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Published: June 16th 2010
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Well, we're now in the Kluane National Park (
it's pronounced "Clue Arnie", in case you were wondering!). And blooming marvelous it is too.
But before we get to that...
Since I last published a blog, we spent a couple of days in the capital of the Yukon, Whitehorse. A surprisingly nice little town given that it's in the middle of nowhere. The town is sort of on two levels. The downtown area is at the bottom of the hill next to the Yukon River. The remainder of the town is on the top of the hill above it. Needless to say that our RV park was on the top of the hill. So we decided to cycle down into town; with a Force 10 gale helping us. Which was all very well, until we needed to get back to the van...!
The city of Whitehorse has spent a bunch of money building a new(-ish) walking trail along the river. So despite the fact that it's 15km long (there and back) we decided that it would be rude not to at least give it a go. We were glad that we did, as we saw some pretty good scenery
Miles Canyon
7.5km walk, south of Whitehorse along the way. We also had the foresight to purchase as large bottle of wine to console ourselves after the 6km cycle ride back up the 1 in 6 hill to the campsite (and a couple of muffins to fortify ourselves before we attempted it!).
The drive west from Whitehorse to Haines Junction wasn't all that exciting. We stopped at a couple of places on the way to do a couple of walks. The first wasn't all that successful - the instructions weren't desparately clear (
well, that's our excuse anyway): but the second was great. Right out in the middle of the Yukon wilderness, we climbed up from the roadside to the "High Country" as it's known, for some fantastic views of the mountains & valleys around us.
Overnight at a cold & misty campsite at Pine Lake just outside the "town" of Haines Junction - the gateway to the Kluane National Park. Monday morning, though, the sunshine at Pine Lake was fantastic. We journeyed west into the park and then turned south, back towards the BC/Yukon border: stopping at Kathleen Lake. We did a very gentle stroll along the lakeshore, before setting off on a hike up
the side of the mountain to "King's Throne" - a kind of natural amphitheatre 1,800 feet up the mountain side. We had some great views back across Kathleen Lake, but it was a tough old climb: in places we were clinging to the mountain side, trying not to look down the sheer gravel face to the tree line below us!
Four hours after we started, we made it back to the van, and headed further south. We stopped off at "Rock Glacier" (
Guess what? It's a glacier, but it's made of rocks!) and then we stopped again to walk the St Elias Lake Trail. A fairly strenuous 7.6km hike up to a lake in the mountain valley. We eventually got to our campsite - the bizarely named Million Dollar Falls - absolutely shattered.
Today we headed back north again. We stopped at a few of the viewing places that we were too tired to appreciate yesterday afternoon, and then stopped again to do the Auriol Trail, just south of Haines Junction. This is a 15km loop through the Spruce Forest, up to the sub-alpine area at the base of three snow-covered mountains. We were somewhat proud that we
managed to do the trail in just over 3.5hrs (given that the guidebook says it takes a minimum of 4hrs to do it), so maybe all this walking is finally having an impact on our general level of fitness.
Too tired to do any more serious hiking, we have headed north again, and are now in the tiny hamlet of Destruction Bay, at the side of Kluane Lake (the largest lake in the Yukon, for all you fact fans!). Tomorrow we're going to head another 120 miles north to Beaver Creek, just shy of the Yukon/Alaska border, before we make our (slow) way back to Whitehorse: and then we're planning to head north again towards Dawson's Creek, which is about 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle. So you can all look forward to our stories of that next week...
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