The Slims River (Ä’äy Chù) was a glacially fed

river A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside Subterranean river, caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of ...

in the Canadian territory of

Yukon Yukon () is a Provinces and territories of Canada, territory of Canada, bordering British Columbia to the south, the Northwest Territories to the east, the Beaufort Sea to the north, and the U.S. state of Alaska to the west. It is Canada’s we ...

. Until 2016, it originated in the Kaskawulsh Glacier, then ran approximately 15 mi (24 km) into the southern terminus of Kluane Lake. Over the course of a few days in the spring of 2016 the flow of the river was changed. Where the meltwater of the Kaskawulsh Glacier had been draining in two directions, now it was all draining into the south-flowing Kaskawulsh River, and further on into the

Gulf of Alaska The Gulf of Alaska ( Tlingit: ''Yéil T'ooch’'') is an arm of the Pacific Ocean defined by the curve of the southern coast of Alaska, stretching from the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island in the west to the Alexander Archipelago in the ...

, drastically reducing the size of the Slims. Researchers suggested the change in flow could be due to manmade climate change; this was the first time manmade climate change was implicated in the reorganization of a river.

Naming

The Slims River was purportedly named after a pack horse that drowned while attempting to ford the stream during the 1903 Kluane gold rush. It is crossed by the

Alaska Highway