Rafting The Snake: Another Excerpt - Milk Creek

This will be the last excerpt from Rafting the Snake: A Journey Through the Yukon's Snake River Wilderness that I will place on my blog. If you find the comments below interesting, you may want to buy the book!  It is available from Amazon and Friesen Press, and any bookstore can order it for you.

​It was hard to believe how milky Milk Creek was. This fast-flowing tributary of the Snake entered its parent river with great force, but the two waters were reluctant to mix. For at least one hundred metres there was a sharp demarcation between the white waters of the Milk and the brilliant blue of the Snake. I was given to understand that it was the temperature difference between the two rivers that was the main reason for this phenomenon, and not the heavy white glacial limestone sediment of the Milk.
It was a magical place, and we spent some time on the beach where the two rivers met. Up the Milk Creek valley stood the stony massifs of the Bonnet Plume range. A little downstream, a spectacular flowerpot-like rock crowned by half a dozen black spruce trees rose up from the river. The Milk Creek valley was another potential hiking route to Mount Macdonald from the shores of the Snake. According to Wild Rivers of the Yukon’s Peel Watershed, a hike up Milk Creek leads to the base of a stunning glacier. The glacier is no doubt the source of some of the glacial sediment that gives Milk Creek its remarkable white colour.