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CHRIS' PHOTO JOURNAL
26th-30th July 08 - Success Lakes Part 1
This is the view from the window of my cabin.
It looks as though we are looking at one mountain. But there are two very different mountains here.
Mount Monarch is on the left. It is 3,500 metres high (nearly 12,000').
On the right, Mt Migma is much closer. It is only 2,500 metres high.
In between is a valley.
In the valley is a lake just big enough to land a plane on.
The plane can take off empty but we would have a long walk before we could fly out with a plane.
The lake is called Success Lake.
It is here that the climbers land when they want to climb Mt Monarch.
Our plan was to hike to a higher lake a little more than a kilometre away,
then camp for three days before walking for four more days to reach Hunlen Falls.
I had done most of the hike from the opposite direction when I lived at Lonesome Lake
and thought it would be moderately easy.
I had wanted to do this hike ever since I had arrived at Nuk Tessli.
So this was to be the hike of a lifetime for me.
But I had never been to Success Lake before.
We eventually found a trail to the upper lake but it was very overgrown with shrubs and distorted subalpine fir.
Then we hit a terrible rock slide.
The dogs had struggled wonderfully in the bush, but the rockslide was too difficult for them.
I dragged Nahanni's pack and Paul carried Badger's pack on top of his own, which was already very heavy.
The upper lake was a gorgeous turquoise blue.
Concubine Peak and glacier are behind it.
But it had taken us eight hours to cover the 1.3 kilometres between the two lakes.
And there was nowhere to camp.So we struggled through the terrible thick bush around the lake
until we reached a little rocky fan that the creek coming from the glacier had made.
That took another two hours.Just before we got there, Paul grabbed a rotten branch for support:
it broke and he fell and badly twisted his ankle.The campsite was very pretty
But Paul spent most of our time there sitting under a tarp
with his ankle in a Sam splint and his foot propped up.
We had no satellite phone, and would have to wait until we saw what Paul's ankle did
before we could plan our next move.
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