With a decent night’s sleep behind us, we awoke this morning to the unexpected voices of two lovely female park rangers who were in the campsite area conducting some surveying as part of an impact study on the surrounding area. After some conversation, we found out that there had been no Grizzly sightings in the area for the past two years. Sad to hear, but somewhat comforting at the same time.
We ran our intended day hike plan by one of the rangers – a plan that was met by some rather off-putting laughter. As it turns out, we would have ended up being completely stuck on the top of a ridge without any safe option for getting down. One of the rangers instead suggested that we hike over “Fox Pass” on the other side of the range, and down into the picturesque “Twin Lakes”. This would allow us to blaze a rarely trodden trail, and be able to spend some of the day at a pretty spectacular turquoise lake.
Setting off on the climb up from Grizzly Lake, we caught a glimpse of a wolverine on the way up through the pass, and snapped a bunch of pics of some curious Hoary Marmots along the way.
Instead of taking a milder route down into the valley destination, we opted to hike to the very top of the range and headed along a ridge as far as we could safely go before descending down to the lake. Doing so afforded us views of a fantastic cave and some amazing vantage points of the surrounding landscape.
We had to have our wits about us during the descent, as the slope leading to the lake was loose slate. Rock slides were numerous, and had we not proceeded in a fanned out line, anyone who had gone on ahead down the slope probably would have been hurt.
Upon arrival at the bottom of the valley, we set down on the edge of the larger lake, ditched our shoes and soaked our feet in the cool, clear glacial waters for a spell. We relaxed for around 90 minutes, had lunch and contemplated our route back to the tents. Surprisingly, we made the decision to return the same way we came down. The crazy incline, coupled with the soaring heat and a poor drinking water management decision made it really tough going, but we got there in the end – a roughly 8 hour round trip and a pretty solid day hike.
Somehow we gathered the strength to prepare a serving of “Annie’s Organic Pasta and Cheese” for dinner… then we zonked big time!
To check out the images from today and the past few days on this Yukon adventure, click on the gallery link below.
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