We had plans this weekend. Christina’s 30th birthday fell on Monday, but to celebrate we were going to go to Kluane (yay!) on Friday, camp, and then do an ass-kicking hike at Kathleen Lake called “King’s Throne”. It was going to be epic. And then the weather gods got in the way—the ENTIRETY of the Yukon Territory had rain forecasted for the weekend… and even thunder and lightning for Kluane. Boo-urns, no one wants to spend their 30th birthday with third degree burns, so we needed a new plan.
Saturday morning, I had been up for all of 8 minutes when my phone rang: Christina said “Judith and Sara are leaving in 30 minutes to do Caribou Mountain.” And so it began. Caribou neighbours Nares, my hiking nemesis, and Carcross is adorable… but also had rain in its forecast. Judith said “yeah, well, they always give the same forecast to Carcross as Whitehorse, and, seriously: they’re 70km apart. We’re climbing it.” Turns out that that 70km made all the difference—we were in a rain shadow, as my photos will show: surrounded by ominous clouds, and Whitehorse being deluged, we had found the one and *only* place in the Territory that was dry and sunny. And for what will follow, I should apologise, because this is a photo dump. I can’t help it! It was gorgeous and I couldn’t choose from the photos I took—that’s the downside to the digital era, I think… so here we go, and I hope they tell *something* of a story…
Stop 1: 1 hour into the “100% climb” hike, we broke for lunch, and I broke out my camera… 
Spirit Lake!
A meal with a view: 
“Are those clouds getting closer…?”
Birthday girl action shot:
Stop 2: 2 hours into the 100% uphill hike—and we’ve got some real altitude. That’s Montana Mountain over there, with the snow:
Along the Caribou ridge…
One of us was on Day 14 of a liquid diet after a BAD infection from wisdom teeth removal, and began to get over this whole hiking thing. So at this point, we decided we had bagged our summit as much as we would, and out came the sparkling wine: 
The dead soldier: 
…being the world’s saddest drinker, a bottle of wine split between 5 people was still too much for me to be able to climb *down* the mountain, now that I was up it—so we had a snooze and a hangout for awhile. Absolute perfection: 
Oh god. I have to go *down* that?!
Or, maybe *up* more? 
Why isn’t there a third option?
The cloud fetish continues…
And our blissful day seemed poised to end in a deluge—can you see the wall of water coming our way from Whitehorse? 
And so, returning to our desire *not* to die by lightning strike on a mountain, we took our leave quickly… with this behind us: 
and, paradoxically, this in front:
And that was Caribou—or, two thirds of Caribou Mountain. Now that was a hike. 🙂 
Lessons learned: eat a banana, drink more water, have a more substantial lunch, and duct tape—lots of duct tape—equals hiking happiness.
waywayupthere 