Kluane Lake,
Yukon
Tuesday, August 26th, 1997
Headed west
on the Alcan
The sun is high in the sky by the time we extract ourselves from deep inside the sleeping bags at 9:30. Even after all that sleep, we somehow still feel groggy as we straighten up and get moving. It is rather cold out now, and for the first time Sean relents and changes out of shorts and into long pants.
This is the Yukon. I walk down to the water and watch a tiny little frog hopping along the bank, alternately trying to flee and hide. He is well camouflaged among the rocky, sandy shoreline.
Sean drives on towards Whitehorse. It is cold, gray, and alternately misting and downright raining. The truck comes out a little cleaner as we approach the outskirts of Whitehorse. We are drawn in by billboards for Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and Dairy Queen. We explore the small city a bit, then eat a greasy buffet lunch of pizza and root beer. I watch the local traffic go by outside the window behind Sean. Many large working trucks- some with bullbars and winches. Almost all dirty. We notice that almost every vehicle has an electrical plug hanging out of the front grill- probably a block heater. It must really be something up here during the winter.
We are back on the road by 1:30. The sun finally burns through the clouds and it stops raining as we approach Champagne. I stop for a couple quick pictures east of Haines Junction. The terrain got very flat yesterday afternoon, and is just beginning to get mountainous again. By the time we reach Haines Junction we are again losing our breath at every turn (photo above). The peaks here are different- more spread out but taller and more desolate, mostly red or grey shale above the tree line. I irritate Sean by stopping repeatedly to get pictures. Somehow we simply keep on driving without fatigue. It still amazes me that Sean and I somehow hooked up for these two trips. We are making good time on pretty decent roads, though they don't really measure up to the way they were described in my guide book. I wouldn't call them excellent.
Mile after mile of rolling hills under towering rock peaks. The underbrush isn't as lush here as in British Columbia. It's mostly sandy soil with scraggly pine bushes, though occasionally we pass patches of wispy red flowers or puffy white seedpods that look like short dandelions.
Around a sweeping bend we come across Kluane Lake- a sprawling, intense aqua-colored lake lapping against the base of a reddish-grey mountain range. A long, narrow causeway crosses the striking body of water on the south side, and a steep mountain face juts abruptly up out of the water. It climbs so high and so fast that we can't see the top of it through the windshield as we approach it. The road curves around the lake for a while, and I am ready to stop driving and climb up one of the peaks but Sean doesn't seem interested. I won't attempt to describe the majesty of this lake, in the hopes that the photographs will come out.
Kluane Lake,
Yukon
I drive out the tank at Brower creek, just a few miles shy of the border with Alaska. It begins to rain like crazy shortly before, and the truck gets a much-needed bath. Reminds me of a similar rain storm in Belize.
Sean takes
us up to the border station, and after two minutes of questions, we drive
right in. The rain alternately stops and drenches us as we get accostumed
to miles and mph and American highway signs and such. Sean stops
at a gas station and we get a couple fishing licenses. Sean a $30
14-day and myself a $15 3-day license that is accidentally punched 14-day.
The scenery here seems not so spectacular as in the Yukon, though of course
everything is relative.
I program more GPS points and write a bit in my journal as we travel on. The sun is still high in the sky when we get to Tok and take an unspectacular but geographically significant left towards Anchorage on Hwy 1. The sun is just as bright and piercing as yesterday evening's and we are glad we aren't continuing west towards Fairbanks and certain blindness.
The truck is doing exceptionaly well considering what we are putting it through. The transmission noises continue to concern me but otherwise she is very solid. A growling sound heard under heavy acceleration was found to be a loose wing nut on the air cleaner cover. Otherwise the burnt-out headlight is the only mechanical problem thus far. "Pedro Nanook" rolls on.
We start feeling hungry about 20 miles north of Mentasta Lake. We decide to drive down to the lake and maybe fish while eating dinner. The seven mile gravel road turns out to be terrible and Sean swerves from side to side as we crash along at only 15 mph. I feel bad energy in this place, and dark rainclouds sit low between the mountains to the south. We pass slowly through a Native American Indian village. There is nothing particularly indian about this depressed collection of small houses. We roll past two young men dressed in contemporary mall garb- baggy pants and bright, loose-fitting shirts. Derelict cars and trucks frame the front yards of most of the one-story shacks. A near-vacant apartment complex is the largest structure, and it is the only building of any size along the potholed road besides a brand-new government building that appears abandoned.
Passing the stripped-down hulk of a late-model american car strewn atop a dirt burm by the side of the road, I suddenly feel fear. The possibility that poor Pedro will end up like that enters my mind. We are truly in the middle of nowhere, and there is no one who will come looking for us here if we end up missing.
After about 20 bone-shaking minutes we arrive at a wide stream that flows under a small wooden bridge and into the shallow lake. We pull over to the right into a grassy area with a picnic table and step out into the frigid air. It is close to 9:00 but there is a stable, pale blue light still hanging in the valleys. I immediately put on my heavy down-filled coat and walk down to the stream, which flows to my left under the wood-plank bridge and into Mentasta Lake.
The stream is about 20 feet wide at the bend where I am standing, and about 1-2 feet deep most of the way across. The air smells of fish, and the clearing is littered with trash. The water burbles as I approach the bank. The stream almost writhes as seemingly random disturbances disrupt the relatively smooth-running water. Slowly my sight pierces the reflection of the blue sky and dark mountains, and in a spine-tingling realization, I see that the stream is alive with huge salmon.
There are no rocks anywhere near the surface, and the water runs slowly and smoothly between the banks. It is the fish that cause the entire width of the stream to bubble and splash. The salmon are so thick that their dorsal fins constantly break the surface as they jockey for position on the sandy bottom. There are too many to count: two-foot-long sockeye salmon in flaming red spawning colors. Every two or three feet along the low bank, a dead and rotting salmon carcass lies in the short grass. Sean explains that they flip themselves out of the water trying to get upstream, and can't find their way back in. In the shallows near the bank, sickly white salmon float dead in the eddy pockets. But the overall impression is of the hundreds of gleaming-red salmon spawning in the clear, cold water. I turn to run for the camera, feeling that this glorious sight can't possibly last long. Sean stops me, warning that the salmon can see me just as I see them, and not to move too quickly. This proves to be not much of a concern, as they appear blinded by their instinct and completely oblivious to us. The camera's light meter won't register in this late evening light, so I can't get a picture of the stream. I study the sharp, spiney teeth of the beached fish, and decide to keep clear of them in the future.
As magnificent as this spectacle of nature is, I feel very negative energy in this place. As Sean giggles with delight and begins rigging up a rod, I walk around slowly with my hands in my pockets. I can't forget the Native American's dilapidated houses just up the hill, or see past the trash left near the water's edge by previous fishermen. I feel somehow responsible for the fate of the dried-out salmon on the bank, and feel that this place would be even more glorious if man had never laid his destructive eye upon it.
I begin to straighten up the truck and prepare dinner. My cold hands move slowly through the frigid air as I extract two cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew from deep inside the truck. I begin to ask Sean how much he is going to want, and he replies by asking me to bring him the camera and the pliers from his tackle box. The pliers are soon used to wrench a hook out of the pectoral fin of the 20-inch Salmon he has snagged. Unfortunately the camera fails to capture the moment in the quickly-fading light. The fish goes back in the water, and we eat beef stew from a can.
We pack up and I drive us out of there. At 11:00 the sky is still a dark electric blue between the puffy clouds. I feel much better gripping the thick steering wheel between my fingers and we careen over the terrible highway at up to 60 mph. These roads are much worse than in Canada, where even the gravel roads were fairly well graded. This is more like what we were on in Mexico around the Gulf coast. Poor preparation of the road bed during construction causes heaving of the surface- throwing the truck from side to side and up and down like a roller coaster. The Canadians build wonderful roads in this climate- why can't we?
The tank is almost dry at midnight, and I pull into a well-lit but closed service station to fuel up from the roof-rack mounted tanks. As I climb to retrieve a 5-gallon steel can, I hear Sean mumble: "Holy shit, dude..."
I turn to see a 150 lb half-horse, half-husky lurking out of the darkness towards us. I step down from my perch on the rear tire. He is easily 3-1/2 feet tall, but he's wagging his tail, so I approach him very slowly. He's only curious, and likes being petted. Sean is soon feeding him Oreo cookies while I refuel the truck.
We are back on the road quickly, and as is usually the case after stopping to gas up from the roof, we shortly come to an open gas station. All tanks are full when we pull away into the darkness again. We are tired and don't want to miss too much by driving at night, so we decide to look for a good place to spend the night. A few miles down the road we come to a sign for "Moose Creek." After 10 minutes spent bouncing around on dirt roads off of the "highway", we end up in a grassy gravel clearing next to another traveler sleeping in the back of a full-size Ford with a camper shell.
We quickly fall asleep in the frigid darkness. It is after 1:00am. We have made it to just west of Glennallen, Alaska.