Sailer Takes Yukon Open Gold Again

by Dan Davidson

In the seemingly endless contest between the Millar family and the Sailer family, first place in the annual Yukon Goldpanning Championships has once again passed to Art Sailer, who also came second in the Seniors category and saw his Ace Placers team win the Corporate Challenge.

Second place in the Yukon Open went to Noreen Sailer, who also placed second last year.

Noreen and Art Sailer and David Millar vied for top spot once again. Photo by Dan Davidson

David Millar, who had taken the top spot for two years running, placed third this year. Significantly, Lorraine, his wife, came in fourth.

Top prize in the Yukon Open is the right to represent the Yukon at the World Goldpanning Championships, which will be held later in the summer in Slovakia. Art will receive $2500 to help in his travel expenses. Noreen, on the other hand, won the right to compete in the Canadian Goldpanning Championships in Edmonton and $1500 in expense money.

To win, Art found all eight of the gold flakes hidden in his bucket of paydirt in a time of 4 minutes and 45 seconds, beating seven other contestants in the race against the clock. Millar was faster, but missed a flake, incurring a five minute penalty.In the less prestigious Klondike Open, Manfred Hansen placed first, followed by locals Henry Reinick and Ralph Nordling in a field of thirteen.

There were 11 teams in the Senior category, and Germany’s Herbert Keman captured first place, while countryman Paul Bilderbeck came third.

Bilderbeck also placed third in the Cheechako category for beginners, while his wife, Shirley came second and Bol Roberts place first. There were twelve first time panners seeking 5 golden flakes.

There were four teams of four in the Corporate challenge. Ace Placers found 14 of the 16 flakes to take the gold while a European team (plus Ralph Nordling) came second, Millar’s Goldbottom teams third and family team called the Young Whippers made a very distant fourth.

There weren’t a lot of the younger generation in this year’s event. The Youth Eleven and Under competition had ten contestants, with Justin and Andrea Millar placing first and third, and Ryan Quist in the middle. They sought five flakes.

The Youth 12 and Over category was sparser, with just three entries. In their search for six flakes Alistair Hardy came first, Dawson’s Ted Hunter second and Darcy Kandt third.

The smoke of the early morning had cleared away for the afternoon event, and it was quite hot at the panning venue; good for sales of pop and ice cream.

The venue had been rearranged this year so that the audience could see more of the panners than their behinds, and the prizes this year were little gold pans rather than the certificates or yore.

The audience was healthy and more contestants were still there at the end of the afternoon to pick up their prizes.

Dawson is Open for Business and Ready for Anything

by Dan Davidson

It seems people just can’t say enough times that Dawson City remains alive and is welcoming visitors. This was a major theme during the public presentation on the fire situation at the first meeting of the Trustee’s Advisory Council on July 6.

“Despite what a lot of people may think ... Dawson City is open for business,” said Trustee Ray Hayes as the meeting opened, but he went on to

While many tourists were scared away by the negative press related to the fires,, those who were here took in the sights as usual. Photo by Dan Davidson.

set aside a large portion of the posted agenda in order to introduce various members of the fire suppression team working on the blazes south of the town in order to dispel some of the rumours that are circulating and get some real information before the public.

"The municipality of Dawson is working in full cooperation with the firefighters," Hayes said, “as well as with the Emergency Measures Organization, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, the Dept. of Tourism, Social Services, Highways and Public Works. And of course we’re trying to communicate everything we can to the people of Dawson.”

Ken Colbert, the Head of Wildfire Management for YTG, told the gallery that the Yukon is in a very odd position right now, with 5/7 of the active fires burning in the country located right here. There are normally an average of 140 fires in the territory, and we’ve already topped 150 with weeks left to go in the fire season.

The fire suppression budget is likely to be exceeded by a factor of three or more before that season is over.

He himself is located in Dawson right now because it is the area being most effected.

Matt Meyer, Incident Commander for the Goldfields Fire Complex, as the four main fires (and other smaller ones) around Dawson have been termed, leads an oversight strategic planning group brought in from Ontario. He said that the “ramp up” to getting his operation going here in Dawson has been particularly effective and that he credits a lot of that the cooperation of the local authorities and the people.

He described the operation’s priorities as managing safety issues for the public and the firefighters, minimizing social disruption and giving structural protection to values where possible.

Of the four fires in the Dawson area, three, the French Gulch, Dominion and Dempster blazes did present the possibility of advancing on the town and cutting off the highways. Major effort has been expended to work with the wind, terrain and types of fuel to steer these fires into areas where they would burn down to the Yukon River, stay of one side of a highway, and move into previously burned areas where their fuel sources would make for less dynamic blazes.

So far, Meyers said, most of their efforts have been successful, but he noted that “There is a ton of fire today and it’s very unpredictable. It’s a very volatile situation.”

Volatility is a certain thing. The massive Haystack fire which prompted the Goldfields evacuation order began as 6 smaller fire starts which combined. The Dempster blaze was a lightning strike obscured by smoke. it was half a hectare when it was spotted, forty when the attack planes hit it and 3,000 in a short time thereafter. If it had been possible to get more resources airborne that day, it might not have grown so fast, but Whitehorse was smoked in.

Dave Milne, a YTG fire behavior specialist, spoke about the trends of weather and their effect on the fires. The region is cooler now by six to ten degrees that it was a week and a half ago. That is helping. Dense smoke both hurts and helps, since it makes it hard to action the fires, but it does reduce their temperature.

Tuesday was a clear air day in Dawson, after three days of increasingly oppressive smoke. Milne said residents can expect things to see-saw back and forth in this fashion over the next several weeks.

People should avoid getting complacent on clear days, he said. The danger is still there.

On the other hand, Ken Colbert reassured the group.

“We don’t see any evacuation alert (in town) in the foreseeable future.”

John Mitchell, the City of Dawson’s council appointed Emergency Measures Coordinator, spoke of the town’s EMO plan, which usually has to deal with floods rather than fires. The group has been holding morning meeting of more than a dozen agencies all this week, adapting the action plan to this situation and getting an inventory of resources and options in place.

“There’s certainly minimal direct threat given the current conditions,” Mitchell said, but he added that the town and its citizens would be foolhardy not to prepare for any eventuality.

A similar meeting was held Tuesday evening at the Rock Creek Fire Hall for the 300 or so residents of Bear Creek, Rock Creek and Henderson’s Corner.