When it touched my lips it was rubbery, and I knew it was done.
I let the dead toe fall back away into the glass as a cloud of relief and revulsion washed over me. Having just downed a drink containing a severed human toe - thankfully, leaving the toe in the glass - I’d completed Dawson City’s most infamous tourist activity: the Sourtoe Challenge at the Downtown Hotel.
I’d heard a lot about the Sourtoe Challenge before travelling to Dawson, chiefly because my sister had been working at the bar there. The Downtown had also attracted much publicity recently due to an incident where a patron attempting the Challenge ‘accidentally’ swallowed the toe whole. So, while I don’t consider beverages containing body parts to be normal, I was becoming adjusted to the idea.
Or, at least, that’s what I thought.
The Downtown had enacted a penalty of $500 to be applied for a case of toe consumption. I thought that perhaps the toe could still be recovered after such an event, but would probably not be well-suited for use in cocktails from that point. By the time I arrived at the Downtown in late October last year the fine had been increased to $2,500. I feel that this decision was justified. Many people have not considered the difficulties involved with acquiring a severed human toe (fans of ‘The Big Lebowski’ might be notable exceptions). Whilst most have ten options within arm’s reach, the majority are not interested in parting with any of them. And frankly, the mere existence of a ‘backup toe’ had left me somewhat disquieted.
One toe was enough – but… toes?
Where do they come from?
After inquiring several times about the source of the toe involved, I was provided two words: “frostbite happens”. That was enough for me. But the Challenge itself didn’t involve the ‘why’ or ‘where’ of the toe – the toe was the toe.
Sitting on the bar, waiting.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d envisioned it of course, but as a toe that one might see in a magazine, or on a pamphlet in a doctor’s surgery. Perhaps I was trying to quell my anxiety by not concentrating on the less savory aspects – the oddly shaped amputation point, the protruding toe-nail… most of all it was the colour that perturbed me. It was a deep, blackened red - the colour of Mordor. It was searing into my psyche - what was this abomination that had been served? I assumed the monstrous shade was a side effect of whatever curing process is used for preserving dead human flesh. But even now as I write this I can feel a long-buried kernel of nausea taking root. Don’t think – just do it, I told myself.
I don’t really remember what spirit I chose as the base of the cocktail but I’m pretty sure it was Yukon Jack. Once a glass of that was presented, the Sourtoe Challenge was recited by the bartender. The toe just sat there staring at me. Suddenly, into the glass it went and the time had come. Perhaps I made a mistake in thinking it would be easy – as the Yukon Jack washed down my throat I realised something was wrong.
The toe hadn’t touched my lips yet! The Challenge would only be complete once the toe had made contact with my face, and it was being denied me by an inanimate piece of human flesh holding fast to the inside of the glass. I knew - it was taunting me. A nervous shake and I felt a small, light and nasty object fall slide down onto my lips. I put the glass down, swallowed, received a certificate and commenced trying to move on with my life.
But the thing with the Sourtoe Cocktail, and to an extent Dawson itself, is that it is still stuck in my head in rather vivid detail.
I suspect many other people who visit Dawson encounter this same stickiness. Dawson City (or simply ‘Dawson’ as the locals refer to it) is a town of around 1500 people at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike rivers in Canada, about 300 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. It’s an interesting place, populated by interesting people, and in winter it is basically very cold.
Those who have been to Yukon will remember it. On the Klondike Highway, to the southern border with Alaska and then north to Dawson, I caught a glimpse of an impossibly large tract of pristine wilderness. Deep blue lakes nestled surrounded by forest, filling much of everything between the water’s edge and the feet of steep, snow-capped mountains.
In Dawson itself the temperature tended to hover around -6 to -10 throughout the day as well. 2013 was descending into winter and the town was getting colder and whiter every day. Forests were painted in dark green and greys, but with bright green mosses and red berries still visible under foot where snow hadn’t managed to fall. Every day there was more ice in the river, more cloud in the sky, more scattered snowflakes floating into the street. Over the course of the next few weeks the river would grind to a halt, snow would pile up, and the residents would spend as much of their time indoors as possible.
When my sister returned home after her first stint in Dawson, she said things that made me very curious. -40 degrees Celsius in winter she told me. MINUS FORTY. Rumours were that wolves on the edge of town would howl to pet dogs, coax them out into the woods after nightfall, and eat them for dinner. Locals were known to tip bartenders with flecks of gold. And then of course there was this business with the aforementioned toe. Meanwhile, the aurora borealis visits the crisp night sky with unpredictable regularity, dancing in languid shades of green while people go about their night-time business.
I was told there is a huge range of contrast to be witnessed during a year in Dawson City. Temperatures rise in the 30s during summer and the landscape blooms into colour. Many more people visit the town during the summer months including many American tourists leaving Alaska via the Top of the World Highway. There aren’t too many places further north in Canada than Dawson, but to this traveller it was not so much a last bastion of civilisation, but felt more like an expeditionary force that had somehow achieved permanence. Dawson and its inhabitants do not seem at odds with their environment, but are well adjusted to the extremes that it offers.
Perhaps it is only fitting that tucked away in a corner of this quietly intriguing place lurks one of the most horrendous menu items in history. I can say now though that I can handle a drink with a toe in it, but if I return and get offered a cocktail including a human armpit or pancreas, I will be thinking long and hard about my choices.
Andrew Wright is a writer, VHS collector and film enthusiast.
