Golden Cache
2024-09-13, Day 7
Golden Willows intermingle with the red foliage of Dwarf Birch and seem to glow with inner light in the late afternoon under gathering storm clouds, Kluane National Park, Yukon.
Cache Lake sits at the headwaters of Copper Joe Creek in a valley that begins about 850 feet above the Duke River. I can only imagine that the Creek would be named differently if the naming were to be thought about today. Regardless, most of the elevation must be gained in about ⅔ of a mile as the crow flies, and the route description led us to believe that an old mining road that once connected Cache Lake to the Duke River offers a reasonable grade to negotiate the ascent if it can be found. Alas, the features for which the route description instructs one to look from the riverbed to locate the old road appeared to have been erased from the landscape, perhaps shoved, bullied, and rearranged by the tumultuous and chaotic energy of flooding currents. As a result, we found ourselves pushing upward through steep Willow once more, feet looking for purchase on a rapidly climbing slope.
The larger trees thinned out and disappeared as the slope finally crested, and we were afforded a look down the valley toward Cache Lake. The route description suggested good campsites could be found around the Lake, but it looked to us like the storm clouds were coalescing ever more densely and the environs immediately round the Lake offered scant protection from wind. I have slept in a tent in the wind, and like Bartleby the Scrivener, I would prefer not to. We thus elected to continue northward along the creek bed, hoping to find a more sheltered place to pitch the tent, cook dinner, and learn what this weather system might deliver.
Golden Cache
2024-09-13, Day 7
Golden Willows intermingle with the red foliage of Dwarf Birch and seem to glow with inner light in the late afternoon under gathering storm clouds, Kluane National Park, Yukon.
Cache Lake sits at the headwaters of Copper Joe Creek in a valley that begins about 850 feet above the Duke River. I can only imagine that the Creek would be named differently if the naming were to be thought about today. Regardless, most of the elevation must be gained in about ⅔ of a mile as the crow flies, and the route description led us to believe that an old mining road that once connected Cache Lake to the Duke River offers a reasonable grade to negotiate the ascent if it can be found. Alas, the features for which the route description instructs one to look from the riverbed to locate the old road appeared to have been erased from the landscape, perhaps shoved, bullied, and rearranged by the tumultuous and chaotic energy of flooding currents. As a result, we found ourselves pushing upward through steep Willow once more, feet looking for purchase on a rapidly climbing slope.
The larger trees thinned out and disappeared as the slope finally crested, and we were afforded a look down the valley toward Cache Lake. The route description suggested good campsites could be found around the Lake, but it looked to us like the storm clouds were coalescing ever more densely and the environs immediately round the Lake offered scant protection from wind. I have slept in a tent in the wind, and like Bartleby the Scrivener, I would prefer not to. We thus elected to continue northward along the creek bed, hoping to find a more sheltered place to pitch the tent, cook dinner, and learn what this weather system might deliver.