feature story on the Snake River - Fritz Mueller Photography

From a gravel bar, Anthony and theWaldens take the measure of 2,758-metre Mount MacDonald, highestpeak in the Bonnet Plume Range.One of nature’s nastier pieces of engineering, the botflyhovers in front of a caribou’s snout, blowing eggs up the animal’snostrils. These hatch, and the larvae (bots) migrate intothe nasal cavities, where they grow all winter; a big infestationmakes it difficult to breathe. In spring, the caribousneezes the larvae out, and they metamorphose into flies. Thisone looks to be trying to elude another round of egg laying.After this Darwinian drama, we hike the final ridgeto an overlook of MacDonald, a stunning big-wallpanorama of Himalayan proportions. Its remoteness andlow elevation mean it is rarely visited by climbers, despitespectacular 1,600-metre walls. Following animal trailsback to camp, we wade through swaths of bear flower, aplant characteristic of the unglaciated areas of Siberia,Alaska and the Yukon, yet another of the Peel’s dimensions:though much of it was heavily glaciated, a good chunk ofthe watershed missed out on the most recent Pleistoceneparty. This long-standing, unperturbed ecosystem holdssignificance for the future.“One of the best ways that we can manage natural systemsto ensure resilience to climate change is through protectinglarge habitat areas and ecosystems,” explained KarenBaltgailis, executive director of the Yukon ConservationSociety, when I spoke with her after the trip. “The Peel isexactly such a place — large, unimpacted, with linkagesbetween different elevations, habitat types and latitudes.”From the perspective of a canoeist, hiker or climber, it’sjust plain cool. There are few places left on Earth to observesuch large-scale diversity.Except for encountering the occasional rock garden,our days on the river are braids and eddies, braids andeddies. And now, a week into the descent, a particularlystrong example of the latter rips in from the right. We bracehard across it. “That’s Iron Creek,” says Blaine, directing usto pull over.Iron Creek holds particular interest for outfitters such asthe Waldens. Like many Yukoners, Mary and Blaine arrivedfrom other parts of Canada to fall in love with this wild land.Growing up in Calgary, Blaine, 54, had wanted to go intothe woods and build a cabin since reading Farley Mowat’sLost in the Barrens. In 1982, he answered an ad for a raftingguide and has led river trips ever since. One of few peopleto have descended all the Peel’s rivers on the Yukon side,Blaine runs sled dogs during winter. Mary, 50, is a journalistwho left Saskatchewan in 1988 to be a reporter at theYukon News and later the CBC. She now focuses most of herwriting on protection of the Peel.On this trip, one of their goals is to visit a site where,50 years ago, the Snake dodged a bullet. In 1963, CaliforniabasedStandard Oil (now Chevron) cleared an airstrip on aforested plateau and erected a camp to conduct oil andgas exploration. It didn’t find any, but 14 kilometres upClimbing up off the river,we are treated to the truebreadth of the land.52 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC JUNE 2011