Finding Our Way to Twin Lakes in Iskut

On this trip to Alaska, as we've driven through British Columbia, some of the best hikes we've found have been the result of lucky recommendations from locals.  One reason is that hiking trails don't seem to be as systematically documented in Canada as they are in the U.S.  Many trails exist - probably more per population than in the States - but it's hard to identify them without knowing an area or knowing where to check.

When we arrived at Mountain Shadow R.V. Resort here in Iskut, our research had not uncovered a single hiking trail nearby.  As we drove up, we found three trails of interest merely by reading trailhead signs, but each of those would require a drive back south perhaps 30-40 miles and, while we're not against driving as much as an hour for a good hike, we would just really rather spend our time hiking than driving.

So when we asked the campground owner if there were any hiking trails here, he offered a very interesting option:  a hike for as far as we were able to walk in a day along an old wagon road that connects this area with Telegraph Creek Road to the north.  Telegraph Creek Road follows the old Telegraph Trail from Dease Lake, north of Iskut, to Telegraph Creek.  The old Telegraph Trail followed a telegraph line connecting the interior of Canada to the Pacific Coast.  Gold had been discovered in the Stikine River in the late 1860’s and Telegraph Creek had become the head of navigation for paddle wheelers.  Communication was needed from here to the Pacific Ocean, for further communication on to Europe and the rest of North America.  The telegraph cable project began in 1866 but was stopped when a competing cable was laid across the Atlantic Ocean, making connection with Europe via Alaska unnecessary.  The telegraph line project started back up when the gold rush hit, and was completed in 1901.  By 1936 it was abandoned in favor of the new technology of wireless radio.  Telegraph Creek Road is now a popular high-clearance jeep road for adventurers on their way through B.C. north to Alaska.

Today, parts of the old wagon road connecting to Telegraph Creek Road have gone back to nature or (as in the case of our campground) been developed over.  Other parts survive as sections of forest roads or as ATV trails.  In some cases, such as the sections we hiked, many stretches have become hiking and horse trails.  Local people enjoy horseback riding and riding their ATV's, so a random web of dirt roads and trails has grown.  The particular hike our campground owner suggested was to what he calls the "Twin Lakes," about 3 miles north of the campground.  He cautioned, however, that we need to have good trail-finding skills and be cautious to mark our way for the return, or we could easily get lost among all the intersecting ways.

On Sunday, May 23, 2016, after getting up at 4:30 a.m. to see the dawn on the mountains and try our hand at a second day of fishing, we decided to set out for the Twin Lakes.  Here Kathy leads the way up into the hills of aspen and fir forest:

Our campground is perched on a ridge halfway up hills above the string of glacial lakes that include our Kluachon Lake.  During the Ice Age, glaciers carved this valley, leaving a series of tarns sprinkled among hills of moraine.  Perhaps, too, as the glaciers melted, this valley saw the flow of a large river that left the individual tarns as it, too, eventually receded.  To get to the Twin Lakes, we followed the line of the valley north, but along hills and ridges a level above the lowest wetland:

Our path was easy on the feet - fir needles and bark dust - but hard on the legs because we had to conquer one steep moraine hill after another, only to hike down the other side of each of them and conquer the next one, and then again and again.

We stumbled upon the remains of a wooden pipe or trough used by some settler to direct water from a hillside spring.  Now the spring is dry and the little sluice directs nothing into nothingness.  But it evokes images of wilderness life in times past.

We also stumbled on the skeletal remains of what our best guess told us was an elk that had met its demise - either at the hands of a hunter or for some other reason, and its carcass decayed or was field-dressed here:

Being the experienced hiker that Kathy is, she brought along several pieces of bright orange string to tie as blazes at strategic junctions along our hike, to remind us which path to take when we returned:

We were taken aback, when we returned to one of these, to see that someone had piled branches across the path that our tell-tale was meant to indicate - a customary warning against taking the path in question.  We wondered why someone would have tried to direct people (us?) away from the path we needed to take on our return, and felt a little strange to know that this "someone" had been here only in the couple intervening hours since we had first passed.

This is, in fact, wilderness, so it is unrealistic to expect people to clear trails (which they don't - we clambered over or around numerous fallen trees) or to mark trails with names or blazes.  The only blazes we saw were carved by ax in trees along what we suppose is a main snowmobile or ATV route for local recreational riders.  However, due to fallen trees and work-arounds, while the blazes probably were intended to guide people to the Twin Lakes, they actually did not succeed at showing us the way.  At one point, following the old woods road and the blazes, we found ourselves wandering off to the east of the lakes.  We finally decided to turn around and follow a path that seemed more likely to lead to the smaller, southern of the two lakes.

With some trial and error, we finally found the lake, only to be a bit disappointed in it:

Water covered perhaps only 20% of the current lakebed, and it resembled a sad little mudhole more than a lake.  But we found a perch on a berm above the lake/pond/mudhole and enjoyed our packed lunch before heading back.

On the way back, we were less preoccupied with finding our way and had more time to look at the details of our surroundings.  We found several types of delicate wildflowers, of which these are two examples:

Before too long, working our way back through the network of trails with no misadventures, we eventually found ourselves in a high meadow with a splendid view of good old Mount Poelzer, the sentinel that guards Lake Kluachon and our campground:

By this time the day was clouding up, foretelling a day of pouring rain the next day.  The temperature was falling and we were getting tired and hungry, so we hiked deliberately back to the campground, put out some camp chairs, and enjoyed Happy Hour watching Baxter play in the tall grass and new RV neighbors pulling into their new home.  We even succeeded in inspiring two other couples to put on their fishing gear and hike down to the lake to try their luck.  Where we only catch and release the trout, these couples were hoping for four trout - enough for their dinner that evening.  We wished them luck, watched the sun soften on the nearby peaks (remember that the sun never goes down; it just softens), and finally retired to our RV to watch a few DVD episodes of "Person of Interest," and then fall asleep to rest up from our adventures.