Kluane Park

Kluane: the name evokes images of pristine solitude and mountains shrouded in mist. Well that's certainly the way we found it, along with a good dose of rain.

We arrived here a couple days ago and were hoping to do a hike yesterday, but got rained out.
Today decided to have another go at it. We tried going up to King's throne, which is a classic glacial cirque. A hiking trail would take you up to the cirque, and from there you could scramble the left ridge to the top, where you could get a glimpse of the St. Elias range to the west. We got to the cirque, but everything above was completely socked in. Having become bellweather scramblers over the years, the lack of even the possibility of a view totally killed our motivation, so we headed back down and started hitting the Hootch earlier than usual.

We have been told by the locals that the weather this year has been unusual; being in the rain-shadow of the St. Elias and Kluane ranges, the climate is normally arid for this lattitude. This has been one of the wettest summers they can remember. Lucky us; we decided to pack it in and continue on to Alaska.