Fantastic scenic flight over Yukon's jagged Tombstone Mountain Range

We had to be at Dawson City Airport for 8:45am Thursday morning. The airport is located about 17 kms (10.5 miles) east of town, so we gave ourselves about a half an hour to get there just to be on the safe side. We parked up Sherman at the area where it said "No Overnight RV Camping", but of course we weren't parking overnight.

It's a big enough airport considering the town of Dawson City has only about 2,000 permanent residents. Although they say that the population goes down to about 800 during he winter! Air North does regular flights to Whitehorse from here, as well as Inuvik and also other communities that are only accessible by air.

But for our particular flight this day, we were looking for the offices of Great River Air.

Dawson City and the immediate area certainly isn't flat, but there aren't really what you would call "mountains" here either. The nearest mountains are a jagged range called the Tombstone Mountains which start about 40 kms (25 miles) north of Dawson City. When we begin heading up the Dempster Highway (likely on Sunday) our first stop will be Tombstone Territorial Park where we plan to doing some hiking in the Tombstone Mountains.

We were really excited to do this flight, because it would give us a different perspective on what we will be seeing from the ground when we're hiking next week.

We found our pilot Gord, and he brought us out to the small 4 seater airplane.

Ruth, ready to go!

The first thing of interest that we saw was the tailings left over from the dredging of the Klondike River that happened between 1913 and 1959.

Left over tailings from Dredge #4.

It's taken over 50 years for some greenery to start to grow.

The town of Dawson City from the air. 

The Yukon River is muddy, but the Klondike River is clear.

Looking south, you can see the Klondike Highway and the pools left over from the dredging.

The Yukon River.

That's where we're heading!

The entire flight from the airport to the mountains was spent climbing in altitude. The mountains are at 7,000 ft, so we needed to get at least that high to get over and around them!

Still climbing.

Scenery along the way.

Now we're getting up there.

And of course while you are climbing, the mountains are getting higher and so it seems like you're not climbing.

Wow. We love the mountains.

Jagged rocky peaks.

Now, we're flying in between the peaks.

I honestly didn't expect us to be flying so close to the peaks. But we were really lucky and there were no weather issues or turbulence and the skies were very smooth so our expert pilot Gord was able to fly fairly close to the rocks. I was in the back seat because there are windows that open for camera access and I just had a big grin on my face. I love flying, and I love the mountains so this was the  best of both worlds combined.

Our little four seater airplane sure seemed tiny up there!

This is the actual Tombstone Mountain.

Yukon mountains.

Looking back at Tombstone Mountain.

Wow. Beautiful.

Mount Monolith.

Still lots of snow up here.

Mount Monolith from a different angle.

More scenery.

Things are getting greener in the valleys.

Still frozen. When it thaws, it will have a beautiful greeny blue color.

Looking north, the Dempster Highway. 

We will be taking this road when we leave here.

Back on the ground.

Absolutely amazing. And even more special to us because we will be viewing these same mountains from the ground while hiking Tombstone Territorial Park in upcoming days.

You can book your own scenic Air Tour in the Yukon by contacting The Klondike Experience at (867) 993-3821 or [email protected]

Huge thanks to Yukon Tourism for supporting this adventure so that we can show you how beautiful and rugged the Yukon is. They've got more adventures coming up for us over the next six weeks or so, so stay tuned!