Airport Lake

This Saturday last I was asked to help out a young biathlete from Alkavik who is going to the Arctic Winter Games in Fairbanks (http://awg2014.org/) in a few weeks, so I spent to morning coaching him on some skiing techniques as he is the sole biathlete in his community and is training alone.; which is always hard to do. Anyways after finishing up with him I went over to Airport (Dolomite) Lake on the sled for a ride. The way to the lake is via the outflow channel that leads into the Mackenzie River. As this is a protected channel and not prone to large ice movement in the spring one of the smaller barges is over wintering here.

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/details/ships/-8744822/vessel:WILLIAM_BRADLEY

At the far end of the lake is the short cut to Campbell Lake that passes through a narrow defile that has some nice bouldering potential as numerous towers dot the initial part of the trail. There is actually a cave formation along here. It appears to be shallow frost pocket that has a water worn feature leading up and back from the depth of the feature – way too small to explore unfortunately. There could be some reasonable skiing potential in the hills along the trail when the snow pack settles more – still lots of unsupportive metamorphosed crystals off of the trails at the moment. The tracks end just as the small lake / hanging valley that empties into Campbell Lake, but the unconsolidated snow turned me back, along with whoever laid in the trail, as I was by myself. Trails end makes a nice loop though, lol.

...and some pix of the towers and such. The cave of course is a rather diminutive example of this sort of feature. The small water course does show signs of key holing and re-deposition of stone by flowing water. The mini cornice had a nice diffuse light through the back of it and the layering was interesting. The area appears to be reasonably dry in the summer so trailside bouldering options exist - other than one has to get across the lake in the first place.