« Day Nine | Main | Day Eleven »
October 19, 2009
Day Ten
Wednesday September 23, 2009
This day started early with the hopes of putting some serious km's behind us and getting back to warmer climates and the benefits of camping and cooking our own meals. We left Inuvik with a beautiful sunrise over the road south and good weather presenting good driving conditions. We made quick work of the ferry crossings and were soon back at the foot of the Richardson mountains. The conditions here were much better than on our previous travels. Much of the snow had disappeared and the cloud level was slightly elevated giving us a further view of the surrounding landscape. It also helped that the graders had been out on the highway, smoothing out ruts that had slowed our travel northwards several days earlier.
The Yukon/NWT border is a place that seems to be forever harassed by windswept snowbanks and a biting gale that would have you call a thermometer a liar. This observation is only based on the two crossings that I've made (and so is surely false) but it is how I will remember it. Even a brief opening of the truck window for a photo left a chill in my bones that took minutes to subside.
There was virtually no animal sightings on the southbound journey except for the odd flock of ptarmigans. The formations of clouds that threatened to overtake us and dump snow, rain or anything else conceivable were, however, quite frequent. We were luckily in that the weather near the road remained pleasant and we were left with only unique photos of the bad weather that someone or something was experiencing in the distance.
One of my favourite photos from this section of the trip was at a point south of Eagle Plains where we could see a valley that had been previously hidden in a blizzard on our northward journey. It was quite visible this time around, except that there was a low-lying cloud cover that had a very defined elevation - an effect that seemed to produce an atmospheric censor bar. The valley was clear but half-way up the surrounding hills, everything was hidden from view; another first for me.
The tundra-covered lands north of Tombstone Park beckoned, yet again, for photos and several stops produced some great vistas: a mountain reflected in a lake, another lake being touched by a lone ray of sun poking through the cloud cover and a mountain range framed by a hole in the clouds and the Dempster approaching.
We made it to the campground at Tombstone Territorial Park and set up for the night accompanied by the sounds of the North Klondike River rushing past.
End of day ten.
Posted by Dr.Unk at October 19, 2009 2:05 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)