RETURN TO "YUKON HISTORICAL SIGHTINGS"
Drivers Near Kluane Lake see Giant Object
February, 1968
From "Strange Sights in Yukon Sky" by John Magor, Canadian UFO Report, Vol 1, No. 1
A month after the experience of Tommy Banks and Errol Smythe (See January 5, 1968) another sighting of an egg-shaped object was made in much different circumstances by three witnesses on the Alaska highway north of Whitehorse.
Two of the observers were Jim Jack, foreman of the highway surface crew at Destruction Bay on Kluane Lake, and fellow employee Tom Campbell, together in a truck at the time. The third was Nick Barnett, a petroleum truck operator working out of Whitehorse who was on the highway about 60 miles north of the other two. The sighting of each party was made at about 8: 30 a.m.
Jim Jack gave us this account:
"Tom was driving and we had just started out to work when he noticed something funny in the sky and pointed it out to me. We could both see it from the cab of the truck. It looked like an oval cloud at first but it stuck out for two reasons -- it was brick red against the grayish-white other clouds and it was travelling east to west, almost dead against the wind."
The morning was a normal winter's one for that part of the country, with a steady wind of about 20 knots and temperature Between 20 and 30 degrees below zero. The clouds were scattered, which accentuated the object as it passed across patches of blue.
"We were travelling south when we saw it," Jim continued. "It was ahead of us to our left, coming across the lake. Judging by the mountains, it must have been about 5,000 feet up. We watched it for two or three minutes until it went behind the side of that mountain." Me pointed to a slope about 15 miles west of the lake.
By rough estimate the distance travelled in that time was 20 miles, giving the object a speed up to 600 m.p.h. Asked about its size, Jim formed an oval with his hands which he judged would cover it at the distance observed. This would make it many times larger than a jet aircraft at the same distance.
"It flew with one end leading but the ends and edges didn't look quite as solid as the center part," Jim added. "It seemed to have sort of a mist around it. Neither of us had seen anything like it before or since."
Nick Barnett, being alone in his truck following far behind, had been reluctant to mention his sighting to anyone until he met his two friends on the road the following day and the subject came up. Although the object had looked black not red to Nick, possibly because an angle in the road caused him to face into the sun, his description matched the others' almost exactly.
However, Nick had this to add:
"It looked to me as if the thing was flying at an angle of about 45 degrees, with the rear end lower than the front. And just before I lost sight of it, it put on a terrific burst of speed."
The clear description given by these three men suggests that what they saw was a "mother" ship, the type from which smaller objects have occasionally been seen to emanate. Typical features were the elongated shape, the large size, the angle of flight and the vaporous outline. Possibly there is something about Kluane Lake and the St. Elias Mountains bordering it that excites the interest of the big ones, as witness the following experience of Kenneth Green and at least three other observers a year earlier (See March 20, 1967).