The river broke, and a hike

The river broke on Thursday morning (May 6).

Jeff messaged me to say it just broke and then I heard the town’s air raid siren to notify everyone (to be aware in case it jams and floods as it goes out). Jeff’s office is on Front Street so he gets to see when the action starts.

I was in the middle of my 2 hour on call shift – meaning those are the 2 hours of the day I’m on the front lines and can’t leave. I sat here for a bit, just sick I was missing all the excitement, and decided not to miss any more and skip out for 20 minutes (my colleagues were all supportive, I’m glad I asked them!).

I drove over to Front Street, and ran up on the dyke to see. There was a huge pile of ice chunks along shore!

Almost immediately my cousin Veronica photobombed my shot! I’ve hardly seen her during this pandemic last year.

While Lulu whispered “fart” and other fun words while I was videoing the river. HA!

There is a walk trail along the dyke, but also down below along the river. Parts of the path are covered now, and a long stretch of the trees between the river and that lower trail and all pushed over and buried. It’s going to look a lot different walking that lower trail when all that ice melts. That’s gotta take a few weeks!

Here’s a Dylan for scale:

All the excitement buzzed around this car that someone left parked on a lower road by the ferry landing/ice road. As the river level rose, the water was more and more under the water until a local guy waded it and chained it up so it could be pulled out.

On Saturday there are these big high chunks of ice all over. We had a good ice year, it is still thick when though it is in chunks!

I went for a long overdue haircut on Saturday. Sara straightened my hair for the day. It’s always so shocking straight, but felt so soft!

Our grocery store got in a shipment of plants, so I bought two inside plants I totally didn’t need at all, but couldn’t help myself.

On Saturday night when we walked Hank, the river level had dropped more showing even more big chunks stranded out in the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers.

On Sunday afternoon, we missed the sunshine window, but went for a family hike up behind Robert Service’s cabin, out to the Crocus Bluff lookout, then around behind the cemetery and down the zig zag switch back to the lower Dome Rd, and back home.

The FireSmart program people cleared out more trees in Crocus bluff again and burned the brush. Great idea for a fire break for town, but there is more and more wind blow since spruce really don’t like being thinned out this much.

From the lookout we got a good view of the rivers flowing again.

Can you see the two new slides starting across the river? They’ve been becoming more prominent in the last couple of years. The road to Sunnydale, the golf course, and the West Dawson lookout itself are right above it. Last year some sort of device was placed up there to track ground movement.

There are always so many relics along all our hiking trails in the woods here. People once had cabins all through here, so there are old pails and cans and stove pipes.

And this, billions and billions of spruce cones on the forest floor!

The crocuses of Crocus Bluff seem a bit past their prime. Not super colourful, and a little spindly.

But nice enough for a few photos!

We haven’t had a rain yet, but there is a chance today. A good rain will kick start the grass and tree leaves!

Happy Spring!