Bjorn Dihle
"A few years ago a friend and I floated down the Inklin, then down the Taku, and paddled home to Juneau. We felt like we were beating winter out of there. The leaves had fallen, and it was pretty low water. Super beautiful. The canyon on the Inklin might be one of my favorite memories on the Taku. You’re going along, pinched in this teeny little canyon, and you look up and there are mountain goats all along the edges. It’s a surreal feeling to be in this little canyon, looking up at mountain goats not too far away.
We also hiked up the Tulsequah to No Name Lake and checked the mine out, then floated out the Tulsequah. The upper Tulsequah had some pretty interesting paddling. And seeing the Tulsequah Chief — it’s such a reminder that it’s been leaching acid since the ‘50s. It’s just this one little crappy mine, and it hasn’t been cleaned up.
It’s a reminder of what is going to happen in the future, except on a much larger scale with these mines. People promise anything, but if B.C. can’t clean up one crappy little mine — if there’s not the care, and energy, and economics to clean up one little mine — that’s just completely telling of what the future looks like for this region.”
– Bjorn Dihle, wildlife film guide, lifelong Alaskan, and author of “A Shape in the Dark: Living and Dying with Brown Bears in Alaska”
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