Whitehorse sits on the Yukon River in a broad valley under bare hills, and with some twenty-three thousand people it holds around three quarters of the territory's population, which gives you a sense of how empty the rest of it is. It is also where everything you need is available, fuel, repairs, food and beds, before the long road west. The Alaska Highway runs straight through town, and the town sits at about Mile 918 of that famous road, counted from Dawson Creek in British Columbia.
The name comes from the White Horse Rapids that once ran through Miles Canyon, just upriver of town, where the foaming water reminded gold-rushers of a horse's mane. In 1898, thousands of prospectors heading for the Klondike built boats at Bennett Lake and ran those rapids, and many were wrecked, until a tramway and then a dam tamed the river. A few minutes from the centre you can walk across a suspension bridge above the green canyon. The big sternwheeler SS Klondike, which carried goods down river to Dawson, sits restored beside the water, and the town's fish ladder, among the longest wooden ones in the world, lets Chinook salmon climb past the dam in July and August.
For the Kluane Scenic Drive, Whitehorse is the start: about 160 kilometres of Alaska Highway west to Haines Junction, where the St Elias Mountains and the Kluane ice fields rise. The road is mostly open, rolling and well surfaced, but frost heaves, patched asphalt and roadworks appear every summer, and it is a long, steady ride more than a technical one. Wildlife includes moose and the occasional bear near the highway.
Summer light is the unique thing: in June the sun barely sets, so a late departure is perfectly practical. Weather can still turn cold and wet at any time, and in winter this is a place of deep cold and aurora, not riding. Fill the tank, buy water and snacks, and expect long gaps between services.