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The following day we were only planning on driving as far as Mayo (only ~300km) so we decided to spend the morning exploring the back roads and looking at the Klondike gold rush area. We started by trying to get up a back road behind Dawson City for a good view over the area.
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However, the road hadn't been plowed so we fairly soon came to a halt on the steep hill - so it was finally a chance to try out the snow chains we had been dragging arround with us.
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Some of us launched straight into trying to fit the chains to the wheel whereas others decided to read the instructions first... those of us who read the instructions infact got their wheel done first...
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As usual in photos you loose the sense of how steep the hill was - this was not the shallow gradient it looks like here!
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An old pair of gloves are useful for this - my fingers were frozen by the time I had my chain on...
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These chains have caused quite a bit of interest in Alberta as people don't seem to know about this style - which are hugely easier to put on than the traditional US style ones. These have been arround in Europe for at least 2 decades - and I note you can order them online in the US so I don't know why they are so uncommon.
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So, now we are ready to continue - and this makes a huge difference, as you might expect. I had ground to a halt here even with a runup at the hill with the chains off - with them on I was now able to drive off from a standing start without too much trouble.
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With the chains on we got well past the point where most of the other tracks turned arround. We eventually turned round when it became clear that getting up the last 1km section was going to take quite a bit of trying and we didn't really want to get stuck as there we plenty of other things to look at as well. So we headed back down and then went up the valley that leads to the area where Klodike gold was originally discovered.
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The entire valley is covered with the remains of old mining activity.
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Road conditions continued to be 'interesting'...
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The snow was quite deep in places...
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