The opposite bank is tantalizingly close, just a couple of meters away. In fact, it would be fewer than 10 paces on solid ground. Instead, we can only gaze longingly across the un-crossable, raging river that stands between us and the next section of our route. We are stuck on the west bank of the Duke River. It’s a crushing defeat. On a normal hike, this would be a mild inconvenience, but we are on day six of a backpacking epic that is far from normal.

View of a scenic upland section of Kluane National Park

The Donjek (Dän Zhùr) Route

We are on the Dän Zhùr route, also known as the Donjek route in Kluane National Park and Reserve. It’s a 110-km trek through rugged Yukon wilderness. The Parks Canada description advises the traveler that it is “a route not a trail”. It’s a suggestion of a journey without any consistently or clearly marked trails. Instead, it weaves together the crumbled remains of old mining roads, tundra meadows, horse paths, scree slopes, and creek beds to bring you to the toe of the Donjek Glacier, an impressive, 56-km surge glacier spilling down from the icefields of the St. Elias Mountains. While photos of the glacier look incredible, the real appeal of the trip is the potential for pristine wilderness and true solitude, a hike that sees only several handfuls of groups annually. But this is also a route where people have gone missing and where groups routinely require rescue.

I stashed the Impreza about 100 meters up a gravel road at the end of the route, and we secured a ride to the trailhead, 16 kilometers up the Alaska Highway. Things started easily enough with an old double-tracked mining road leading to an abandoned camp about 5 kilometers in. As we continued to climb, the willows gradually encroached until the last semblance of a path disappeared into a marshy lake near the 19-km mark in the Burwash Uplands. It was late August, and resplendent fall colors were setting in: the fireweed a burnt red, the tundra grass golden yellow. I was excited about the prospect of easy meadow walking, but as I would quickly learn, the Donjek gives up nothing easily. The short tussocky grass was a spongy uneven mess of vegetation, and the poor absorptive properties of the permafrost meant that random puddles lurked, waiting to swallow your boot. The unrelenting sunshine coupled with the sluggish travel forced us to camp in the tundra grass near a tiny creek. As I scanned the tundra, there were no trees, no animals, no wind. Just silence.

We continued to toil through this terrain the following morning. Distances are difficult to judge in this vast open landscape without any clear frame of reference, and hills that appeared only a few hundred meters away would take an hour or two to reach. We happily left the tundra behind at Burwash Creek, following it upstream to another abandoned mining road that had eroded down to a small footpath at the 30-km mark. It was littered with fossils, jasper, and quartz. Dall sheep dotted the surrounding hills. I was eager to summit Hoge Pass and begin the descent to Hoge Creek.

The Parks Canada route description is maddeningly vague. The description warns that some gullies are dangerous and impassable. After some argument and a lot of reconnoitering along the ridge, Trish picked a gully that appeared best and seemed to match the route description. The 1-km steep descent to the creek took an hour and a half of carefully picking our way down loose scree. Travel and navigation had been arduous, much more challenging than anticipated. Camped deep in the canyon, the isolation felt like a millstone.

The following morning we enjoyed more straightforward travel along Hoge Creek until it neared the Donjek River. The creek wash provided a superhighway for the wildlife of the area, with wolf, elk, caribou, and grizzly tracks attesting to their comings and goings. We took the ranger’s advice, veered inland onto the bank above the Donjek River, and found an overgrown old horse trail meandering through the alder, birch, and willows of the boreal forest. This provided smoother sailing to the 48-km point where we set up camp in a creek wash overlooking the majestic Donjek Glacier, the largest glacier either of us had ever seen.

The isolation, which felt like a sickening weight descending Hoge Pass, melted into euphoria while traveling along the Donjek Glacier. The reward was a true sense of the sublime: the stunning beauty and vastness of the glacier coupled with its inhospitable and destructive nature. We could hear the groan of the glacier, see chunks of ice falling off; it felt acutely dynamic in a way the surrounding mountains did not. Our quiet reflection was disturbed by winds that whipped up a sandstorm from the fine glacial silt. With grit in our eyes and teeth, we reluctantly retreated to the meadows away from the glacier to Bighorn Creek. The silt continued to plague us at camp, as the night’s drinking water from Bighorn Creek was completely turbid and looked like mud.

Day five marked the commencement of the return leg, and the spell of the Yukon was beginning to wear thin. We climbed out of the valley, gaining over 1100 meters scaling Expectation Pass and then Atlas Pass. Dall sheep keenly observed our progress, seemingly unsure of whether we were benign or dangerous. Pressing on from kilometer 62 to 75 was laborious, and by the time I summited Atlas Pass, I was shattered. The panoramic vantage from the top was overwhelming, with mountain beyond mountain rising toward the horizon and valley beyond valley carving the slopes below. After the knee-straining descent, we followed Atlas Creek for another 6 kilometers to where it met the Duke River, hobbling into camp after a marathon 10-and-a-half-hour day.

The crux of day six was crossing the Duke River, and after the misadventure of failing to cross, I regretted not waking up earlier. Because the rivers and creeks are fed by glaciers, as the sun warms and melts the ice, water levels rise. A family of caribou teased us by easily fording the river and shaking off the water into a halo of mist, backlit in the morning sun. After taking a 6-km detour, we finally found a viable crossing point where the Grizzly Creek tributary met the Duke. The euphoria of crossing was short lived, as climbing out of the river valley to Cache Lake involved several hours of grueling bushwhacking. Willow-bashing on the steep hillsides in the afternoon heat was frustrating and led to what felt like endless bickering about the route choice. But finally, like a mirage, Cache Lake shimmered into view, nestled in the most inviting valley I’d ever seen.

Challenging hiking and expansive views were both plentiful in Kluane National Park.

Reflections on a Backpacking Trip through Kluane

This was the theme of the Donjek experience: every day more challenging, every obstacle more onerous, every navigational decision more involved than anticipated. There’s a raw sharp edge between problem and solution in this environment. But managing this adversity provided me with a more vibrant sense of the place. Nothing forces you to pay attention to the land more than moving through it. You develop a keen sense of whether there may be a game trail ahead, how the slope of the valley may lead you to water, how the braiding of the river may provide safe crossing. Not only do you feel connected to the land, but you feel more bonded to your travel partner. Your partner is your lifeline, trailblazer, pillar, navigator, friend. The day to day adversity taught us we had a stronger trust and certitude in each other than we realized. This is the reward for stepping outside your comfort zone into the unknown; of being brave enough to try something difficult, something a little bit different from your normal.

Back in Haines Junction at the Mile 1016 Pub with dusty hands and achy feet, sitting in actual chairs for the first time in a week, I clink my cold glass against Trish’s and ask, “What’s our next Donjek?”

Need to Know

Information

Parks Canada has a route description available online. Registration and backcountry permits are required for all overnight use in Kluane National Park and Reserve between April 1 and November 15. The use of approved bear-resistant food canisters is mandatory. The Donjek route is in remote wilderness.

Best Time to Go

June to mid-September. Yukon weather is unpredictable and snow may fall at any time of year, but this is more likely in early June or mid to late September.

Getting There

The closest international airport is in Whitehorse, Yukon. The park’s visitor center in Haines Junction is a 1½-hour drive west of Whitehorse, and the trailhead is a further 1½-hour drive northwest on the Alaska Highway, just past Burwash Landing.

Maps and Books

Natural Resources Canada topographic maps Bighorn Creek 115 G/3, Donjek Glacier 115 G/4, Steele Creek 115 G/5, Duke River 115 G/6, Burwash Landing 115 G/7. Kluane National Park Hiking Guide, 4th edition by Vivien Lougheed.

Editor's Note: This article by Daniel J. Kim and Patricia Veinott originally appeared in Issue 56 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here for additional photos and content.