Whitehorse- Grey Mt

Whitehorse has a visitor center in the proud tradition of impeccable Canadian visitor centers.  I stopped there to find out about local hiking and was given a comprehensive brochure on treks in the area.  Among the suggested was Grey Mountain, a rounded peak with a grey pate just to the East of the city.  The trailhead marked its summit at 704 meters and about 6 miles from parking to peak.

The steamboat in downtown Whitehorse that has been converted to a museum

 

A service road wound up from the parking area, around a foothill, between tall pines and birch trees, and to the cell phone tower on the lower summit.  As I hiked, the wind whispered through the tree tops and walked behind me so that I had to turn several times to reassure myself I was  alone on the trail. The trees shrank as I climbed and the brush thinned until I was walking along the bare face of Grey Mt.   Patches of snow lined the shaded crevasses between rocks and refused to melt in the hot midday sun.  People and animals had stepped in the snow and the prints had melted and refrozen into soft outlines of tracks in long lines.  Past the cell tower, a path continued along the ridge to the peak in muddy lanes carved out of spongy plants.  These plants dampened the sound of my feet and gave way with a dry crackle that was loud in the still air.

The view from Grey Mt.

 

The peak was a broad expanse of boulders arching their backs from the green like waking trolls and when I sat to admire the view, I noticed a small brass circle hammered into the rock.  “Azimuth mark US Coast & Geodetic Survey” was chiseled into the metal, “For information write to the director Washington DC”.  Under it was inscribed 1943, a token from the survey team working on the Alaska Highway I guess.