Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ing body of rock. Behaving as a glacier does, it creeps down the slopes of the mountain.
This is one of the few places in the world you can stretch out in your deck chair, train your
binocs on a rock glacier and watch it move …or not.
With a little more energy to burn, one can walk into town and rent a canoe or a kayak to
paddle up to the glacier for a closer look. The interconnected lakes system goes on for hun-
dreds of kilometres. Getting totally lost is a potential too so there are guides for hire. We
were told this is one of the best places in Canada to drop a fishing line or you can ante up
the big bucks for a flight over the glaciers.
The Llewellyn Glacier, if you recollect, is the site of the headwaters of the Yukon River,
which played such a critical role in the transportation of stampeders to the gold fields of the
Klondike. The Yukon, at 3185 km /1980 mi, the longest river in the north, flows from BC
to the Yukon Territory, through Alaska to the Bering Sea. Traversed by hundreds of paddle
wheelers, not to mention self-propelled rafts and canoes, the Yukon River was a freeway to
the goldfields for those who could afford the ticket to ride.
The town of Atlin was founded in 1898 when Fritz Miller and Kenny McLaren struck gold
on Pine Creek. They actually called the encampment that sprang up to accommodate the
10,000 stampeders, “Discovery.” Good thing they mostly stayed in tents because within a
year all the good spots had been staked and most of the crowd moved on.
We drove up Discovery Avenue to see the ghost of what once was. There is not too much;
a few old cabins, an outhouse leaning into the wind, a huge pile of rusting tin cans. There
is a “Pioneer Cemetery” which is interesting. All the very old graves are there. That and a
crew of nasty biting bugs that attacked my uncovered scalp. Keep your hat on if you head
out to the graveyard because you won't even know you were the lunch entrée until it is too
late.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search