A breathtaking flight over Kluane National Park(7 photos)

Guelph's Jerry Daminato and Elizabeth Bone took a five-month trip in 2018 to visit Western and Northern Canada. One of their highlights was a trip to Kluane National Park in the Yukon. This is their journal entry from that experience.

Flying Over Kluane National Park August 2018:

Our stay in Haines Junction was a busy one. There is a lot to see and do and the scenery is magnificent. On Tuesday, we’d booked a flight with Icefield Discovery Tours to see one of the many glaciers in Kluane National Park and Reserve. We were excited. 

Kluane NP was established in 1972 (and officially gazetted in 1976). It is 22,000 square kms and 80 per cent of the area is covered in glaciers, ice and snow year-round. It contains the most extensive non-polar icefields in the world.

The moose, lynx, cariboo, wolverines, grizzly bears, sheep, mountain goats and arctic ground squirrels all live in the 20 per cent of the park we see from the highway – the area with the trees, shrubs and other vegetation. The only animal that lives in the mountain peaks and glaciers are the tiny pikas – a sort-of rabbit. 

Kluane National Park and Reserve, Tatshenshini-Alsek Wilderness Park, Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park are a joint UNESCO World Heritage Site and together form the largest internationally protected area in the world.

Within the boundaries of Kluane are some of the largest mountains in North America and they are still growing. The park protects 17 of Canada’s 20 highest mountains, Mount Logan, at 5,959 m (19,545’) is the highest mountain in Canada, the second highest in North America and the most massive mountain in the world. 

Icefield Discovery Tours fly out of the Silver City Airport which is about 61 KMs from Haines Junction. Tuesday was a simple gorgeous day, sunny and bright and the views from the highway were breath taking. The distant mountains were a combination of colours, mauve, pink, soft blues and a sandy rose. The ones we could see up close were dark slate grey and green-brown at their feet.

During the time we’ve spent in the Yukon and NWT I’ve been watching the fireweed from its first blooms. It is only mid-August but everything around here is looking like fall is well on its way. For the most part, the fireweed has lost its flowers except at the very top and what is left are the small stems that held the flowers, these are a deeper, pinker colour than the flowers, beautiful and fleshy. Along the road are great swaths of Fireweed looking like blankets of fuchsia (maybe it’s permanent rose) laid between the swirls of white cotton grass. They have a saying, “When the fireweed turns to cotton, Summer’s soon forgotten.” Well, I’ve seen this in a few places, the fleshy stems open up and send out filmy cotton like threads with the seeds. 

We arrived at the airport – basically it’s a big field behind the Arctic Research Centre. I believe at one time there was a trading post at this site at the southern tip of Kluane Lake. As I said we were excited because we expected to be landing and walking on the Kaskawulsh Glacier.

Unfortunately, the weather was not co-operating. While it was a glorious day at Kluane Lake and the lake was a glorious turquoise, up in the mountains – the really big mountains – there is a completely different weather system. It had been warm for several days and the landing surface was slushy so not safe to take-off from after landing. We debated rescheduling for a different day but decided to go as planned since who knows what the weather would be like on Thursday.

We had to be weighed so the pilot, Mike, could distribute us properly. Our plane was a STOL Helio Courier on wheel skis – it holds four passengers and the pilot. When I saw the plane, I was a little nervous. We took off over Kluane Lake and flew up the Slims River valley towards the interior of the park. Mike explained as we flew over what is only a trickle of water that climate change has caused changes in the glacier melt.

There has been so much melting recently and the volume of water is so great that the direction of flow has changed. That’s why the Slims River has practically dried up and that Kluane Lake is smaller. 

I really don’t have words to describe what we saw following the glacier up to the peaks of the mountains. It is incredible, beautiful, magnificent. We have some good pictures but I know that a picture can’t compare. The weather was a little stormy around Mount Logan and several times we experienced a rough ride. I was only really scared maybe two or three times. Mike told us that he was putting down the skis just in case we had to land on the ice.

Where the glaciers are the mountains are one and a half times higher than the mountains you can see from the highway. We flew close to 9,500 feet. 

It is interesting to see the route the glacier takes – it looks like a highway. It even has a brown line in the middle, which has something to do with pressure as it moves.

The depth of the ice was measured in 2017 by university researchers and the ice was over 2 kms deep – really deep. On the way back, we saw what looked like a long string of tiny glass beads down the side of one of the mountains. Of course, it was a mountain stream and the sunlight was glinting off the glacial water.

It was an incredible experience.