Yukon

Well I am finally back from the North. I had a good time, even if the mosquitoes drove me crazy. I had one kayak mini-epic and one hiking mini-epic, plus scores of mosquitoe crazy moments.

The kayak adventure involved wandering down a reasonably nice looking river to access the lower canyon of the Stikine. It ended with a humungous portage up an 800 foot hillside to avoid a nasty class VI 40 footer in a slot canyon. I had a moment's thought about running it despite not being able to see the landing, but the nasty stuff further down the canyon quickly changed my mind. If you can see exploding waves up a thousand feet and a kilometer away, you know they are huge! The port invloved dragging my 70lb boat 2km through some nasty low growth spruce forests. Yuck!

As for the hiking epic, maps are nice. Warnings up north actually mean something as well. I will write up the story in more detail, but suffice it to say, the trail I had planned on taking was pretty sparse, and I figured it could be an old indian trail. The road I ended up taking added about 12km to to the trip. Near the end of the day, insane from bugs I didn't take enough time at a cross roads at 40km. This meant I wound up on the wrong side of the park, well out of food, energy, and at 9:00pm, with another 10km penalty. Trying my best to make good time to avoid getting benighted, the trip ended at 11:30pm and, with this being my break in hike, ended up messing up doing in the cartlidge problem I occasionaly have with my knees. But at least the 60+ km day hike was a good start to the trip. Of course it sounds like it had better rock that Mt. Sir Douglas!