'The World's Smallest Desert' Is In A Very Unexpected North American Destination

Have you ever seen white sand dunes set against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains? How about pine trees rising up out of the desert? If you want to feel the crunch of freshly fallen snow giving way to soft sand under your boots, then you need to travel to Carcross Desert in Yukon, Canada, and experience this real, remarkable, and totally unexpected place for yourself.

You're not entirely wrong if you're having a hard time picturing a desert in western Canada. While this place is often dubbed "the world's smallest desert," it actually gets too much rain on a yearly basis to officially be considered a desert. That doesn't stop it from looking like one, though, and the opportunity to see two completely contrasting landscapes simultaneously makes this spot well worth the journey.

Carcross Desert measures just a single square mile, but travelers from all around the globe make their way to this tiny pocket of the world in order to cross the shifting sands for themselves. It is a popular destination for hikers and sandboarders — just don't expect to be trekking on hard-packed trails. This place might not technically be a desert, but that doesn't make walking on the soft sand any easier.

To reach Carcross Desert, you'll have fly into Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport in Yukon's capital, Whitehorse, and then drive about 45 minutes along Klondike Highway and YT-2 S. There will be plenty of parking available when you get to the site, so you don't have to worry about scrambling for somewhere to put your rental car.

If you'd like to see the views without focusing on the road, however, you might want to consider starting your journey in Skagway and then taking the scenic railway through the Alaskan and Yukon wilderness, which happens to stop in the town of Carcross. Fortunately, "the world's smallest desert" is completely free to visit, so you might be able to justify splurging on the train trip.

Once you arrive, consider trekking to Carcross Desert Viewpoint. There are plenty of park trails in North America that are only for experienced hikers, but this is far from one of them. It isn't a marked hike (because of the shifting sands), but just a general route to the best view of the area from the highest point. It'll only take you about an hour to get there and back. From the top, you can stand in the sand and look out at lush green forest landscapes beyond the desert's border.