Upper L’ehéeni (Klehini-Glacier-Porcupine)

Just before Haines Highway enters Canada, it traces the north bank of L’ehéeni, no-transl river (Klehini), in a rather dry-feeling valley—rainshadow of cloud-winnowing summits along the border with Glacier Bay National Park. South of the river, less-traveled Porcupine Road accesses a land of rolling hills underlain by productive, mostly limey bedrock.

Upper Klehini has a history of mining and logging. Cutting units here are coded by decade; yellows earliest & reds latest. Red outlines show proposed Baby Bear sale, as of 2021.

L’ehéeni south side has been heavily logged beginning with prime spruce stands on karst and alluvium in the 1960s, moving gradually west into less productive hemlock (“the best of the rest”). As of summer 2021 further logging is proposed. Prospective cutting units are red-outlined on hillshade, for comparison with matrix forest condition, ‘current’ (2014) and in prelogging (1948).

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