Whitehorse's Rail Trails

Many dream of the day when the White Pass & Yukon Route tracks through to Carcross can be converted to a multi-use rail trail.  At least let's get the Riverfront Railtrail through downtown built!  Rail trails are abandoned railways that are converted to recreational and active commuter trails.  They are wonderful.

But I realized there are already a number of "rail trails" in Whitehorse already.  Here is a map of the intermittent pieces and a description of each of them: 

1. White Pass & Yukon Route

Two short sections of abandoned rail grade have had the track removed and can be used for biking and walking (shown in yellow on the map)

1. Utah - this is my favorite piece of rail trail. It is a 1.5 km long piece extending south from Miles Canyon Road with great views of Miles Canyon and a convenient connection south to the American Laundry road at MacRae.  It was abandoned in the 1960's because of a landslide as the land moved down towards the Yukon River just upstream of the canyon.  The track was rerouted further west closer to the highway where it is today.  
2. Marwell Spur - the railway was extended from downtown northward to service the building of the refinery in Marwell during the war.  The old railway grade makes a nice path along the river, extending north from Chikoot Way to behind the grader station, where it dead-ends at a fence.  The tracks used to extend a bit further, but that lies on the North 60 Petro property now.  600 m of it are accessible today.
   

2. Macauley Tramway

This is probably the oldest "rail trail" in Whitehorse and is remnants of the horse drawn log-tramway that portaged boats around Miles Canyon and the White Horse Rapids.  Parallel "humps" where the log rails were can be see today bordering the trail.  It remains in two portions (shown in green on the map), with the middle section submerged under Schwatka Lake when the dam was built:

1. South Portion - extending 2.5 km from Canyon City in the south to where it dives under the lake at the north end near the Sckwatka Lake boat launch.  Today it is used as the Red and portions of the Yellow ski trail as part of the Chadburn Lake ski trail network.
2. North Portion - extending 2.1 km from the dam to almost the Robert Campbell bridge in Riverdale (behind FH Collins).  Much of this section has been paved over for the Millennium Trail, but at the northern end, in the forest behind the school, the straight alignment with twin rail-humps can still be found
   

3. Hepburn Tramway

This is the second gold rush era tramway, but built on the west side of the river.  Not many people know about this trail, although the Yukon River Trail Marathon route follows the north end of it as a "goat trail" cut into the hillside above Miles Canyon and Schwatka Lake.  The route is well documented by Peter Long in his publication  Forgotten Trails, walking the Hepburn Tramway  (and thanks to Peter for providing the mapping data.)

 

About 4.2 km of this tramway can be followed (shown on red on the map), although only the the southern part can be mountain biked, where the rest is mostly a footpath and does require some scrabbling at points.   

4. Copper Mines Branch

This is the longest "rail trail" in Whitehorse, and is an abandoned 18 km long branch line (shown in orange on the map) that was built to service the Whitehorse Copper Belt.  During the 1960's era mining of the copper belt, most of the rail grade was re-built as the Copper Haul Road.  Knowing this was once a rail grade explains its gentle grades and broad curves.  

 

The Copper Mines Branch has been well documented recently in Eric Johnson's 2017 book "Copper Mines Branch:  White Pass Rails to the Whitehorse Copper Belt" and on Tim Green's website: https://then.timmit.ca/projects/cmbranch/index.shtml.

 

1. South portion - 750 m piece of trail in the Whitehorse Copper subdivision.  The start of the branch in occupied by private property, but you can get on the public portion at Esker Dr and follow it till it runs into the fence of an industrial property.  There is some interpretative signage is found here.  
   
2. Middle-south portion - another 500 m segment of the rail grade can be found north of the industrial properties off of Collins Lane.  It is a bit hard to get to, but interesting.  Sadly, it is a dead end to the north where the bridges crossing the lakes and swamps are gone.  But fun to find the old bridge abutments
3. North portion - 12.3 km of "rail trail", now mostly the Copper Haul Road extending from the Whitehorse Copper mine north to reach almost to the former Peublo Mine (now Icy Waters fish farm) on the Fish Lake Road.  Most of this route is a road, but there are two short sections of the old railway grade that can be found along the way. 

 Here are my pictures from running the length of the Copper Branch with by friend Brent a couple of years ago:  

Enjoy!