8 Reynolds Creek to Atlantic Creek

 Reynolds Creek to Atlantic Creek


The mosquitoes weren’t too forgiving when it came to Sally’s delicious and nutritious blood.  Bravely she sucked it up and we set of at 530 into the morning.  The early start allowed us to fit in a long day.  News of inclement conditions was filtering through and as a precaution we decided to fit in as many miles as possible to put passes and miles between us and the weather.  






This morning brought a fast paced walk to breakfast by a waterfall and fast miles through meadows with a long day to get ahead of the coming change of weather.  The pace continued and we walked through meadows and dead forest.  Bark beetle is a nemesis to forests in the park.  The rarer, older trees have packets of pheromones stapled to them to deter the beetle. The proletariat however are shown no mercy. The winners on this morning were the mountain flower and our delight in munching on small edible columbine.


At Red Eagle Lake we stopped for a noodle lunch in the shade and after a short snooze were joined by ZenCo.  An ex US marine who lives in Costa Rica with his six pack and biceps.  His trail name was a promotion of his company Zen Commandos where you could join him for weeks of loud talking, one armed press ups and raw meat swallowing contests.  ZenCo left and peace returned to the lake.  


Sally and I didn’t worry so much about bears that afternoon with ZenCo ahead, I was certain that they would have left the valley that was home to Hudson Bay Creek.  We climbed quite comfortably to Triple divide pass, a point where the melt water would go one of three ways.  To Hudson Bay, the Atlantic and the Pacific.





As we headed down along side Atlantic creek we saw clear evidence of the sediment geological history.  Purple layers of oxidised mudstone, signs of the retreating Belt Sea where even a fingers width of this 7000 feet of rock represents the entire history of human existence.  Sally loved the stones with quartzite, it had a Thai dyed marble effect.  It made her day, as did ZenCo’s and the mosquitoes’ company made mine as we ate at camp.


That evening as we settled down I thought, ‘Isn’t it good, Norwegian Wood’ 🪲 


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