2004/07 Yukon trip - Trek to the Arctic - Atlin Lake |
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Most of the day was gone, but we kept to plan and followed the highway to Jake’s Corner, and then headed south on a gravel road to Atlin, BC, past Little Atlin Lake, which is enormous, but smaller than Atlin Lake. We came to a beautiful overlook, which looked to be a perfect camping spot, but there was a sign erected by the Taku River Tlingit that read “We welcome you to our territory and request that you proceed with respect”. A really nice way of saying “No parking, no camping”.
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Tagish and Klondike Highways (Atlin Lake, Atlin, Carcross, White Pass) |
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Atlin is a sleepy town, part Indian and part Retiree, on a gorgeous big blue lake with a backdrop of mountains. The town’s prize possession is the Tarahne, a partially restored riverboat that they hope to use for lake tours someday. We were looking for a place to camp, so we continued past Atlin on an old logging road to Warm Bay, another Forest Service campground, and parked a few feet from Atlin Lake with the waves lapping and a family of loons fishing on our doorstep.
Friday 23rd July
I went for an early run and discovered the warm spring pool nearby. The water was warm and fizzy, no sulfur smell but thick green algae around the edges, so it didn’t look too inviting. I came back to the campsite and swam for a short while off our beach on Warm Bay, and found that the namers had overstated things. It wasn’t the coldest swim I’ve ever had but it was definitely not warm!
Our plan for the day was to drive to Carcross and then south to Skagway in Alaska, but it was beautiful, clear and sunny day, and the lake looked very inviting, so we replanned. We would get the kayak down from the roof and go out on the lake for a couple of hours. It ended up with us kayaking just about all day. In the shallows the lake is a faint sapphire colour, rather like the sea in Australia, but the deeper water is a strong turquoise, even just looking down from the boat. It’s all those tiny grains of glacial flour reflecting the sky.
When we got around the first point we could see rows of mountains all along the lake’s southern
shore, stretching to the border with Alaska. The highest mountains were snow-covered and seemed to float on the massive Llewellyn Glacier. We didn’t want to risk crossing the lake as it’s 90 miles long and prone to sudden windstorms, but we went a few miles south and found a shallow lagoon, where Sandie could look for agates and I could float in the warm lagoon and watch the scenery. The wind came up and we had a rolling trip back.
Later we visited the warm pool and found that it’s like standing in a vat of Alka-Seltzer, (if you’ve ever done that.) 
The springs are quite extensive, and there are many patches where the ground is crusty, probably with calcium carbonate, and trees don’t grow, but we only found the one pool that was warm.
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Atlin's warm pool (6.14) |
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Sunsets last forever here. We didn’t have to turn the lights on inside until 11pm.
Saturday 24th July
We had only taken the waterproof camera along on our kayaking trip and I wanted some better quality pictures of the rows of mountains we’d seen on the trip, so I had the bright idea of bushwhacking out to the point. After all, much of the hillside was bare of trees, so it shouldn’t be too hard, right? I found out that the reason there were no trees was that the hill was full of springs, so it was really a giant waterfall with patches of grass and shrubs and crusty goop. It took me nearly an hour to cross it, and then I still had the forest part to contend with, crawling over logs and under branches. After all that I did get the pictures I wanted and the light was perfect. On the way back I found a trail that went up over the back of the hill, and that seemed preferable to my previous route. The trail took me to an Indian encampment and through one of the buildings: shacks, sheds, tents, old cars, even a tepee frame. Luckily, nobody seemed to be at home.
We drove back through Atlin, and we stopped to talk to an admirer of the Tiger. He said that quite a few of Atlin’s summer residents come from Juneau, Alaska’s capital. They come to Atlin to escape the summer rain. Juneau is only just the other side of the Llewellyn Glacier, but the only way to get from there to Atlin is a ferry to Skagway, and a drive through Alaska, BC, and the Yukon. We were now doing that drive in reverse, headed for Skagway.