In the summer of 1981, 64-year-old Helen Broomell, mother of six and grandmother of ten, set off with an old aluminum canoe that had been shortened by cutting and riveting. She had found a ride on a ride board from her home in Wisconsin to Dawson, British Columbia, and the Yukon River. After three weeks paddling 600 miles by herself, she spent the next four months exploring Alaska by plane, train, Alaska Ferry, hitchhiking, river rafting, and dogsledding. Two years later, Helen returned and picked up her canoe at the gas station by the pipeline bridge where she had left it, and paddled another 750 miles by herself. When the weather got bad before she reached her destination (about 100 miles from the Bering Sea), she traded her canoe for a boat ride, and again spent several months traveling all over Alaska by any means available. This book combines her journals from both trips into one volume, and includes unforgettable anecdotes about bears, native villages, making friends, and being self-reliant.

Journal of a canoe voyage down the full length of the Yukon River from the headwaters of the Big Salmon River to Norton Sound, made in the summer of 1973.

Leaving Skagway, Alaska, in June 1990, Townsend followed the footsteps of the Klondike goldrushers across the Yukon's rugged mountains, wild rivers, and muskeg swamps. Focusing on the Yukon's history, geology, and wildlife, Townsend finds reminders of the gaunt men chronicled by Robert Service almost a century ago. 15 illustrations.

Chris Townsend left Skagway, Alaska, in June 1990, following in the footsteps of the Klondike goldrushers for a time before finally ending his trek 83 days later at the Arctic Circle.

"The Yukon River is 2,000 miles long and the longest stretch of free-flowing river in the United States. In this riveting examination of one of the last wild places on earth, Adam Weymouth canoes from Canada's Yukon Territory, through Alaska, to the Bering Sea. The result is a book that shows how even the most remote wilderness is affected by the same forces reshaping the rest of the planet. Every summer, hundreds of thousands of king salmon migrate the distance of the Yukon to their spawning grounds, where they breed and die, in what is the longest salmon run in the world. For the people who live along the river, salmon were once the lifeblood of commerce and local culture. But climate change and globalized economy have fundamentally altered the balance between people and nature; the health and numbers of king salmon are in question, as is the fate of the communities that depend on them. Traveling down the Yukon as the salmon migrate, a four-month journey through untrammeled landscape, Weymouth traces the fundamental interconnectedness of people and fish through searing and unforgettable portraits of the individuals he encounters. He offers a powerful, nuanced glimpse into indigenous cultures, and into our ever-complicated relationship with the natural world. Weaving in the rich history of salmon across time as well as the science behind their mysterious life cycle, 'Kings of the Yukon' is extraordinary adventure and nature writing at its most urgent and poetic"--Dust jacket.