Rock On !

After multiple conversations in my mind and watching Hal become increasingly nervous, anxious, we aborted The Donjek and sought other hikes. My heart sank as I so...wanted to show him the mist amazing terrain, yet it was easy to give up when the man you love means the world to you, and being in their presence exceeds any vista.
Kimberly Meadows, a gentle 3 day backpack up over a pass and into some meadows, it all was too idealic. 4 kilometres up a trail the route finding started, dodging the ragging river coming down, yodelling to ward off beasts, while grasping branches on the edge to avert plunging into the frigid waters, and thrashing through alders carrened by puffy flowers sap residue that clung to our hair, what more could we ask for.  My mind began to wander within hours if we'd got ourselves into a pickle. Hal's leg began acting up at about 2 pm, 5 hours in, just when we found a mere 30% angle to hang the tent off. Grass surrounded us with massive moraine, glaciers and not a soul in sight to claim we'd made it.
The skies of the midnight sun wasn't a problem for me to sleep through, Hal resembled Zoro wearing an eye mask each night, as I flinches each morning waking up to a stranger.
Day 2 over the pass and down to the passive meadows, right?
Over the pass, a massive moraine brought snow to glide down for 300 meters then the warden cautioned us to keep right, knarly rock, high brush and those blasted alders kept us company for 6 hours. Our lake we so sought had dried up as had the creek on the topi map, a mere mistake the warden forgot to mention, which meant back tracking on a lower contour only to be sought by tundra, tuffs of earth that might cushion your foot if it didn't fall over, our aging hips were screaming. In the back of my mind I kept  hearing Jim Gaffigan, a comedian, rolling on about how his parents loved him and thus never took him camping and we were doing this on our own accord. The vast open corridor was magestic from our camp sight just above the glaciers creek and we celebrated our achievement with an extra ration of hash, silver lining always exist, you just have to look really hard at times. While waiting for a heard of caribou to move through we swated flies watching the colors of the skies change and discussed Irish literature and how to inject it into our next year curriculum.
Day 3 God blessed us with a lovely hidden glacier route up the far right flank and within an hour we were at the pass. I leapt up Mt. Descoli part way as we knew hours of fun lied ahead in the river. Just when we thought we'd out  smarted ourselves the high waters of the afternoon caught us stranded bushwalking, something I'd vowed not doing after living in Interior BC for half a decade and being part of the search and rescue crew that did it all to often. Lest to say we got out, never enjoyed a shower so much in Haines Junction and ventured down the road to Kathleen Lake.
The evening interpretive talks on Inland Salmon, and Grizzlies, 2 nights in a row were brilliant, the warden was extremely well versed for 26 years old, serving tea and intellect were a welcome exchange. We'd decided to hike up the King Thrown, having read the sign stating 1300 gain, it felt refreshing without our heavy loads, albeit, the 500 down hard scree took a toll on our aging knees, today is a rest day as we plan more hiking down in Haines, Alaska. Best of all to you.