrange all details of our trips. Yet we call our trips to faraway places an “adventure”.

180 Degrees South is a great movie that follows Jeff Johnson on a trip to Patagonia. Along the way, lots goes wrong, but it doesn’t matter; the trip is a a great adventure. Along the way we are introduced to Chouinard (founder of Patagonia) and Doug Tompkins (co-founder of the Northface), and the ways they use their fortunes to save the environment.

My greatest adventures have been when things went wrong, like getting stuck in a river in Mongolia, running out of gas in the Gobi desert, or walking through the rainforest of New Guinea without water for 30 hours, or even getting stuck in snow storms in the far northwest of BC. None were planned, but they were all epic adventures in places that are not listed in the guidebooks or on Tripadvisor.

As Mark Twain said: “… throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Oh, and go places where there is no cell phone coverage or Internet, and which are not in the guidebook.

Watch how they can beer in a micro brewery in the Yukon. It will make your appreciate your next can of beer so much more!

Fly through the mountains of the Yukon by floatplane. Great footage of an iconic Canadian experience.

Learn how fireweed honey is made up in the Yukon. Discover Dredge #4, one of the behemoths that dredged the Klondike for gold. Find ancient mammoth tusks among the permafrost. View these and more of our latest travel docos from the Yukon!

Check out this video of watching grizzlies in the northern Yukon. The footage was shot with a simple Flip camera – it only has a wide-angle lens, no zoom at all. You get amazingly close to the bears. This amazing experience is offered by Bear Cave Mountain Tours in Ni’iinlii Njik Territorial Park.

Earlier this year, National Geographic Adventure Magazine published a list of top-ten green destinations around the world. It includes Canada’s Tatshenshini River as one of five eco-successes world-wide.

I was living  right at the source of the Tatshenshini on Chilkat Pass when they were exploring at the Windy Craggy minesite; a DC3 with supplies would fly over my study area every single day for most of a year. Cancellation of the permit and creation of  Tatshenshini-Alsek park was a huge victory for conservation groups, creating the world’s largest protected area (together with Kluane in the Yukon, Wrangell-St. Elias in mainland Alaska, and Glacier Bay in SE Alaska).

Nahanni River Adventures is one of my favourite operators in Canada’s north. I have always dreamt on going on one of Neil’s trips, especially his Tashenshini trip, since I used to live right at the source of the Tatshenshini on Chilkat Pass. The Edmonton Journal just published a great article on the origins of his company.

I uploaded a few of my images from the Yukon recently. Kluane, Dawson City and the Dempster are still my favourite parts of the territory.

Many people have heard of the Iditarod dogsled race (“Alaska, where men are men and women win the Iditarod”), but the lesser-known Yukon Quest, from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, Alaska, is actually quite a bit tougher, because of the terrain and the cold. The trail follows the historic Gold Rush and Mail Delivery routes from the turn of the 20^th Century, leading from Whitehorse north to Dawson city, and then west across the Alaska border to Fairbanks.