David and Enid at lunch spot on Angelcomb Mountain
It is almost too good to be true. Today was our second good day of weather in a row. Although it was never a completely clear sky, always obscured somewhat by high haze, it was a warm day, with the temperature over 22 °C by noon.
We had a great sleep, with no noise in the campground overnight, and no rain drizzling on the tent. We both slept in until almost nine am today. While it’s still very light here at night, it’s also darker than in Inuvik, with some sense of twilight and morning.
Today we hiked up on Angelcomb Mountain. We started by pulling off the road at a siding, and simply struck off across the tundra. At first it was just short dwarf birch, but by picking our way we could get through parts that weren’t too thick. As we got higher up onto the ridge, the small brush ended, and we were in alpine moss and short grass. We kept climbing, and just before lunch spotted a trail coming from the north of where we were. We followed this up to a large rock outcropping that sheltered us from the wind while we ate lunch. It was warm, and the wind was strong enough to keep us bug free.
After lunch we continued to follow this trail, and climbed quite high to about 1650 m, though not all the way to the summit of the mountain. It would have been another kilometer or so of walking atop the ridge to get there, so we started back down. On the way down we followed the trail to the gravel pit where it starts. We met a couple on the trail, formerly from Candle Lake, but now living in BC. We chatted with them for quite a while, and learned that this is the Angelcomb trail. However it isn’t advertised by the information centre, I believe because it is where the Dall sheep have their lambs in May and June.
The views from the heights are spectacular, and Enid is getting less intimidated by them. She felt quite proud of her accomplishment today in getting up so high on an exposed ridge.