Best places to see the Northern Lights in Yukon, ranked
After 3 winters chasing aurora across the territory, here are the 7 spots that actually deliver.
The clear winner: Lake Laberge & the Takhini valley
Thirty minutes north of Whitehorse, Lake Laberge and the surrounding Takhini valley get my top vote. Skies are dark, the horizon is wide open across the ice, and you can be back in a Whitehorse hotel by 2am. Most aurora tour operators charge $120-$160 per person and park at pull-outs off the North Klondike Highway. If you have a rental car with winter tires, drive it yourself and save the cash — just watch for moose after dark.
Dawson City and the Dempster: darker, wilder, colder
Dawson City sits under the auroral oval and delivers longer, more overhead displays than Whitehorse. Drive 30km up the Dempster Highway to Tombstone territorial park viewpoints and you get zero light pollution. The catch: January nights routinely hit minus 40, flights from Whitehorse cost around $300 return on Air North, and most of Dawson shuts down between October and April. Worth it for the truly obsessed.
Overrated: staying downtown Whitehorse
Downtown Whitehorse works for a single lazy sighting through a hotel window, but streetlights along Second Avenue wash out anything faint. If your only night is here, at least drive up to the Grey Mountain lookout or the Yukon Wildlife Preserve road — both under 20 minutes and dramatically darker skies.
Hotels for this trip
Plan your days here
What hotels in Yukon actually cost
In Whitehorse, expect CAD 95-140 a night from November through April at mid-range downtown properties like the Stop In Family Hotel, River View Hotel or Skky Hotel near the airport. From mid-June to late August the same rooms run CAD 220-310, and anything under CAD 180 in July books out fast. Yukon Quest week in early February and Adaka Cultural Festival in late June both spike downtown rates. The Coast High Country Inn and Edgewater sit at the top of the range, around CAD 260-340 in peak.
Dawson City is roughly 15 percent cheaper than Whitehorse in summer (CAD 180-260 at the Downtown Hotel, Aurora Inn or Bombay Peggy's) and much cheaper in winter, when several properties close entirely and the ones that stay open sit around CAD 90-120. Haines Junction runs CAD 140-200 year-round. Add 5 percent GST to all quoted rates; there is no provincial sales tax in Yukon, which keeps things a little simpler than BC or Alberta.
Getting around Yukon and when to go
A rental vehicle is non-negotiable outside Whitehorse. Distances are large and honest: Whitehorse to Dawson is 533 km on the Klondike Highway, roughly 6 hours with fuel stops at Carmacks and Pelly Crossing. Whitehorse to Haines Junction is 158 km, about 1 hour 45 minutes on the Alaska Highway. The Dempster Highway to Inuvik is 736 km of unpaved gravel from the junction near Dawson and requires two spare tires. Husky Bus offers a Whitehorse-Dawson run in summer for about CAD 149 one way if you truly cannot drive.
Best months are late February to mid-March for aurora with tolerable cold (minus 15 to minus 25), and September for autumn colours on the Tombstone tundra with far fewer people than July. Peak summer (late June to mid-August) has 20 hours of daylight and the highest prices. November and early December are the quietest and cheapest, but many Dawson businesses shut for the season. Check road conditions on 511yukon.ca before any drive north of Whitehorse between October and April.