An Island in the Sky Story by Lawrence Millman
A
tlin is a former gold mining town located near the Yukon border in the extreme northern part of British Columbia. From the moment I arrived there, I found myself staring at Teresa Island, which, crowned by Birch Mountain, rises 4,567 feet above Atlin Lake, making it one of the highest inland islands in the world.
an entire forest of lodgepole pines felled by an avalanche. The footing was precarious. A single false step could mean a sprained ankle or a downward tumble. Gernot, who was nearly seventy, sprinted over the recumbent trees with the aplomb of a mountain goat. Although much younger, I alternately walked or crawled over those same trees
The longer I stared at this uninhabited mass of rock and boreal forest, the more I wanted to plant my feet on its snow-capped summit. Finally, after I made a few queries in Atlin, I found just the right Birch Mountain, Atlin Lake. person to take me to Photo by Liz & Anders Treiberg/WeDiscoverCanadaAndBeyond.ca the summit — an Austrian mountainat the speed of a sluggish tortoise. eer-artist named Gernot Dick. Having completed our traverse So it was that Gernot and I of the fallen forest, we headed up a chugged off from the mainland in his streambed created by the summit’s motorboat. Once we reached the ismelting snow. Occasional patches of land, he chose a route that followed a ice sent me skidding and sliding in all steep avalanche chute on the northwest directions. I looked up at the summit, side. According to Gernot, this route and it seemed to be telling me, “Better would not only keep us out of the isthe sideways path than the straight and land’s virtually impenetrable forests, narrow one.” but it would also give us an opporA waterfall now blocked our progtunity for an advance sighting of any ress, so we climbed a ridge and scramgrizzly bear that might be interested in bled over more fallen trees. Gernot una human meal. sheathed his machete and slashed away As it happened, our initial ascent some of the more recalcitrant branches. took us through what a bear might As he was doing this, he admitted that have regarded as an alfresco restaurant he preferred the island in the winter, — a dense growth of raspberry bushes. when you can snowshoe or ski on top Higher up, we began walking on top of 28
The heartbeat of Cascadia
of all this debris. At last, we were above treeline and hiking up a slope that stood at an almost vertical tilt with the rest of existence. After an hour or so, we stopped to rest on an incline, and as Gernot played a medley of Tyrolean mountain songs on his harmonica, I gazed out on the world. Several thousand feet below us, Atlin Lake was an expanse of turquoise that suggested the Mediterranean rather than the Canadian North. Cumulous clouds sailed by overhead like a fleet of luminous cauliflowers. The green of the mainland forests seemed to surpass any other green I’d ever seen, even in the tropics. I informed Gernot that I was ready to make the descent. “You’re not interested in the summit?” he said with a look on his face that suggested I was a wimp. “This mountain, if you want to call it that, is only one-seventh the height of Everest…” I shook my head. For I couldn’t imagine the summit being as splendid a place as the one where I was now seated. Also, I had the distinct impression that Teresa Island wanted to be alone now — alone with its waterfalls, its fallen trees, its raspberry bushes, and perhaps with even a few bears, but without a pair of human invaders. And so we started down. ANW
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