This season’s final RV camping weekend at Kluane Lake
A last-minute decision took Cathy and I back out to Kluane Lake this past weekend, for our final RV camping weekend of this season. With night-time temperatures nearing -15°C (+5°F) later this week, it’s time to get my water system winterization done.
We arrived at our favourite campground, Congdon Creek, at 8:20 on Friday night. That was 5 minutes after official sunset, but in the deep shadow of the Kluane mountains, it had been quite dark for a while. We were very pleased to find that our favourite lakeshore campsite, #8, was empty, and we were soon set up there.
The first photo was shot at 07:47 on Saturday morning, 9 minutes before official sunrise. A strong cold wind unfortunately made spending time on the beach not very pleasant.
Our view towards the mountains at 08:17. This photo was processed as an HDR image to bring out the detail in both the lighted and shadowed areas.
The actual sunrise was much more dramatic than the dawn had been.
Tucker is a guy who loves to be cozy – wrap him up in a fleece blanket and he’ll be there all day 🙂
To get out of the worst of the wind, we drove back to Bella’s favourite beach (she hates rocks), and the Fall colours were good there. The poor visibility was due to sand being blown up on the Slims River Flats.
We continued our highway bear and sheep hunting by driving up the access road to the Slims River West Trail. There were no bears, and no Dall sheep down low, but we could see about 60 scattered across the slopes of Sheep Mountain.
There’s not much left of Horseshoe Bay anymore. I thought that the water level of Kluane Lake couldn’t go any lower because the outlet – the Kluane River – would control it. As it does seem to keep dropping slightly, though, my hypothesis is that the Kluane River is cutting a deeper channel.
There’s a lot of work going on at the campground, most notably enlarging the parking area at the electrified (bear-resistant) tenting area, and adding 2 more lakeshore campsites at the west end, between sites #8 and 9. The new sites are both excellent.
Getting ready for a special dinner to finish the season off – a huge steak-for-two from the barbecue, a Caeser salad, and a bottle of very nice Cabernet Franc that we picked up at Synchromesh Winery in Okanagan Falls during our 5-day stay in Penticton this past May.
Bella knows how to clean off a steak bone properly! 🙂
The moon rise was beautiful on Saturday night, though a bit of cloud obscured a perfect view. This was 2 days before the full moon, known as the Harvest Moon.
Even though the wind had mostly died, the girls seemed to be none too anxious to get Sunday started.
The beach just keeps getting bigger and bigger! The recent drop in the water level has uncovered a lengthy strip of sand along the water, which Bella which quickly found.
Bella in one of her happy places. She rarely swims, but loves splashing around in the water.
I caught a few shots of a bald eagle patrolling the beach.
A classic Kluane Fall scene along our beach walk, with brilliant colours along a meadow, and snow in the high country.
We had a campfire going all day Sunday. It felt almost like summer had returned in the afternoon, although the weather report says that it only hit 14.1°C.
One of the very few RVs still on the road passes by in the distance. Most of those RVs are rentals being driven by Germans, but they rarely look like they’re having fun, huddled around huge campfires.
I had Bella and Tucker out on the beach a few times, going down to a large sandy area so they could play. In the next photo, Tucker is literally “flat out” running from Bella.
Doesn’t he look pleased with himself? Tucker is such a character!
Bella alerted me to a family of 6 Red-breasted mergansers (Mergus serrator), and we sat down and waited for them to get closer. The kids are so good when I ask them to be patient and quiet at times like this.
My new 100-400mm Canon lens really makes birdwatching in particular a lot more fun.
A telephoto look at the high country above the campground. At 5:00, we packed up and started for home. It was a short weekend, but it had been wonderful.
At Sheep Mountain, there were about 20 Dall sheep close to the road. To get a better spot to park to watch them, I turned around at the interpretive centre. We had to wait for 3 semis to go by with armoured personnel carriers headed for Alaska – there have been dozens going by in the past week or so.
Some idiot with plates I didn’t recognize pulled off the highway and drove up a side road right into the middle of the herd of sheep. The sheep may have been headed for the grass on the flats, but that ended that plan, and they started back up the mountain.
The sheep with my long lens.
There were more sheep fairly low above the highway at the same spot.
One young sheep had us worried that he was getting himself into a spot he couldn’t get out of. In the next photo, he’s at the upper centre.
One final shot, looking across Slims River Flats to Fish Heart Island.
And that’s it for our RV Season 2018. I may use it for short hiking outings until snow shuts it down for certain, but my project for today is winterizing it.
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