Escape to Kluane

I had to be back in Whitehorse for my book club meeting and a telephone conference on Tuesday, July 11, but had a few days to kill before that.

A few people at the hostel and hot springs had said that Kluane National Park was  "must see." When I came through here last fall, the park was closed due to it being so late in the season, so all I got to see was the surrounding mountains and Kluane Lake, which is not even in the park. It was one of the places where I briefly thought about putting the kayak in the water, but it was windy and cold, and the water in the kayak had frozen. So I broke up the ice, dumped it out of the kayak, and put the boat back up on the car.

So I figured I was entitled to a re-run.

Near my campsite, just outside Kluane National Park.

As usual, I had a minimal plan: hit the visitor center in Haines Junction to collect my Yukon passport stamps and talk with the staff about what to do, maybe search for a couple of letterboxes, go for some hikes while dodging raindrops.

A couple pages from my Yukon Gold Explorer's passport

The passport is a passport-sized booklet of interesting sites to visit in the Yukon Territory. When you go to one of the sites, you get your passport stamped. It's kind of like letterboxing, but a little bit easier, since addresses are given, not general clues.

And it is encouraging me to visit some places that I might not otherwise go. When you get 10 stamps, you can enter a drawing for 1 troy ounce of gold; if you get 20 stamps, you can enter a drawing for 2 troy ounces. I have 18 stamps so far, so will probably get to 20.

The hardest one to get is the one for Old Crow, since the only way to get there is to fly in by bush plane! One of the staff members I talked to said that she knew of a couple guys who were determined to get EVERY SINGLE STAMP, so chartered a plane to Old Crow, just to get the stamp. I'm not that hardcore!

Since it was the weekend, and I knew the popularity of the park, I did ask about camping in the local campgrounds. Camping here is not a problem. Perhaps it's because it's off of the Alaska Highway, or the Klondike Highway, and so is a little more out of the way for the big motorhomes that clog those highways in the summer. On Monday morning, I visited two campgrounds: one on Dazadeash Lake (a Yukon "government" camp) and the other at Kathleen Lake (Kluane NP); the first was totally empty and the other was moderately full, but with ample space. I am so happy that these all continue to be first-come, first-served, with no reservations required. Many of the parks in BC are feeling population pressure, and now require reservations.

I actually ended up spending the night by a river (don't seem to be able to find the name, but it's not the Kathleen River). It was just off the road, and, except for the rushing of the water, it was quiet and private with just a few annoying mosquitoes — absolutely perfect. Fireweed was blooming on the islands in the braided stream, and the mists wafted in front of the mountains, giving tantalizing views of the massive peaks upstream. It was a quiet and peaceful evening.

Kathleen Lake and Kings Throne

Aster

Fireweed: love the dark stamens on this flower.

I headed to Kathleen Lake the next morning, to lowering skies. Glacier fed from the Icefield Ranges upstream, the lakes here are pretty big, and there are fair warnings that winds can arise suddenly, making waves that can reach 1.5m high. While they were nowhere near that rough on this day, they were significant. 

Kathleen Lake is home to Kokanee Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka). These are salmon that live their entire lives in fresh water lakes. 

Like normal sockeye salmon, they used to migrate to the ocean as young fish and then return to freshwater to spawn, however, at some point during the population's history, their migration route was blocked, by either an ice dam or a landslide. 

The fish managed to survive without migrating, and spawn in the lake itself, although their preferred spawning grounds are in the upper parts of the lake. 

The population of Kokanee salmon in Kathleen Lake is somewhat precarious. There seemed to be a stable number of 3,000 fish in 1976 when counts were started, but by 2008 there were only **20** fish counted. The lake was closed to sports fishing, and since then the number of fish has rebounded. This is good news, but they don't really understand why the population is so variable, so the lake remains closed to fishing while continuing studies are conducted. 

— More on the Kokanee salmon

Kathleen Lake is a favorite stop for people (for good reason, as it's very pretty). I went for a meander along the lakeshore, and for the first quarter mile I didn't worry about bears at all since I was accompanied by a harried father with two screaming boys aged probably 8 and 10 years. Once the boys left, the walk was lovely, with lots of wildflowers.

The Chairs

Parks Canada has a program where they have placed red Adirondack chairs in prime locations in each of the national parks. I was a little surprised to find Kluane's chairs along Kathleen Lake! They'd hidden them at a nice view point that wasn't even "accessible." I paused to admire the view, but didn't tarry, as it was pretty chilly with the wind blowing!

Chillin' in the special chairs by the shores of Kathleen Lake

Shrubby cinquefoil

Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis).
Not sure what the pink discoloration was caused by. 

Resuming my walk, it was pleasant to hear the crashing of the waves on the shoreline, and think about the glaciers that had carved this valley during multiple glaciations in the relatively recent past.

The "ice age" seems very close here. There are so many reminders of glaciation and extreme events. Ice advances, erodes mountains, and dams rivers. When it melts, it leaves behind scraped earth, glacial till and loess, and sometimes these changes are remarkable.

There is an exceptional example from this area:

The Kaskawulsh Glacier fed two rivers. The first was the Slims River. It empties into Kluane Lake, thence to the Kluane River, which flows into the Yukon and north to the Bering Sea. The second river, the Kaskawulsh River, flows south into the Alsek River, which goes into the Pacific Ocean in BC.

Scientists had been studying the Slims River system for several years, but when they came in the spring of 2016 to resume their studies, they were astonished to find that the water in the river had virtually disappeared, leaving a streambed filled with gloppy clay.

What had happened was that upstream the glacier had receded spectacularly, and the gradient at the toe of the glacier was such that the Kaskawulsh River captured ALL of the meltwater, leaving the Slims River dry of meltwater.

Although there have been examples of stream piracy in the geological record, this is the first case that has been documented in recent history.

Prickly rose 

It is a cautionary tale, since the disappearance of a river is traumatic for the animals that live along it. That would include us humans.
— Excellent article on this (with great photos)

Before leaving, I walked the other direction along the waterfront for about a mile. I felt reasonably safe walking along the shoreline, since it was fairly open.

I did think about hiking up to King's Throne, but the weather report was promising rain, and I was feeling wimpy. The view is supposed to be spectacular in good weather, but if it's socked in, it's a lot of hiking to see clouds.

So I passed.

I stopped at several other spots along the the highway, which goes to Haines, Alaska.

I need to come back here.

Haines Junction

One side of the Haines Junction "muffin"

Haines Junction is a fun little town, and yes, I would like to come back here. There's the Village Bakery to check out, plus several recommended restaurants.

There was also a letterbox to find, which used the "muffin" as one of its clues.

The "muffin" is a fiberglass(?) 3D sculpture that kind of looks like a muffin or cupcake. There's a wood structure at the bottom, and the crown represents a mountain with near life-size Yukon critters emanating from it. The animals are pretty lifelike, if you squint.

I did find the letterbox, and I did a wee bit of shopping at the First Nations store, and then it was time to head back to Whitehorse for my next adventure in a Yukon B&B!