Mark Waring is no stranger to challenging long walks, but Tombstone Park in the Yukon Territory has more bears, bushwhacking and wild weather than even he knew what to do with. Luckily, he also found a gentler side to this ‘ragged mountain land’
THERE’S A LOT ABOUT Tombstone Territorial Park that is flat out intimidating. Its anglicised name reflects the impression it made on the first Europeans, no doubt catching sight of its foreboding spires on a bad weather day and deciding its massif resembled the headstones of a graveyard, or a place of doomed endeavour at the end of the known world. It still retains that wild, edgy remoteness. Hiking here is a raw and visceral experience, demanding a huge effort to traverse through dense brush, unforgiving talus or spongy mires overlaying permafrost. There’s also the unforgettable fact that it’s home to scores of grizzly bears, swaggeringly confident in their status as the apex predator.
But there’s another side to Tombstone. It’s a place of quiet beauty and reflection, and a landscape of shared experience and human warmth with fellow hikers in one of the most striking mountain ranges that I have ever visited.
BUCKET LIST TRAILS
In August 2023, I made my first visit in a decade to Canada’s Yukon Territory, for an 11-day circuit. Tombstone Territorial Park lies a little south of the Arctic Circle and within the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people (‘People of the River’). It’s 2200 square kilometres of wild and dramatic rivers, forests, tundra and jagged peaks, and it remains largely unspoiled. Despite the raw beauty, it’s relatively accessible for the Yukon, lying just off the 1000km Dempster Highway and only a 90-minute drive from the small, Gold Rush-era town of Dawson City. A single trail system connecting three small managed campsites allows for fast-track access right into the park’s heart and the achingly beautiful tarns of Grizzly, Divide and Talus.
That trail system is a bit of a ‘bucket list’ hike for backpackers across North America. When I first came across the name Tombstone it was in Chris Townsend’s book Walking the Yukon, which describes his epic cross-territory hike. Tombstone was a highlight, and Chris’s description had me aching to go there. When Chris pitched his tent in these mountains, they were still the preserve of the few. As their popularity grew, and further to a land settlement between the Territorial Government and the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, it was agreed to limit the impact of hikers with a permit system in the central mountains. Camping there is limited to the small managed sites at Grizzly, Divide and Talus, where there are ten set pitches only. Away from this central zone, though, Tombstone is yours to camp and wander in at will. As I was to discover for myself, you need to be fit, competent and well-prepared – Tombston
