Snake River   (Page 1 of 3)

The clash between conservation and exploitation plays out in the Yukon’s Peel watershed

By Leslie Anthony with photography by Fritz Mueller

With their canoe and gear unloaded, trippers watch on shore as the Otter departs Duo Lake in soupy weather on its way to another rendezvous. (Photo: Fritz Mueller)

What is wilderness? The thought, which has hovered all morning, turns on its side as our float plane tips steeply into the alpine vale cradling Duo Lake, in the headwaters of the Snake River. Below, brocaded in olive, mustard and bluegreen, Yukon mountainsides jut above jade spires of dwarf spruce and the puce darkness between them. The palette is unfamiliar yet vibrant. It exists here in an undisturbed state — undisturbed, that is, by us.

Locate the Yukon’s Peel Watershed (Map: Steven Fick/Canadian Geographic)

The definition of wilderness that I’ve been mulling is a matter of degree to the human mind: not this but that; some but not all; us but not them. The problem is that all of these constructs are ours, relative and contextual. Real wilderness defines itself: the natural intertwining of landforms and waterways; the presence of indigenous, co-evolved plant and animal life; intact ecosystems operating the way they have since they arose.

No matter the perspective, there is room for humanity, since we are a part and not apart. It would seem, however, that we must not mess with functionality — certainly not with the functionality of aquatic ecosystems, whose components are more easily perturbed and whose problems are quickly distributed over large areas.

The idea comes sharply into focus as we near our destination, the isolated Snake River. The Snake is considered pristine: no roads, no residents, no development. It’s a wild and rugged watercourse that we will follow for 10 days and 300 kilometres to its junction with the Peel River.

First and foremost, the trip is an exploration by canoe. But it will also offer insight into the hot-button politics of protecting the entire Peel watershed, of which the Snake is the last of six rivers — preceded, from west to east, by the Ogilvie, Blackstone, Hart, Wind and Bonnet Plume — to join the former’s flow within the Yukon’s boundaries (another, the Rat, makes the Peel’s acquaintance in the Northwest Territories).

See the Snake River route (Map: Steven Fick/Canadian Geographic)

On the side of protection and conservation are First Nations with traditional hunting grounds in the Peel, backed by tour operators and environmental organizations, such as the Yukon Conservation Society and the Yukon chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. On the side of exploitation is the Yukon’s traditional economic engine — the mining and oil and gas industries — intent on preserving leases that have been staked on uranium, iron and oil and gas deposits. A land-use planning process involving an arm’slength commission of stakeholders has been under way for seven years. It is winding down after having recommended to the Yukon government that 80.6 percent of the Peel watershed be fully protected and the rest closely regulated, a decision with overwhelming public support (see sidebar). With a final decision expected this fall, the fight for the Snake is heating up. A chance to experience it in its current state is an opportunity I can’t turn down.

After all, if any place can school me on wilderness values, it should be a pristine river.

Weather perpetually threatens in the Yukon, so it was no surprise that our pilot had to make this second attempt in two days to drop us off at Duo Lake. In the tiny community of Mayo, some five hours southeast of Dawson City, we had loaded gear into the high-powered Otter, lashed canoes onto pontoon struts, taxied onto the turbid and historic Stewart River and put the hammer down. A viridescent quilt of forest and moss quickly fell away, riven by the blue of serpentine rivers, their bends bracketed by sandbars and parenthetic oxbows. On higher ground, geometric patterns testified to the meta-processes that preceded the forests. Dendrites of former drainages fell like dark veins between muscled ridges. Trees grew in fractal scallops on the halting deposits of glacial retreat. Arrays of circular lakes told a story of leftover ice chunks buried beneath rubble.

Now, as calm plateaus give way to bucking humps and sharp ridges, we encounter the same lowering wall of cloud that turned us back yesterday. Only this time, we squeeze through a mountain pass just as the curtain drops and descend in a slow spiral onto Duo Lake. In no time, our group — a Whitehorse-based crew consisting of photographer Fritz Mueller and guides Blaine and Mary Walden of Walden’s Guiding & Outfitting — plus our tonne of gear and pair of canoes are all on shore. The plane is reduced to a faint whine that tails off like the last note of a song, leaving us to the silence of a huge and dramatic landscape. Before we have time for contemplation, the drone of the plane’s engine is replaced by the buzz of mosquitoes.

It is said that the Snake gets its name from a Gwich’in term (literally translated as “large hairy worm”) and refers to a myth about a giant serpent that swallows all the river’s boulders. Like the Wind and Bonnet Plume rivers, the Snake begins its northward flow in the Wernecke Mountains, a northern extension of the Rockies and part of the Mackenzie Mountains Ecoregion. Remote and rugged, the river carves canyons through sub-range after sub-range, bisecting massive rock slides and braiding out into long gravel flats.

Any doubts about who these waters belong to are put to rest when we begin portaging to the river. Twice, we trudge loads one hour over alpine scrub, ford a creek, beat through a maze of willows, struggle across a hummocky wetland, burrow through another strangle of willows and land on the flood channels of the Snake. Mountains soar on both sides as we hump over the abundant tracks and dung of moose, caribou, wolf and grizzly, whose diggings for bear root, a favourite food, are everywhere.