Five days at Kluane Lake: grizzlies, history, and beach fun
I got home from our 62-day wander around BC on June 26th, and on the 28th, was on the road again. I had come home a few days early so that Cathy could join us for an extra-long Canada Day (July 1st) weekend out an our favourite campground, Congdon Creek on Kluane Lake.
Cathy took the Tracker to work that day, and after she got off work, we met at a rest area at Km 1436 of the Alaska Highway, just west of Whitehorse. I hooked the Tracker up to the motorhome there, and by 5:00 pm, we were on our way. Just after 6:00, we stopped at the Otter Falls Cutoff lodge at Km 1546, fed the kids dinner and then went in to the cafe and had a leisurely dinner ourselves.
As we neared the campground right a couple of minutes before 9:00 pm, we saw a grizzly – an older boar – along the shore of Kluane Lake at Km 1663. That put the weekend off to a great start – seeing a grizzly is always a very special experience for us.
He was very focussed on eating a very specific light yellow flower, and paid little attention to us.
We spent half an hour with the bear, and then continued on.
Just a couple of hundred meters/yards from the Congdon Creek Campground entrance at Km 1666, more grizzlies! This was amazing.
There was very litte traffic on the highway at 9:30, but everybody stopped to watch this family. A semi-trailer even stopped and sat in the traffic lane for a few minutes while the driver took photos from the passenger window.
After about 10 minutes, the family came right up onto the shoulder of the highway. The cubs were really funny, standing up, and playing, as well as getting the business of having dinner taken care of.
We stayed with the family until they wandered off into the forest after about 20 minutes, and normal traffic resumed on the Alaska Highway.
We prefer to set up in lakefront campsites, but knew that they would all be taken by the time we arrived. They were, and we set up in site #28 up in the forest (there are a total of 39 sites at Congdon Creek Campground). The next morning, though, I took the Tracker down to the lakeshore, as as soon as the camper left site #8, I parked the Tracker on the site and then walked back and drove the motorhome down. Have a toad can be very handy! The Yukon family camped next to us in #30 was also watching for a lakeshore site, and one of the kids had come down on his bike to watch for an opening. While I got the first site to open, they soon got #6. The man actually came over and good-naturedly congratulated me on my method of getting the first opening 🙂
The big event for me for our first Kluane Lake day, Thursday, June 29th, was an Alaska Highway 75th Anniversary celebration hosted by Parks Canada at Soldiers Summit. The party was scheduled to start at 12:30, but I went over about an hour early.
I was really pleased to see new interpretive panels in the parking lot…
…and even a very good new brochure, “Plants of Soldier’s Summit and Thach&aunlaut;l Dh&aunlaut;l (Sheep Mountain)”.
Although there was a lot going on in the trail parking lot, I expected that the actual ceremony would be done up at the site where the opening ceremony actually took place on November 20, 1942. The 50th Anniversary celebrations were done up there on November 20, 1992, but it was very cold! Anyway, I began my visit by walking up to that site. All of the interpretive panels along the trail have been replaced. Some, like the one in the next photo, have audio recordings of interviews.
To go along with the brochure, several plants now have signs identifying them, in 3 languages plus the scientific (Latin) name.
There are still some very nice places to sit and enjoy the broad views over Kluane Lake and the new Alaska Highway.
This new panel includes a map showing the location of the 1943 road, the bridges that were built in 1943, 1955, 1956, and 2010, and the extent of the new shoreline since the retreat of the Kaskawulsh Glacier dramatically reduced the amount of water flowing from the Slims River into Kluane Lake. This was the first time I’d seen a name put to what used to be an island at Slims River Flats – it’s called Fish Heart Island (Lutsiïaut;).
High above the 1942 highway opening site, the are even a couple of the Parks Canada Red Chairs. The Red Chairs are a program to encourage people to stop and enjoy a few particularly fine locations across Canada.
Walking back down the 1942 road to join the party beside the new highway.
By 1:00, the food tent was very busy. I was there early and had already filled up on stew and bannock and cookies.
To bring a bit of 1942 life to the crowd, Fawn Fritzen was singing period songs, with Andrea McColeman on piano.
I love hearing Fawn singing these old songs. It’s hard to believe that music so beautiful was being produced during some of the most horrible days of the last century.
There were, of course, speeches, but all were kept short. Our Member of Parliament, Larry Bagnell, is almost always fun to listen to in any case, and he was clearly enjoying this celebration.
At 2:00, the speeches were over, things had slowed down at the food tent, and most people were walking up the trail to the summit to hear more highway stories. I headed back to the campground to join my family.
We had an enjoyable day at our campsite and on the beach, then after dinner, went out on a grizzly hunt. We hadn’t got very far before meeting this fellow, who had some large patches of fur missing. We didn’t say with him very long.
We had no plans on Friday – it was a full day of relaxing at the campsite, playing on the beach, and going on grizzly hunts (we saw one more grizzly between the campground and Destruction Bay). Bella has started to be bothered by the rocks on the beach in front of the campground.
She much prefers the fine gravels and sand of the beach further down the lake. Tucker just likes any beach that he can run on, and really perks up when that word is spoken 🙂
We drove over to Destruction Bay to see how badly the new lower lake level has hurt the marina there. It has completely ruined it to the point that the docks have even been removed. It doesn’t seem to me that digging it out would be that big a job if there was any will to do it. In 1942 it would have only taken a few hours to fix the problem…
I really wanted to get the kayak out, but it was too windy at the campground, so we drove over to the south end of the lake, past Slims River Flats. I stopped at the Slims River Bridge to get a few photos.
The new, much smaller, Slims River, looking up the Slims River Valley into Kluane National Park.
Conditions were perfect at the large pullout at Km 1642. I launched the kayak, got Tucker on my lap, and with a lifejacket on Bella, she has lots of fun swimming after us. She loves fairly shallow water, but doesn’t like swimming until we put her lifejacket on.
It was an absolutely perfect Kluane Lake afternoon.
Back at campsite #8 at Congdon Creek Campground for a steak barbecue.
The weather on Canada Day, July 1st, was cloudy and cool. At about 1:00, we decided to dive to Haines Junction to see what was going on celebration-wise. I stopped at the Slims River East trailhead to read the notices about the entire Slims River Valley being closed to hikers due to a problem grizzly. The fine for violating that closure is $25,000.
A slope above Christmas Creek definitely provided a Kodak moment or two.
We arrived at Haines Junction just as a heavy rain was shutting down the festivities and people were scrambling to get sound equipment and fabric chairs into the Convention Centre. We stayed for a few minutes, then went over to Frosty’s for burgers and ice cream. Bella and Tucker love soft ice cream cones! 🙂
The rain followed us back to Congdon Creek, but then about 9:00 pm the skies cleared, so we headed out on another grizzly hunt. We met one grizzly about halfway to Destruction Bay, but he was pretty grumpy and didn’t want us there, so we quickly left. The next photo was shot at 10:01 pm in The Land of the Midnight Sun.
A couple of minutes later, I took a couple of photos of the grumpy grizzly from a distance that wouldn’t bother him.
On our dog walk the next morning, we saw a campsite that had been trashed by some local pigs. Park attendants might not be around for several hours, so I went back and cleaned it up. I just don’t understand that sort of disrespect in a place like this.
On our last full day at Kluane Lake, I wanted to go for a long walk on the Slims River Flats. When the dogs and I got there, though, the wind was screaming. I decided to see if the far side was any quieter. The dust at the Slims River Bridge didn’t look promising.
It was bit better, and I decided to head out across the flats and see what it was like. Within about 10 minutes, the wind quit. This is Bella and Tucker’s favourite place to play!
And mud – what awesome areas of velvet-soft mud to play in! The deeper the mud, the more Bella likes it 🙂
I walked and the kids played until I thought that Bella must be exhausted, then started back towards the car.
The patterns of the mud offer some really interesting photography. Sometimes tiny blades of grass, or dog paw-prints, add to the interest.
The only animal prints I saw on the flats were these ones. I couldn’t identify it positively, but I expect that it was a caribou.
One final shot, with a very muddy Bella. We walked up to a distance spot with clear water and a fine gravel beach, and all of us got cleaned up.
A very strong wind returned shortly after we got back to the campground, so it was a quiet evening. Monday was raining and dreary, and we headed home, arriving at about 4 pm. Now, I’m just watching for some good weather to return to head out for a few days camping and hiking at the White Pass or Haines Summit. I also have some healing to do – while cutting kindling to get a campfire started on Saturday evening, I cut the tip of my thumb off with the axe. I bandaged it up and we carried on, but went to Emergency on Monday night to have a doctor look at it – he said it looked good. It didn’t hit the bone, but it’s going to look odd for the rest of my life. sigh (sorry, no photo of that 🙂 )
Our final count of grizzlies for the 5 days was 9 encounters, with 8 different bears. That’s by the far the most either of us has ever seen except in Denali National Park, where I saw 13 grizzlies on one incredible day a few years ago.
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