SPORTS & RECREATION What’s Up, YUKON!
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June 17, 2005
Sky High Wilderness Ranches Takes It to the Next Level
ky High Wilderness Ranches has always been the real deal. It was a working horse ranch before it became a tourist destination. And, before it was a horse ranch, it was just a trapline with a cabin on it. Ian McDougall is the real deal, too. He is tall and rugged and looks more comfortable on a horse than he does standing on the porch of the office. It is funny to see him with his new partner, Gary Burdess, who is a city boy and knew little of horses before he teamed up with his long-time friend. But Burdess knows how to work and he knows how to run a business. And his favourite place on the ranch is around the campfire that is often just for them and the workers finishing the on-site hostel. This is where stories get drawn out at the end of a hard day. McDougall says he “rolled into the Yukon” in 1975 and squatted on the property at the far end of Fish Lake Road until 1981. Sylvia, his future wife at the time, owned
My greatest sports moment ...
... was coaching the Yukon Boys U-15 Soccer Team to a gold ulu at the 2004 Winter Games in Fort McMurray. Derric Lewis
Ian McDougall (left) and Gary Burdess have teamed up to make Sky High Wilderness Ranches a smooth-running operation with more to offer. the trapline and they lived “a wilderness lifestyle”. McDougall describes this as a life of fishing, hunting, drying meat and tending a greenhouse. In the winters, they would travel up and down the trapline. The odd tourist would show up, because they knew somebody who knew them, and ask for a genuine trip. One day, McDougall’s horse was getting small for him and so they decided to travel to Dawson Creek and buy 11 horses and sell off most of them. Demand was high and so they opened up for business. They built some rough cabins to rent out and then began a sled dog operation and sleigh rides. Keeping things running was a full-time job. There was little time left to improve the property and grow the business. A building for a hostel was started in the ’84-’85 season. The roof went on in the ’86-’87 season and windows were installed in 1992. It was slow going. Then, on May 17, 2003, Sylvia suffered a heart attack while Ian was out watering the dogs and she died after he returned.
“I wanted to carry on the business, there was no question about that,” says McDougall today. “But it was always too much for two people. “I had to expand, but I was always doing the things I had to do and not the things I wanted to do.” Burgess and his wife, Trudy, had known the McDougalls for years as they ferried their daughter and her friend back and forth to work with the horses. They had set up a deal where they would work on the farm and earn rides on the horses. “They were bright kids,” says McDougall, smiling at the memory. “They were like our own kids.” Burgess decided to help out his friend by becoming one of five partners in the operation. His only plan was to finish the plans McDougall already had. A work crew is finishing the hostel for operation this season. It will house five women upstairs and five men downstairs. And, if someone wants to stay in a tent, they can still use the hostel’s facilities. Cabins will be next and will be started in the fall or early next
spring. They have come up with their own rating system: Sourdough One Star is a trapper’s cabin; Two Star is clad against vermin; Three Star is all amenities, but still just one room; Four Star has flush toilets; and Sourdough Five Star is a house. Starting soon will be a dog cart business. A six-seat cart will be pulled along city streets from hotel to hotel – “Skagway has three of them running fulltime,” says McDougall – collecting tourists and giving them a tour. At the ranch, there will be a Petting Dog Coral, where the nicest of the dogs will give visitors a chance to see what a dog yard looks like. Then there will be a Sky High Museum in the old home McDougall shared with Sylvia. She was a Colourful Five Percenter, having come to the Yukon in a covered wagon along the highway, and her life will be told in photos and
mementos. The campground will be operating again this year and horse rides are available again. McDougall takes visitors on various durations of trips throughout the Yukon-esque countryside. At the top of one knoll, in the middle of an alpine meadow, he points out various neighbouring mountains and shows where the seven to 10-day trips go: “There’s a cabin on the other side of that one and you can see wildlife along there.” A business needs to grow, but McDougall doesn’t cotton to the tour bus trade: “We’ve had tour buses up here,” he says with a shrug. “But I don’t really want to get into that market. “There’s older people who can’t do much and you are herding people around. “It would be the same thing everyday.”
Yukoners Could Win River Quest
W
ith last year’s winner coming back with a new partner, and strong Yukoners in every category, there is a good chance most of the $15,000 prize money will stay in the Yukon after the Seventh Annual Yukon River Quest. But a record number of paddlers from as far away as Australia and Guam and Austria will make it tough for them. From the BBC to a feature in the New York Times to Northern publications, the river race from Whitehorse to Dawson City has caught the attention of the world. On June 29, at 12:30 p.m., 66 teams will run from Main Street to the White Pass Train Depot and then down a trail to their boats on the Yukon River. It is the last time
any of them will stop moving until they reach Carmacks for a mandatory seven-hour break. Ingrid Wilcox has raced before and she knows this doesn’t mean the athletes will get seven hours of sleep. There is cleaning and repairs and eating and, after being on the water so long, “for the first little while they will be wobbly.” An extra three-hour stop at Kirkman Creek was added for safety. Wilcox, the acting treasurer on the board of the Yukon River Marathon Paddling Association, says this stop will help limit the hallucinations as they push to the finish line in Dawson City. The number of teams could change as late registrations arrive in the mail and other teams are forced to drop out.
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