I skied into this school of fish on the way upstream as well as downstream. The fish would part as I tried to ski over the school attempting to get a good photo. Finally I just had to wait and they slowly got closer and closer to me but in a much looser group than before. After the trip we found out that these were a whitefish. Mountain whitefish I believe. I had never heard of them but there they were... about 200 of them in all. Oh, that ice is pretty cool isn't it? It was about 8 inches thick in this spot and crystal clear.
There were several large cliffs with rock that looked pretty friendly for those inclined to test their skills on their faces.
After a good night's rest in the cabin Bob and I were joined by Matt as we decided to go up to a little peak near the terminus of the Popof Glacier. (Photos from another trip near Popof are in the archives - August 2007. You'll have to scroll down a little before reaching the trip photos.) As we were walking the flat floodplain we ended up drifting to the left of the ridge and valley we desired to ascend. We had to backtrack to get around the ridge and into the valley where our route was. As we were attempting to go around the ridge I noticed a slot in it and decided to see if it was a shortcut. Turns out it was, and a pretty impressive little shortcut at that. Bob gave it the nickname "Quentin's Canyon of Consternation" which I liked. The Canyon did resemble a slot canyon but as far as we could tell, no water was flowing through it. There were overhanging cliffs and huge boulders. In one area we had to take off our packs and skis to crawl through a little tunnel under a large slab type boulder to get to the other side.
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