The Newluks

March 02, 2010

Kathleen Lake, Yukon.

Though I write about this now, the event was just before Christmas. I was perusing my photo's tonight and found these that I thought warranted a posting.

Remember how I mentioned the trip to Granite Lake where I boiled some beer for my hardworking Shea? Remember how we'd had a trip planned to that same cabin just before Christmas but hadn't made it as the temperatures had plummeted to something bordering on un-inhabitable (I, like my Granny, steadfastly refuse, despite historical truths and facts, to accept that -38 celsius is inhabitable. I think it's an extreme that should drive said inhabitants to somewhere more hospitable...like NSW, for instance!)

Anyway, instead of skiing into Granite Lake, Shea, his sister Skye, our friend Bill and myself drove to Kathleen Lake to stay in the picnic shelter for the weekend. The shelter is winterised, has a log stove and is meant to be purely for day purposes; there are notices in the shelter proclaiming just that, stating that unless you are a school group you MUST NOT spend the night. Shea, who has taken his Outdoor Ed class there a couple of times, assumed some kind of privilege that I didn't really understand. Sometimes I think he assumes privileges of his own definition based purely on the fact that he is "B and R" (local abbreviation for Born and Raised, even though he isn't technically, but in case he reads this I won't go into that). Fortunately we didn't suffer the fate of a friend who also stayed at the Kathleen Lake shelter for the night. She and her family were awoken at 2am and told they shouldn't have been there, fined $250 and told they could stay the rest of the night. At 4am the same National Parks Ranger came back and informed them that he'd changed his mind and they had to pack up and leave. Shea will be back there again tomorrow night with a school group...I'm nervous about the resulting assumed privileges and just how they might affect my own nights of camping in the future. However, it is a superb place to visit...

The neat thing about this weekend was that due to recent strong winds, the frozen lake had been swept clean of all it's snow. What was left was a beautiful skating rink, barren of any life bar ourselves. We skiied out onto the lake and as I scooted round the edges of the clear ice, sticking closely to the remaining patches of snow, Shea, Bill and Skye became quite adventurous. Skis, we all know, are made for snow, not ice. We didn't have ice skates so skis would do these three - they began tentatively, but by the end of our three hour ski they were using their poles to dig into the ice, thrust themselves froward and fly along with absolutely no resistance. They moved across the lake at amazing speeds.

I shuffled, made rigid with the fear of falling.

The ice, as it expands and contracts, makes these amazing whoomphing noises which are quite eerie. It's quite safe (I promise, Mum, the ice is maybe three metres thick), but very unsettling. I kind of got the slightest bit comfortable with the fact that I had no friction on my skis and therefore would move for the longest time from the slightest shove of my poles. It was an incredible feeling to just take the forever to stop sliding; you certainly couldn't stop yourself. As I gained the most insignificant amount of confidence at self-propulsion, Shea and the others advanced in slips and spins. Really, they began spinning.

Once you give yourself a good shove with your poles, you can then send yourself into an uncontrollable spin by nudging off the ice with one pole. Shea was doing multitides of 360 degree spins, hooting and hollering all the while (we have the video footage to prove it - remind me to show you when I see you next). It must have been funny to see me, eyes fixed on the distant shelter, tentatively shoving myself along, in the most direct and trudging line, surrounded by three spinning, skidding larrikins! I did try one spin, but the out-of-controlness of it made me decide that that was something that new skiers just did not attempt in their first year of skiing. Instead, we beginners opt for survival and not falling on the cold, hard, whoomphing ice.

Looking at my skis and the ice. It was so clear that you could see the bottom of the lake in the more shallow sections. You could see dead fish frozen in the ice in some parts.