Tormented Valley and Summit Lake in the White Pass of the Yukon

On our drive back to Whitehorse from Skagway on Thursday, June 2, 2016, we decided to spend some time hiking through Tormented Valley and around Summit Lake, just north of the White Pass Summit.  The landscape is so unique and breathtaking, that we wanted to put our feet on the ground and get deeper into it.

Here was our first view of Tormented Valley on our earlier drive south to Skagway:

The place we picked to hike into the valley happens to be the trailhead for the "Outhouse Trail" - named, unsurprisingly for the outhouse that is posted at the turnout on the South Klondike Highway where the trail starts.  Our only problem was that we could not find any single, clearly defined trail. There was evidence that lots of people had marched all over the landscape near the road, but we could not see the trail that was supposed to head up the slope toward the pass and the U.S.-Canada Boundary.

Being without trail, we decided to select a bushwhack route that would give us the greatest payoff. We started with this gorgeous little tarn nestled below a glacial valley in the far mountains:

Several slopes up from our location still had snow, which, though several feet deep, was packed firmly enough that we could bare-boot across it without post-holing at all.  Once we realized this, we could confidently map a route that required crossing snowfields such as this:

We found another beautiful little tarn on our way to climb the lower slope of the mountain in the background:

Here we are, having hiked higher up the slope, with another snowfield in our path:

No problem!  We made the top of a ridge on the lower slope of the mountain, and found a cairn, which seemed to make a great destination and turn-around.  It offered a splendid view back down Tormented Valley:

While we were resting at the cairn, eagle-eyed Kathy spotted a strange triangular wooden structure on a ledge that was two ridges over from us.  We hiked over to it and discovered that it was a ski- or snowboard-jump:

It was awe-inspiring to imagine that others had not only hiked where we were hiking, but had done so in the deep snow of winter, AND had carried a wooden jump all the way up here to launch themselves into space, to land heaven knows where in the deep snows of Tormented Valley - hopefully not in the middle of an icy tarn such as the one below:

Having satisfied our curiosity about this landscape, we started working our way back to the trailhead, but bushwhacking by another route.  Here, Kathy stands on a ridge above a snowfield, with the glorious mountains of White Pass in the background.  While we were standing there, we heard the horn of the White Pass & Yukon Railway train, chugging along at the base of the mountains in the distance, and, perhaps two seconds later, its echo on the near mountains to our west.  The lonely train whistle emphasized how wild and uninhabited this land is.

Having worked our way back to the trailhead, we drove a short way down the valley to Summit Lake, where we hopped out of the car and worked our way across large boulders to the edge of the lake. Here is a view north down the lake --

-- and this one up the lake, with the Sawtooth Mountains in the background:

Directly across from us, the mountains weren't any too shabby, either:

We found a peninsula to get out onto, and Kathy stood for scale as we looked straight up the lake:

We then switched positions and tried a little selfie looking the opposite direction, down the lake, with the lichen-laden and moss-covered rocks all around us:

This was a great little hiking interlude to the drive back to Whitehorse, and it produced some great memories of the details of the wild and rugged landscape.