Day 6: Terrace Lake to Upper George Creek
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| Artie crossing John Creek with style, grace, and quiet confidence. |
In the morning we packed-up and took off down the barren ridge high above the Terrace Creek valley. The gentle down slope made for an easy morning stroll. Soon enough we picked our way down to the creek and erased my navigational error from the day before; I forgave myself. We crossed the creek without fanfare and headed over a bench that would cut the corner into the Kosina Creek valley.
The Kosina flows through a large broad valley that is over two miles wide. On our way down to the creek we ran into another stand of miniature and perfectly formed spruce trees that once again tricked us into thinking that they were not only much bigger but further away.
We found the hiking to be most pleasant right next to the creek. Slowly we made our way up the Kosina Valley on our way to our next destination: George Creek. The creek which started out braided and shallow, came together and became deep and fast; it looked tricky to cross. Luckily as we ascended its western bank it split into three; John Creek, Kosina itself, and George Creek. Fording these tributaries one at a time wasn’t so bad because it cut the volume of rushing water greatly and we crossed all three with no problems. By late-afternoon we were headed up the George Creek valley.
There is a special place in my heart for the George Creek valley. If there was one place that I would like to re-visit this was it. It was wild, beautiful country with surprises around every corner. Also, it was fantastic hiking and reminded me a lot of where we moose hunt off of the Denali Highway. We followed the creek up and around the corner where we discovered a couple of waterfalls spilling hundreds of feet off of the mountainside. One such waterfall spills out from a mountain lake high above. We could hear the roar of the water as we hike passed them.
Further up the valley the creek slowed down and we were amazed to find several bends of the creek slowly flowing over a gravely bottom. The water was crystal clear and no less than six feet deep. “Hey Steve you should go swimming” I considered it for a hot minute before declining; we were on a mission. If I have one regret on this trip it’s that I didn’t take time to swim that hole.
And then we came into granite country. From afar we thought it was snow. When we got closer we could see that there were entire landslide debris piles of solid white granite of all sizes including sand. The further we advanced up the valley the more granite we saw. Higher up in the valley we could see big white granite boulders. Many of the caribou trails in this area were on white granite sand.
“Hey Art, check it out.” the cow caribou was the first of the trip. She was curious and hung around us long enough to get lots of pictures and videos. Eventually she had enough of us and trotted down the valley. We would see 5 or 6 more as we made our way to the end of the valley.
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| Click to see video of caribou. |
Our route led us around the corner up a steep tributary of George Creek that was littered with giant talus that we had to climb up and around. The Creek blasted down next to us flushing between and over the giant rocks; Some were bigger than cars. The volume of water crashing down the mountain was super loud and would have required shouting to each other if we wanted to communicate. We chose instead to take-in the moment and climb around the corner incommunicado; The violence of the falling creek roaring next to us.
The white granite boulders stuck out like sore-thumbs among all of the other charcoal colored rocks. A few caribou appeared above us, paused to check us out, then fled. Before long we topped out and decided to set up camp on the edge of a pristine alpine lake. I walked down to the lake to fill our water bottles. I hopped on boulders out to deeper water and could see that the bottom of the lake was a rock garden of wheel-barrow sized boulders.
From here we could see the 6,000 foot pass we would have to conquer the next day. We had a lovely evening in a very special place. I had chicken fajita bowl mountain house and Artie had chicken and rice. As we ate dinner we watched a mature bull caribou walk around the lake. We were quiet and motionless and he walked to within 75 feet of our tent before trotting-off down the valley. This was Mountain Camp.
