A 9-day mental health break at Kluane Lake: Part 2/2
Monday, September 6th, was our 5th day away from home, our 4th full day at Congdon Creek Campground.
I started the day just before 10:00 by taking Tucker with me for a drive to photograph mountains and whatever in the gorgeous sunshine. Our first stop was at the Slim’s River Bridge on the Alaska Highway.
The Slim’s River, now a fraction of the size it was before 2016 when the Kaskawulsh Glacier retreated far enough that its meltwaters found a new channel into the Kaskawulsh River rather than flowing into the Slim’s.
My favourite little cove on Kluane Lake, though I’ve never climbed down to it.
A “rock glacier” slowly advancing down the slope above the highway.
It turned out to be a short outing. A few minutes after I got back to the campground, I was surprised to see 3 U.S. Army Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters roar by, 2 fairly high but this one quite low.
Just before noon, I took Tucker for a hike at Bock’s Creek, which flows under the Alaska Highway at Km 1680.1, a ten-minute drive west of the campground. Bella doesn’t like being left behind, but she has tender feet and can’t deal with this much gravel 🙁
The trail goes along the top of flood control berms that are regularly rebuilt when they’re damaged by flash floods.
My trail buddy, my shadow.
This was as far as I went up the trail. That’s much too enclosed for a single hiker in grizzly country.
Back at the creek, I met a couple from Ontario who were following me. I suggested that we could go farther up safely by staying on the creek bed. We reached this point at 1:30 then decided this was far enough and headed back to our vehicles.
We hiked a total of 6.4 km at Bock’s Creek, in exactly 2 hours.
At 2:35 I was almost back to the campground when a car parked at Congdon Creek alerted me to a grizzly who was playing in the water just upstream from the highway.
The bear walked further up the creek and then laid down in the narrow channel that he just fit in 🙂
At about 4:00, Cathy and the dogs and I went out grizzly hunting and were quickly rewarded with a bear a few hundred meters from the one I had seen two hours before (it could have been the same bear).
The car ahead left and I moved up, well off the traffic lane of the highway.
Three minutes after we arrived, the bear moved off into the brush and disappeared from sight.
While we were in the RV that evening, Bella apparently decided that the seat I had at the dinette looked really comfortable, so took it as soon as I got up 🙂
A group of 5 RVs that had been rented by people from Ontario were camped around us. I had told them about the grizzly a few hundred meters away. I said it as a warning, but 4 of them went of in search of him – on foot! They found him while walking through the bush (one of the 4 people had refused to go into the bush), he growled a warning, and one member of the group got a blurry photo. The guy who told us about this adventure said he knew it was a stupid thing to do, but…
We went for another bear-hunt drive that evening. We didn’t find a bear, but I did get a couple of photos in the beautiful light.
By 6:45 our drive had taken us to Destruction Bay, and back east to Sheep Mountain.
On the way back to the campground, I drove up to the trailhead to Williscroft Canyon to see if Tucker would be able to join me on a hike there.
The first photo was shot on Tuesday, September 7th, at 03:56. This would be the first of 4 mornings photographing the aurora borealis and the Milky Way, and I’ve created a separate post for those 4 outings – see “Four mornings of aurora borealis at Kluane Lake” (with 30 photos).
The next photo, looking up Klane Lake from the beach in front of our campsite, was shot at a more reasonable hour – 11:00. This day was as fine as Kluane gets – stunningly beautiful.
At 1:00 we were back at the head of the lake on the pups’ favourite beach.
For the past 31 years, I’ve wondered what was down a road that leaves the Alaska Highway at Km 1633.7, just west of Boutillier Summit. On September 7th we drove 6.3 km of it, and I know enough about it now to plan a further exploration, probably on the e-bike. I’ve created a separate post for that drive – see “Driving a lengthy section of the original Alaska Highway” (with 14 photos).
I invite you to join me for a couple of minutes of calm at my evening campfire.
The next photo of the colourful morning light was shot from our RV on Wednesday, September 8th at 07:40.
At about 10:30 we went for a fairly long walk down the beach to the mouth of Congdon Creek.
There is lots of sand and fine gravel there, so the dogs are much happier.
Before the lake level dropped in 2016, we would have to climb up the bank to get around the fallen willow in the next photo, during high water periods. The drop in the level of the lake is quite incredible. It’s causing problems for some people – notably those wanting to use boat launches – but the huge beaches are great.
Tucker might have saved my life when we went to Williscroft Canyon. We started hiking at noon, and when we passed by some days-old grizzly scat he paid no attention even when I pointed it out to him. We got to a bushy area where a game trail comes down from the high cliff (just ahead in the photo) and he went NUTS! Growling and an odd bark and darting around looking at specific places. I trust my little bear dog completely, and we left. He may be little, but he is an awesome Adventure Dog 🙂
Kluane has endless options for great places to go, so I took Tucker to some safer places, including this rocky little peninsula I visit fairly often.
We did a long walk at Tucker’s favourite beach, turning around at this marshy spot.
Thursday, September 9th was a quiet day, just relaxing and enjoying this magnificent place. At 3:00 I was on the beach with Cathy and Tucker in front of our campsite. Bella was behind the camera, in the shade of a willow.
From the spot seen above, Cathy spotted a herd of wild wood bison on a hill across the lake. Cultus Lake is immediately to the left of that hill. I had never seen bison in that area, nor even heard of other people seeing them. Pretty cool.
We had decided to stay as long as the weather was good. Very strong winds arrived that evening, signalling the end of our sunshine. The next photo was shot in a screaming wind a few hundred meters up the lake at 6:00.
We left the campground and headed home just after noon on Friday. One of the things that determines how long we can stay out is the capacity of the various tanks in our motorhome. At the end of our 9 days, this is how they looked – we probably could have been out for another 2-3 days even though we hadn’t been at all careful with our water.
We stopped for great burgers at the 1016 Pub in Haines Junction, and got home at about 7 pm. Cathy and I agree that this was probably our best staycation ever – what a place Kluane is 🙂
About The Author
