The world's smallest desert is in Canada | Hacker News Reader

The world's smallest desert is in Canada

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138 pointswellokthen54 comments

Carcross is cute, it's an hour from the capital city, Whitehorse Yukon. Carcross recently built about 6 or so small buildings, mostly occupied by art shops and one cozy cafe. The new plaza is across from the semi-restored frame of the SS Tutshi, but if steam boats are your thing you'll want to check out the SS Klondike.

It has a historic general store, complete with old trapping equipment. Trapping is still practiced today, but the equipment and licensing is much more humane.

The White Pass & Yukon Route railway also ends in Carcross, as of 2007 they restored that part of the railway. https://wpyr.com/sights-sounds/places/carcross-yukon/

If anyone is considering a trip here, the website and guides at https://yukoninfo.com/ are a good resource.

There's also a small makerspace that is in the process of moving to a brand new space, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukonstruct-makerspace-y...

And lots of guiding places to help you get outdoors, in case you are considering a trip here :) https://www.kanoepeople.com

Also, if you make it that far, don't miss out on Dawson City!

It's an old gold mining boomtown with dirt streets, saloons with swinging doors and dancing girls, and brothels converted into bed & breakfasts. Super cute and feels like the set of a movie, only it's "the real deal" (albeit now mining tourists). Dawson is also where Robert Service wrote much of his work, including The Cremation of Sam McGee.

My wife and I rode through on a motorcycle trip some years back. We immediately altered our itinerary to stay a few days, and I wish we could have stayed longer!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lhoriman/3747251310/in/album-7... https://www.flickr.com/photos/lhoriman/3747272684/in/album-7...

Slightly out of context but I want say that Canadians are the most friendly people I have ever met.

Oh my god. NWT/Yukon, Dawson City, and Nahanni National Park have been on my list for years!

Did you drink the toe?

Drink - the toe?

For those of us thousands of kilometers away, can you explain what strange and probably amazing Canadian tradition this is, please?

An alcoholic drink with the toe of some famous dead person in it.

You don't eat/drink the toe - you give it back after you are done with the drink.

Google "Sourtoe Cocktail" for more info (or maybe don't :)

From what I searched, it seems to be the toe of a random person who donates it. Not quite the same allure but still a cool idea.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sourtoe-cocktail

Toes have been stolen or swallowed (yup) over the years and replacements have been donated. There's now a hefty fine for anyone who wants to swallow the toe.

Thanks for the reply... I googled. Amazing tradition. Not sure I'd like to participate ;)

Where are you at, if you don't mind my asking? I'm in Sitka, and I'm always curious to see people from the far northwest on HN.

I did the Klondike relay a few times in the mid 2000s, and I really miss getting up that way. I hope to do that race again in the next few years, and to spend more time in the Yukon.

What do you do in Sitka? I've thought and still think about moving up to northern BC (Prince Rupert/Terrace) or the Yukon, but I can't square it with the lack of tech work up there...

I've been a high school math and science teacher most of my life, but I've also been a programmer on the side all my life. I few years ago I wrote a Python book that's doing well, so I'm slowly transitioning away from classroom teaching and into more technical work.

There are definitely not many programmers in small towns up here. But I'm not sure how many people are doing remote work, that's really hard to tell. It would be hard to get established in tech up here, but once you've got enough experience to work remote you can figure something out. Travel isn't cheap though, and it does take a bit longer to get most places. But living next to true wilderness is just amazing.

My contact info is in my profile if you've got any more specific questions.

You're speaking my language now. That's the dream right there. However Canada's tech market has me planted in Toronto for now.

There are some increasingly northerly-creeping companies, though. While it may not be the preferred field or quite far enough north, the work of Hinterland Games has struck me as well polished and carries a distinctly Canadian flavour:

http://www.thelongdark.com/

And apparently they're hiring... my girlfriend's mom lives out in Comox which is right down the road... now I'm thinking...

https://hinterlandgames.com/career-opportunities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comox,_British_Columbia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtenay,_British_Columbia

I'm too late to edit:

but it looks like Hinterland Studio has moved to Vancouver. They were located in Cumberland previously which is located in Comox Valley. Damned shame. Maybe they had a hard time convincing talent to move to that area... but it would have been pretty damned near ideal for me!

They have a two year old video extolling the virtues of the area: https://youtu.be/ft_Ar0QDjSc

I'm kind of disappointed they moved

Ugh, what a bummer. For me personally, I'm not young or crazy enough to work in games professionally...but I love the island (especially up-island) and would love to see its tech scene develop - and every little bit of momentum helps, so that's a blow.

There is a decent amount of stuff going in the south island, even up to Nanaimo. Tech is actually Victoria's largest industry! https://www.viatec.ca/

(by the way - it's probably at least a couple years off and might just be a pipe dream, but nevertheless I've been dreaming of some kind of hardware startup either near Nanaimo or Terrace. I took a peek at your website and saw that that might be up your alley...so if that's something you'd like to chat about feel free to drop me a line at unfactorablepolynomial at gmail)

Now all it needs is a legend!

Reminds me of Talakadu (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talakadu), a deserty patch along the Kaveri riverbank, about 130km from Bangalore. It even comes with its own legend in which a queen cursed the ruler of Mysore. The curse:

ತಲಕಾಡು ಮರಳಾಗಿ; ಮಾಲಿಂಗಿ ಮಡುವಾಗಿ, ಮೈಸೂರು ದೊರೆಗೆ ಮಕ್ಕಳಾಗದೆ ಹೋಗಲಿ!

Let Talakadu be filled with sand; Let Malangi turn into a whirlpool; Let the King of Mysore never have kids.

Coincidentally, the Mysore royal family does not have heirs born into the family to this day. For the last several generations, they have adopted an heir - who might beget a kid - but a kid born into the family has not had heirs.

The temples in Talakadu have to be constantly cleared of sand. I remember visiting as a kid and there were whole temples buried underneath the sand. I'm not sure if that charm and mystery still exists, but it certainly was a fascinating place!

It's amazing to me that the article doesn't provide a map, illustrating where Carcross is.

I knew its general location because I operate a website containing over 2000 points of interest in Canada, https://rinkatlas.com. But why not give more of a hint to people who don't know where the Yukon Territory is?

https://www.google.com/maps/@60.1884007,-134.7047237,2982m/d...

Also worth mentioning: Błędów Desert in Poland:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C5%82%C4%99d%C3%B3w_Desert

The Athabasca sand dunes are also visually interesting http://photojourneys.ca/2017/12/31/exploring-saskatchewans-a...

I had no idea this existed! A reason to visit Saskatchewan!

Here's another fun one, and I think created due to human activity:

Cheltenham Badlands, Ontario

https://www.google.com/search?q=Cheltenham+Badlands&client=f...

There's also Osoyos "desert" of a similar nature (that is, more of a sandy dry patch). It's 400 km to the East from Vancouver, in the Okanagan valley with its vineyards, wineries and whatnots. Wineries are quite nice; the desert - not so much :)

https://www.google.com/search?q=osoyos+desert

C'mon, there are also rattlesnakes, coyotes, big-horn sheep, tumbleweed, sagebrush, cactus and even the odd scorpion.

It is an amazing and unique climate in Canada and almost always defies the average foreign tourists' idea of what Canada "is".

About 20km north of Osoyoos is MacIntyre bluff, a shear cliff face formed near the end of the last ice age.

Okanagan lake, over 100km long and 400m deep, is home to a mythical giant serpent-type creature known as Ogopogo.

It is a gorgeous place to visit, especially in the summer, although forest fire season can suck.

Most of Okanogan County, WA also looks like that, where it isn't directly next to a river or irrigated. Directly south of Osoyoos.

While I didnt live up there I lived a bit South in Eastern WA and I think the desert out there is amazing (and Eastern OR). I was hoping to get to osoyos but didn't make it and now live down in California.

Checks out. Source: I lived in Osoyoos for 25 years.

If we're talking "deserts" in the sense that there is a bunch of sand and some dunes, then I'd hazard that the Desert of Maine[0] wins this contest at 600 acres smaller (.16km^2 in total) than the Carcross desert (2.6km^2 in total).

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_of_Maine

Unlike the Carcross, this one receives too much rain to be classified as a semi-arid desert.

My comment was tongue-in-cheek that the Carcross isn't a desert either, and the article claiming it was the "world's smallest desert" was wrong in both size and the erroneous statement that it is a desert.

>The dry climate and strong winds in the 260-hectare area make it feel like a real desert, but the Carcross Desert is actually a series of sand dunes (which technically have too much moisture to be classified as a desert).[0]

[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20090612184355/http://www.canadi...

It's also (albeit unintentionally) man made.

I'll see that and raise you a playground.

There's also a tiny, semi-arid desert in Norway (!) of all places - Kvitsanden (The White Sands) by Røros. (62 degrees 34 minutes North, 11 degrees 22 minutes East).

Semi-arid - annual precipitation at Røros (on a highland plain, far from the sea) is some 550mm or so, but some 150-200mm or so of this comes as snow.

The 'desert' itself is approx. a square kilometer (0.4 square miles) - large enough for desert-like phenomena like shifting dunes to occur, small enough that there aren't (to my knowledge) any wildlife there which you wouldn't also find in the surrounding area.

When visiting New Zealand I was driving through Rangipo "Desert" and it gets 1500-2500mm of rain a year. Just bad soils and volcanic desolation. I live in an area where people grow crops on around 250mm of rain a year. Though a bit of bad land management and drought can turn land to sand dunes pretty fast. We probably have hundreds of smaller deserts throughout the region if semi-arid conditions and sand dunes are the membership requirements. Sorry Canada.

The article does expain how it fits the semi-arid definition as it gets 250-500mm, nowhere near 2500. Snow doesnt count, which is why antarctica is technically a dessert. Sand isnt part of the standard.

I live in a semi-arid climate (BSk) with 260mm average rainfall where they grow cereal crops. We are further to the arid end of the semi-arid classification than the desert in the article though still not technically a desert climate.

We have plants adapted to low rainfall and animals such as reptiles adapted to hot, dry conditions. You can go from crops to sand drifts to scrub and back in metres. I think I could go for a 30 minute drive, find an area of land and call it the world's smallest desert with about as much validity as the claim in the headline. The area in the article is remarkable due to its location but it seems less remarkable when compared with semi-arid areas globally.

I nominate the Perry Sandhills outside Wentworth, NSW, Australia at 0.6 square miles to be the smallest desert because it is semi-arid and has sand dunes and is only less remarkable for not being surrounded by snow.

Snow does count, although I assume it's tracked as water equivalent instead of snowfall depth (10mm of snow is generally equivalent to 1mm of rain). Antarctica gets very little precipitation, particularly on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

I think snow counts, Antarctica's average equivalent precipitation is 160mm a year (6 inches or some such).

:) I’ve visited this place. It’s a beautiful place and some great mountain biking nearby on Montana mountain. Keith is a really cool and showed us some of his work in progress.

Reminds me a bit of glades where I grew up in Missouri: areas where the topsoil is just a thin layer above the bedrock and can't hold much water. This creates small arid ecosystems, complete with prickly pear cactus and tarantulas. https://nature.mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/habita...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Mountain_(Nevada) is fun to visit, but scary to walk around because of all the ATV's flying around.

Similar is the Eureka Dunes in Death Valley. Bonus no mechanized vehicles allowed.

Pink Coral sand dunes are interesting (worth a stop).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Pink_Sand_Dunes_State_Pa...

They call it a "desert" because there are sand dunes, not because it is actually a desert[1]. Receives more rain than the Silicon Valley.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcross_Desert

It's covered in the article. It does fall into the classification of a semi-arid desert.

Huh. Mere presence of sand dunes isn't an indication of any sort of "desertness", at least at this scale. Michigan has several sand dunes, and it isn't even remotely a desert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Lake_State_Park_(Michig... That one is according to Wikipedia over 2000 acres of sand dunes, which is over 3 square miles, which is quite a bit bigger than the Carcross "Desert".

There are places in that park where you can stand and see nothing but sand. Well, sand and lots of dune buggies. But, still.

Presumably a colloquial name, or there's something else to it.

> which is over 3 square miles, which is quite a bit bigger than the Carcross "Desert".

Carcross‘s notability is in being the smallest, not largest.

> or there's something else to it.

Anyway, yes—whether something is a desert is determined by amount of yearly precipitation.

Where did you get the precipitation data for those places, because the wikipedia pages for the two areas show that Carcoss[0] gets a bit less than Palo Alto[1] for example. 11 inches vs 16 inches respectively.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcross_Desert

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto,_California

The wikipedia page for Carcross Desert says 50cm. That's almost 20 in.

It says receiving less than which is not 50cm. Further, semi arid desert is defined as less than 50cm. Really Palo Alto like much of California is semi arid, just look at the native plant life. Check out the map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-arid_climate vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_climate

Same situation with most of our "high desert" here in Oregon, which is probably best described as "steppe" outside of a few small areas like the Alvord desert.

There are some dunes here, too, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Valley_Sand_Dunes

If you haven't been to the Alvord desert you should. It's amazing. Looking up at steens from the playa.

I've only ever made it to the summit of Steens. I want so, so badly to travel around, since we're not even that far away here in Bend, but ... vacation time is limited.

Nice. I wish I lived in Bend! So much amazing country to see out there. The Peter French round barn and diamond craters are also worth a stop if you are in the area.

The coastal dunes are also not especially dry.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Dunes_National_Recrea...

In France there's the Dune of Pilat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_of_Pilat). It's really nice to visit. 110 meters high, right next to the coast. It's just one giant dune though :)

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