Town and Mountain Hotel
Town and Mountain Hotel is a practical 3-star stay in Whitehorse, Yukon — good value for exploring the area and its landmarks like Vuntut National Park.
The surrounding Whitehorse district is one of the most convenient parts of Yukon to stay in, with restaurants, cafés and transport links close by.
Key facts
What’s included
Around Whitehorse
The Yukon booking trap most first-time visitors fall into
The mistake is treating the Dempster Highway, Tombstone or Inuvik as a day trip from Dawson City. Tombstone Interpretive Centre is 115 km up the Dempster from the Klondike Highway junction — about 1.5 hours each way on gravel — and there is no fuel between the junction and Eagle Plains, 371 km in. People book one night in Dawson, plan to "see the Dempster", and either burn the day driving or run into tyre trouble with no cell service.
The other under-booked window is shoulder aurora in late August and early September, when nights are dark enough to see the lights but hotels are still discounting from summer peak and the highways to Kluane and Tombstone are open and dry. Old Crow, above the Arctic Circle, is the one place people wrongly skip on principle — it is only reachable by Air North charter and Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation approval matters for visits, so it is not a walk-up destination, but it is the Yukon community most travellers regret not planning for.
Where to stay in the Yukon: picking a base
Most first visits are built around Whitehorse, because the airport, the Alaska Highway and the Klondike Highway all meet there. Downtown Whitehorse puts you walking distance from the SS Klondike, the MacBride Museum and Main Street restaurants, and is where mid-range rates sit highest — expect to pay 30–40% more than the outskirts in July. Riverdale, across the Yukon River, and Porter Creek, 7 km north, are quieter residential districts with cheaper motels and B&Bs, though you will want a vehicle from either.
Outside the capital, Dawson City is the second obvious base for the Klondike goldfields and the Dempster Highway turnoff, and runs about the same price as downtown Whitehorse in summer. Haines Junction is the gateway to Kluane National Park; Carcross and Tagish suit lake stays an hour south of Whitehorse; Watson Lake, Teslin and Carmacks are highway stops rather than destinations; and Beaver Creek, Destruction Bay, Burwash Landing, Mayo, Keno City, Faro, Ross River, Pelly Crossing and Old Crow are for travellers with a specific reason — fly-in, road trip, or work — and thin, often single-property markets.
Best time to visit the Yukon, month by month
The two peak windows are mid-June to late August for the midnight sun and hiking, and late August to mid-March for aurora viewing, with a lull in between. June through August is when Whitehorse hotels sell out around the Yukon Gold Panning Championships and Dawson City fills for Dawson City Music Festival (third weekend of July) and Discovery Days (17 August); rack rates in these weeks can be 50–80% above shoulder pricing.
September brings low light and low prices — often the best value month, with fewer bugs and the Dempster larches turning gold around Tombstone. October and November are the cheapest months of the year in Whitehorse, then rates climb again from late December as aurora tour groups arrive from Asia, holding firm through the Yukon Quest sled dog race in February and the Available Light Film Festival. April and May are quiet and cold, with breakup on the Yukon River usually in early May, and many highway lodges between Haines Junction and Beaver Creek stay closed until mid-May.