None of this is instantly obvious when you land in Whitehorse, however. In fact, what’s interesting is how little the territorial capital seems to have changed down the years. All but a few thousand of Yukon’s people live here. But what they call “the city” still feels like a sleepy frontier settlement. Fly fishermen perform languid casts in the stretch of river that runs through the city centre, every second car is a farm-sized pick-up and just outside town, a handful of floatplanes bob gently against homemade jetties.

“There are really only three major moments in Yukon’s history that involve people,” Jessica Ruffen explains. “The Pleistocene era, when the ancestors of the First Nations walked across the land bridge connecting Asia with Alaska; the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s, when hopeful prospectors ‘stampeded’ up to Dawson City; and then the building of the Alaska highway by American GIs in the 1940s.” In between, this land was left largely alone. 

“From the air, the empty A’ay Chu riverbed is now a scar in the landscape”

Driving the Alaska Highway features on many American and Canadian bucket lists, at least if the number of rented RVs is anything to go by. Tourism numbers in Yukon remain small, but they’re increasing steadily, with the bulk of the growth fuelled by this main artery. It’s certainly prime road trip country – the scenery is stunning, and the highway is blissfully empty. The only time we encounter anything that could conceivably be called traffic is when two other cars pull up alongside us, to watch a black bear and her three cubs gambolling by the side of the road. 

When we were plotting our walking routes, we knew we’d be confined to ‘the front range’. But it isn’t until we jump into a tiny Cessna, flown by Kluane Glacier Tours that we realise just how little of the park we’ve seen.

“It’s an area the size of Switzerland,” says Stuart, one of Glacier Tours’ pilots. As we bump down the airstrip and up into the air we get the most incredible views – not just back over the paths we’ve been hiking, but out over the Kluane ice-field itself.

“In 2017, a river that had existed for thousands of years disappeared almost literally overnight.”

Glance at a map and you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was just an enormous expanse of white, punctuated by the occasional rocky peak. From the windows of a small plane however, the contours, crevasses, and even the character of the ice becomes apparent. Glaciers are usually thought of as inert, static, immobile. But the swirling cracks and violent-looking ruptures in the ice tell a different story. This is a landscape that’s powerfully alive, and constantly on the move.

Recently, however, the speed of these movements has become frightening. In 2017, a river that had existed for thousands of years disappeared in the space of just four days.

In a striking example of what climate scientists refer to as a “tipping point”, the Kaskawulsh glacier receded so far that the meltwater feeding the A’ay Chu river began flowing down a different valley. From the air, the empty riverbed is a now drying, scabbing, scar in the landscape. It’s on the ground however that the real ravages of this change become apparent. 

We spend our last evening in Yukon as guests of Dr. Henry Penn and his colleagues, whose Arctic Institute research station sits on a lake that, until 2017, was fed by the A’ay Chu. Dr. Matt Ayre, a historical climatologist and keen outdoorsman, drives with us out to the dry riverbed. “They have to send a snow plough down this section of highway in summer now, because of the that dust gets blown onto the road,” he says. “At one point the dust storm was so intense, the plough drove off the side of the road.”

“Basically a huge flash flood called – it’s an Icelandic term – a jökulhlaup”

Back at the station, Henry talks me through some of the research projects his scientists have conducted into the long-term effects. The dust now coats plants, contaminating the entire food chain. The water level of the lake is sinking, and will probably eventually settle at “around 12 feet below where it once was”, he says, and these changes will affect the entire ecosystem, including “fish populations, salmon spawning areas,” and potentially much more.

It’s not just animals who will suffer either. On the northern side of the lake sits Burwash Landing, home to the Kluane First Nation, one of the indigenous ethnic groups who’ve lived on these lands for centuries. “All of their boat launches, all of the access points, have been lost,” says Henry.

The agreement means indigenous people have greater rights over the park, better access to Parks Canada jobs, and fairer representation on key governing bodies. But it also means that the knowledge they’ve passed down through generations – about fish and game breeding patterns, climatic conditions, and how to manage this land sustainably – is now being utilised. This is a goldmine for scientists like Professor Moorman. As he explains, numerical data about the climate is useful, but that only goes back around 50 years. The First Nations’ oral history spans centuries.

The tragic fact is, of course, that while the people who live are acutely aware of the dangers they face, the fate of their lakes, forests and glaciers isn’t really in their hands. What happens to the Yukon will be decided by policies put in place in far-away capitals, primarily by people that locals here haven’t voted for.

If the world sticks to its commitments under the Paris Agreement, there’s a chance that Yukon will remain a byword for pristine wilderness, as it was when Calvin and Hobbes struck out here in the 1980s. But even if the worst is avoided, this landscape has already been radically altered, and more change is undoubtedly coming. Given what’s happened so far, it’s hard to be optimistic. As Brian Moorman says, “when people ask if you’re a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty kind of guy, I say I’m a scientist: The glass is completely full – half full of water, and half full of air.” 

Tristan’s trip was supported by Travel Yukon.

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