Yukon cold spell

IF CARS COULD SKATE, I am certain our SUV would have done Lutz jumps and half-Axels all the way up the Klondike Highway. It’s a storied route, well travelled in the summertime by nature enthusiasts, scanning the roadside for bears foraging for berries or horsetail. In the months when the sunshine finally warms the soil, the ditches are painted a bright purple with Fireweed, the Yukon’s territorial flower.

In the dead of winter, not so much.

It’s a six-hour journey of snow and ice, ice and snow. We met few other vehicles and passed through a...