Bare Loon Lake

I'm going through some documents in my office today, and found this poem Ariel wrote in the summer of 1996. She may be cringing a little, knowing I'm about to set it out here. She was 12 when she wrote it and about to go into 7th grade. I recall she submitted it and it was published before. We were returning from our hike with David, Terra and Jennifer along the Chilkoot Trail when she wrote it. The night before we left on the hike, David directed us in packing our provisions, quick eats like gorp, bagels and cream cheese. I think I drank iodine-laced water, flavored with Tang, on the trip, as we had no purifiers then. Most of our party had external frame backpacks. Ariel had a blue junior-sized one we bought at REI, filled with gear and clothes, her sleeping bag and mat, and food and water. A ridiculously small bell dangled and tinkled from her backpack to protect her from bears, a dubious safeguard no longer recommended. She usually wore shorts, big boots, wool socks, a couple of layers on top, sunglasses, and a floppy hat or bandanna on her head. David had the only stove, which we used to boil water. We took the ferry up from Juneau to Skagway, slept overnight at the trailhead in our only rainfall of the trip. The trail took us through the rainforest and then we entered alpine and snowfields, following 33 miles of the trail the gold seekers took during the Klondike Gold Rush to enter the Yukon in the late 1890s. Before the Chilkoot Pass there was a hard climb up a rocky slope, covered with snow near the top. There were switchbacks of boulders marked by poles, but it was mostly scrambling. There is a famous photograph from 1898 showing an endless train of stampeders, each carrying hundreds of pounds of provisions on their backs, hiking straight up to the summit along steps carved into the snow. These are the Golden Stairs. Once you reach the summit of the pass, you enter British Columbia. A Mountie (probably a warden, or ranger, actually) was stationed there. A man portaging a canoe passed us there. We saw very few others, usually only at a camp site or at the pass, discussing bear sightings, but more often we saw no one. Several miles later we made our second or third camp at Bare Loon Lake. We were alone. Our two tents sat on a rocky ledge at the edge of the lake. The night never became dark, and we listened to the cries of the loons on the lake. I recall drinking hot coffee in the morning, standing near the lake, and Ariel bolting from the tent, pack on her back, ready to go. Here is her poem, which I think she began on the ferry back to Juneau and worked on as we flew back home. She also made a pastel painting, a Christmas gift, which I have but I must repair the glass.

Bare Loon Lake

I wonder if the loons sang those nights
The nights it was windy and cold
The nights stampeders hiked through mountains and snow
To find but a handful of gold

I wonder if the loons sang those nights
Sang their eerie song
On a lake with waters as clear as glass
Glistening in the quiet dawn

From the lush rain forest in Alaska
To Canada with lands full of light
Gold seekers reached a peaceful lake
Where the loons may have sung that night

I heard the loons sing last night
The night after climbing The Golden Stairs
The same stairs stampeders made in the snow
The snow that covered many rock layers

I wonder if the loons sang those nights
Sang for the travelers sake
I wonder if the loons sang those nights
Those nights on Bare Loon Lake


Here is an official web site for the Chilkoot Trail.

David has pictures and an account of a recent trip along the same trail here. David has other links, pictures from another trip, and photographs.

Finally, here's the wikipedia page.

When I have a chance, I'll scan photographs from our trip in 1996. Someday, there'll be another.