Willow Fringed Reflections
2024-09-08, Day 2
Morning sunlight streams across the Burwash Uplands and creates a striking reflection of Mount Hoge (9,800 ft; 2,987 m) in a small tarn along the Donjek Route, Kluane First Nation, Yukon.
As it crosses the Burwash Uplands, the Route follows an old mining road that looks as if it was created using a bulldozer to push the soil on either side of the right-of-way up into a raised road bed that is some 2-4 feet above the surrounding tundra. While the relatively saturated tundra itself is studded with small willows and Dwarf Birch that are no more than knee high, the old road bed evidently creates moisture conditions that are favorable for much larger willows between 6-15 ft in height. These larger willows crowd both sides of the right-of-way, so even though one is putatively traveling through open tundra, the reality involves poor visibility in the direction one is moving, and thus the constant and not unreasonable supposition that a Grizzly Bear could be concealed in the brush.
Not long after I made this photo, the old road made a turn in a direction we did not wish to follow. We found a dry offramp, pushed through the willows to gain egress, and began an up-close investigation of what it means to walk with no trail through tussock tundra. The ground was covered in a rumpled layer of extraordinarily thick moss, and we were grateful that the season’s melt had largely passed through to lower realms, leaving only small boggy areas that were easily avoided in our quest to maintain dry feet. Amphitheater Mountain is the low, flat-topped snowless landscape feature with a prominent cliff-band in the upper-right of the image. The immediate task was to find a way to pass up and over its northwest flank and then descend into the Burwash Creek drainage where we would follow the creek upward and toward Hoge Pass.
Willow Fringed Reflections
2024-09-08, Day 2
Morning sunlight streams across the Burwash Uplands and creates a striking reflection of Mount Hoge (9,800 ft; 2,987 m) in a small tarn along the Donjek Route, Kluane First Nation, Yukon.
As it crosses the Burwash Uplands, the Route follows an old mining road that looks as if it was created using a bulldozer to push the soil on either side of the right-of-way up into a raised road bed that is some 2-4 feet above the surrounding tundra. While the relatively saturated tundra itself is studded with small willows and Dwarf Birch that are no more than knee high, the old road bed evidently creates moisture conditions that are favorable for much larger willows between 6-15 ft in height. These larger willows crowd both sides of the right-of-way, so even though one is putatively traveling through open tundra, the reality involves poor visibility in the direction one is moving, and thus the constant and not unreasonable supposition that a Grizzly Bear could be concealed in the brush.
Not long after I made this photo, the old road made a turn in a direction we did not wish to follow. We found a dry offramp, pushed through the willows to gain egress, and began an up-close investigation of what it means to walk with no trail through tussock tundra. The ground was covered in a rumpled layer of extraordinarily thick moss, and we were grateful that the season’s melt had largely passed through to lower realms, leaving only small boggy areas that were easily avoided in our quest to maintain dry feet. Amphitheater Mountain is the low, flat-topped snowless landscape feature with a prominent cliff-band in the upper-right of the image. The immediate task was to find a way to pass up and over its northwest flank and then descend into the Burwash Creek drainage where we would follow the creek upward and toward Hoge Pass.