feature story on the Snake River - Fritz Mueller Photography

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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
Weighed down by supplies, guide MaryWalden is undaunted as she crosses analpine meadow (ABOVE RIGHT). Burstingfrom the rocky shoreline, river beauties(ABOVE) add a purplish-pink exclamationmark to a rugged landscape.this formerly unnamed creek, geologists did stake leases onwhat, according to Chevron, was believed to be the secondlargest iron ore deposit in the world. Chevron currentlyholds 525 leases on this so named Crest deposit, totalling27,827 hectares (an adjacent lease in the NorthwestTerritories adds another 3,915 hectares). Remoteness haskept the find in the ground; the long-abandoned staging site,however, is rumoured to be contaminated. The Waldenswant to see for themselves.The gravel bar we pull out on is peppered with hematitejasperore, blood-red and alien amid the light-colouredcobble. It is strangely beautiful, but a potential disaster forthe Snake. Iron extraction is a messy, disruptive business.In spitting rain, we hike far up the creek before turninginto the bush. It’s difficult going as we struggle throughmosquito-swarmed spruce hummocks and then outrightswamp toward an unmapped destination. Suddenly, I comeacross old cut trees clad in thick moss. Almost immediately,we find oil cans, aviation fuel barrels, an airplanepontoon and other big-ticket garbage near the overgrownairstrip, as well as several dilapidated plywood shelters usedas a fall hunting camp by outfitters.Chevron’s leftover trash encourages hunters to treat the siteas their own modern-day dump. We discover suppuratingbatteries and rusted-out fuel drums whose contents havepercolated into the soil. Here, grizzlies, attracted to oil,have created mud baths. We also find an old fuel towerleaking oily water into a large, well-trodden puddle. Thetower is now a rub, with wisps of grizzly hair attached to boltsand the jagged edges of rusted metal. As small and removedas the site may be, it not only is clearly contaminated but isaffecting local wildlife. If this is the cost of but one tiny,unfulfilled wilderness transgression, what would an entiremine complex and network of roadways beget?After remaining mute for half a century, Chevron, as ofthis writing, has committed to a two-phase cleanup that willcomply with all government regulations. The first phase, tobegin this summer, will involve the removal of debris and soiltesting. In 2012, the company will undertake any necessarysoil remediation. The cleanup might be a double-edgedsword: although belated and welcome, it is also necessary ifChevron holds any hope of acting on its stakes in the area.“Once mining activities are completed, we have to restorethe land to a level where it conforms to the surroundinglandscape and allows for other uses,” said Claire Derome,president of the Yukon Chamber of Mines, when we spokelater. “I’m not saying that happened 30 years ago, but thesedays, that’s how we conduct our business. Mining is one waywhere people living in the community can earn a living.Without that, there’s little else that’s taking place here.”Day 10, our last day on the river, is sunny but gruelling.Wind and squalls fill the air with fluffy cottonwood seedsthat, like the snowflakes they resemble, stick to everything.The water is rising, growing browner and nastier, adding thehazard of new channels roaring through gravel bars crowdedwith old log-jams.Steadily rising water means it is still raining somewhere,and the dangerous flood conditions demand careful corneringmanoeuvres. For 50 kilometres, we skirt threateningsweepers, islands of collapsed riverbank and enormous floatingtrees that only hours before had stood tall on ground theyhad occupied for hundreds of years. It’s tenser than pickingthrough rapids and a stark lesson in the dialectic of wild rivers— their eternal tearing down and building up.Eventually, the water slows and grows bigger, workingthrough soaring cutbanks peppered with mineralizednodules from much further back in time. The nodulescontain the fossils Mary has read about in the journal ofCharles Camsell.Camsell was born in the North and travelled extensivelythroughout the Yukon and Northwest Territories as ageologist for the Geological Survey of Canada. Typical of theold-school explorer/bureaucrat, Camsell felt the only way toappreciate Canada was to see its North, with an eye to theriches of both experience and development. His travels in theregion led to the first comprehensive report, in 1906, on the54 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC JUNE 2011
Page 1: Feasting on their surroundings,trav
Page 4 and 5: Following a four-hour hikealong ani
Page 8 and 9: A relic from Chevron’s oilexplora

feature story on the Snake River - Fritz Mueller Photography

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