Atlin!!!

During the course of my global wanderings I always liked to seek out the unusual and out of the way places. I wanted to find and authentic experience, not just a generic touristic holiday. Thus, instead of Annapuna I went to Dalhagiri, instead of Arusha, I went to Amali. To Puerto Williams, Sucre, Dodoma, Megahalia etc etc. Places it is unlikely most people have heard of and few have been to.

Coming to Canada has not dulled that thirst for the unique and remote and my job has the added advantage of taking me to remote places. For the most part though I am in the bush with my truck, far from towns in endless forest, with a view of little more than trees. Sure the drives are great and the scenery can be stunning, but I long for more.

I was lucky this week to thus visit Atlin. If I was backpacking through Canada, Atlin is just the sort of place that I would seek out and spend some time in. Because not only do I like to find interesting and unheard of places, but I enjoy spending time there. Why go to the effort of hunting out these gems, only to pass through.

Unfortunately I do now work and only had a day in Atlin. But I will be back. With only 400 people living here it is a small town at the end of a 100km long dead end road, the turn off from which it starts been a further 90km from Whitehorse, the nearest town. Decidedly remote. And as such they use our Satellite internet services, which brought me in along the mixed gravel and tarred road on a cloudy Tuesday morning. Being the dead of winter the sun only started to get up around 10, shortly before I came into town. Still, there was enough light around for me to enjoy the view and pull over to the side of the snow covered roads more than once to take a photo or two.

Coming in a grand total of 3 cars were seen on the road, 1 more than I saw on the hour and a half long drive out.

Atlin began life as a spin off of the famous Klondike gold rush of the 1890's with a little gold being found some way from town. The area itself is truly stunning and I think this natural beauty has been enough to keep the town going. Located next to the largest natural lake in British Columbia, the town looks directly across on stunning mountains, which made an appearance out of the ice fog as I rolled into town.

My work in town involved a service call to replace all the components of our system and this took the better part of two hours to have up and running again as before. The guys in our NOC (network operations centre) wanted to watch it a bit before I left site, so I had a couple hours to kill. I took a short lunch in the only place in town to serve food and then went on a bit of a walk around town, taking in the lake front. The lake is all of 300m deep and thus takes a long time to cool down in the winter. Although most other lakes in the area are under a sheet of ice, the lake here was still lapping its crystal clear waters on shore in places. This resulted in an ice fog above the lake as the warmer water laden air left the surface. The surrounding ring of mountains came into and out of view, and the fog itself gave an at times eerie and lovely light to photograph. I took a few shots, some of which are the best I have taken in a while. I particularly like the shot of the house overlooking the docks, with its menacing sky which is at the start of this post.

The town now survives on a summer tourism trade and was mostly boarded up for the winter. Indeed the only shop in town had closed its doors for the winter, resulting in the petrol station being the main place of trade. During the summer the lake must be stunning and it runs right up to the glaciers that carve directly into it in the south. This is something I want to see and the single government agent, Glen, liked my suggestion of a summer holiday return enough to offer his boat. He was an interesting character in himself, having lived here for 9 years as the sole representative of all things BC government. He has also traveled extensively and we chatted a bit as the satellite system passed its testing hours with flying colours.

It was with reluctance that I left around 5pm, with the light almost gone for the long trip back to Whitehorse and my hotel room.