My paddling partner, Ernie La Prairie and I wanted to see the gold rush trail of 1897. So we paddled from Whitehorse to Dawson in the Yukon Territory, 460 miles with a 7-mile-an-hour current! What wild territory it seemed, even today, this arctic wilderness, full of moose, grizzlies, and wolves that howled in the moonlight. We paddled 52 miles a day. One day we paddled into the night until we hit a sandbar, making it an 82-mile marathon.