David and Enid's Travels

Kleanza Creek

The rushing water right behind our campsite tonight is a pleasant change from the sound of rain which pelted on our tent all last night.  Although we drove through rain for most of the morning it has now stopped though it hasn’t cleared up and the sky was heavily overcast for much of the day.

We stopped at Gitanyow Village just before noon and viewed the totem poles there.  It is a pretty typical small northern village, except for those poles.  There are quite a large number of them.  A number were carved right to the top, but many had only the first few feet carved, then a long bare pole topped with the totem.

The drive along the Skeena River is pretty with the river on one side and the high green moss-covered canyon walls on the other.  Occasionally there were some stretches of fast water in the river, but there are very few rapids.

We pulled in early to this campsite about 20 kilometers east of Terrace, BC.  As it is the long weekend starting tomorrow (Friday) many of the sites are reserved with a “one night only” placard.  We picked what seemed to be the nicest site along the river, open and a bit more sunny, and as there are only three or four other camping units in the park, we had a large number of vacant sites to choose from.

The tent went up, and the sun came out, so we were able to dry the fly on a line before putting it up.  So the tent is pretty dry, although the sun wasn’t very powerful and the sunny break only lasted for about an hour.  Tonight is cool and damp, but at least it isn’t raining, and we have a nice campfire to keep warm.

Bald Eagle at Fish Creek, eating salmon

This is a first tonight. We are in a provincial park that has wireless Internet access, and it actually seems to be quite a bit better than what we had in Stewart. I suppose that service will continue to improve as we get farther south.

First this morning we went back to Fish Creek. We saw no bears but did get some great pictures of a bald eagle eating on one of the dead salmon. We talked to a wildlife photographer, Robert Small, who has taken several of the pictures that are published on the interpretive signs at this site (as well as a cover of National Geographic). He has been here taking pictures for seventeen years.

It was very dull and cloudy out today, but not raining too much, and he suggested that we go up to the Salmon Glacier which we did. He told us to check out “The Bearman” at the summit, who is a Canadian camped up there, and selling videos of the bears in the area.

Unfortunately the clouds were very low so that when we arrived at the summit we couldn’t see the glacier at all. We did stop and photograph several of the waterfalls along the way – and there are many – as well as some of the old and abandoned mine sites along the road.

The road is narrow, and winds around the edges of the mountains. As we got past the summit the road is not regularly maintained, but is used by the mines in the area. With the price of gold now over one thousand dollars an ounce, there is a great deal of mining activity going on with many of the formerly closed mines being reworked. At several locations on the road huge boulders had fallen from the cliffs, some as big as our vehicle. If they were just a few feet farther out the road would be completely blocked.

Summit Lake is interesting, as now it is completely dry, and there are only many blocks of ice that mark its location. Several years ago the lake was full of water, and flowed out to the north into upper Boswer River. In December of 1961 the water broke through to the south (a jokulhlaup), flowed under the glacier, and catastrophically flooded the Salmon River. The lake now cycles through filling and draining every year.

We returned to Fish Creek, but saw no further wildlife, just more of the dying chum salmon struggling to spawn in the water. We left Stewart and drove to Meziadan Provincial Park, which is a very nice campsite, and did see two more black bears grazing along the road.  After supper we went for a walk along the lake.  The shore is broken shale, and there are very interesting erosion patterns in the rock.

Shortly after we got back it began to rain.  It rained all night, and is still raining this morning (September 2).  The clerk at the store didn’t tell me that they shut off the Internet access at 8 pm, so when I went to post this last night, it failed.  We are going at least as far as Terrace BC today, and then we will  see how far we go.  It will definately depend on the weather.

Grizzly bear with cub

Tonight we are in the King Edward motel in the border town of Stewart, BC.  This morning it was starting to get cloudy, and as we drove south along the Cassiar highway, it began to get more and more cloudy, and eventually started raining just about noon.  It rained off and on for the rest of the day, more on than off, and so we changed our plans.

Along the way we stopped at “Jade City”, a city in name only, as there are 25 permanent residents.  It is the outlet shop for the jade mines in the area, which apparently are some of the largest suppliers of jade worldwide.  They had many interesting carvings, most of them far out of our price range, including an inukshuk of jade that stood about a metre high.

Our plans had been to camp at Meziadin Provincial Park, and drive in to Stewart tomorrow, but because of the rain we decided we’d go in today and try to get a hotel room.  We phoned from a payphone (no cell phone coverage up here) at the small hamlet of Iskut and made a reservation for a room with a kitchenette.  It is good that we did, since it is really wet here today.

We had no intention of camping here as it is famous for the number of bears, both black and Alaska brown bears.  We stopped at the information centre, and the lady at the desk suggested we go up right away to the bear viewing area, as there has a mother grizzly with cub visiting there in the evening.  We drove up and just as we got there the ranger said that the bear had just arrived.  We got some great video of the two bears eating the dead Pink salmon in the river.  There were many salmon swimming up stream, but the bears mostly just ignored them and gorged on the many carcasses of dead fish that were in the water.

The bears are across the border just a couple of miles up the road in Hyder, Alaska.  There isn’t a US customs post, but you do have to check in with Canada customs to get back.  I guess there are very few people living on the US side, and if you got in there is no where to go except back out through Canada.

Its about sixty five kilometres in to Stewart from the Cassiar highway.  On the drive in we saw two black bears.  Neither paid much attention to us, and one just stood in the ditch grazing on the grass as we took its picture.  There are also many glaciers along the way, and a lot of waterfalls running down the sheer cliffs of the mountains from glaciers on top.  Stewart doesn’t have a very cold winter since it is right on the ice free “Portland Canal”, a ninety mile long fjord connected to the Pacific.  It does get a lot of snow though, the sign in the tourist information centre claiming it to be ninety two feet, the greatest anywhere in the world.

Boya Lake, BC

Tonight we are back into British Columbia after travelling south along the Cassiar Highway.  It was cold last night, but sometime after midnight it began to cloud over, and then the temperature stabilized, and didn’t go below freezing.  Fortunately it didn’t rain, or it would have been very chilly.

We saw a small black bear along the way today before we left the Yukon.  It stood in the right hand ditch for a while, then walked onto the highway and stopped, but as soon as it saw us it took off across the road and into the bush on the left side.  We also stopped early this morning at Teslin Lake.  It is a very large lake, as most of them here seem to be.

After lunch we started south on the Cassiar into BC.  The highway is supposed to be a lot of gravel, but we haven’t hit any yet.  I saw smoke just off the road shortly after we left the junction with the Alaska Highway.  Very soon we were into an area recently blackened by forest fire.  This went on for several kilometers, and you could smell the charred bush in the air.  As we got farther and farther south you could see patches of smoke off in distance in the burned area.  Then just before we reached the end of the burn there was one area that was actively burning, just off the edge of the road.  A large spruce was aflame, and the needles would explode in a burst of fire, until shortly the whole tree was burning.

That was the end of the fire, and after that we continued on south to this park.  The lake is very beautiful, not large, but parts of it are emerald green and reflect the low mountains that surround it.  It seems to be quite popular, as there were quite a number of campers who arrived in their vehicles after we got here. We hiked for a ways around the lake after our tent was set up, to a place where there was a small beaver dam on a narrow channel joining two lakes.  I walked across the dam, which wasn’t very solid, but good enough to get across.

Tonight is calm, and there are a few clouds.  Across the lake against the mountains it is raining, and there is a part of a rainbow in the golden glow of evening.  The sun has set and it gets cool once the sun drops, as it now has below the mountains.  Although it is still light, the power of the sun is gone, and the air is cool.

Summit area west of Fraser

Enid and I have now walked on the Chilkoot Trail, at least the first few hundred metres.  This morning we drove to Skagway (or Skaguay, as it has and continues to be spelled both ways) which is just a bit more than an hour from Carcross. 

However we first stopped in the town of Carcross, where we got our water container refilled at the visitor’s center, and then Enid went shopping in the general store across the street.  I didn’t make it there in time to pull her from the store, so by the time I got there after filling the water container, she’d already decided she needed a new pair of mitts.  She said “I am not taking them to Australia!”

I do have to admit that they are nice mitts though.  Then on the way out she spied some caribou tufting, though nothing really caught her eye.  However, the clerk at the till said “we have lots more on the other side” and proceeded to point them out as well.  We did find a very nice work that made its way into our travel purchases.

Along the way we stopped at Log Cabin, the historical site which was the Canadian customs post on the White Pass trail during the Klondike gold rush.  There is nothing there now but a number of information signs.  It is where the White Pass and Yukon railway crosses the highway, and by coincidence a train came by, so I got some pictures.  The train was only half full.  Two hikers also showed up there, as you can hike out eight miles from the end of the Chilkoot trail to here, instead of taking the train back to Carcross or Skagway.  They were quite excited to have finished the trip, which they had done in three days.

Around the border is very interesting topography.  It is a high alpine area with may pothole lakes, and rugged stone, called the “moonscape” area.  At one spot there are hundreds of inukshuk that tourists have built all over the rocks.

At Skagway we walked around the old town, which is very definitely a tourist trap.  Almost every other store sold jewellery.  You could get everything from very high end carvings and sculptures for up over ten thousand dollars to very cheap costume jewellery for just ten dollars.  We did find a very nice teapot in the Russia Store, and it too is now on its way home with us.  We hope it will survive as the clerk packed it really well, and we’ve got it stowed away in a safe part of one of our packing tubs.

After shopping and a brief stop in the museum, we went the short distance to the old site of Dyea.  Now there is nothing there but the decayed remains of a few buildings, though once over five thousand people lived here during the Klondike gold rush.  There is also a cemetery where a large number of the gold seekers are buried who died in an avalanche on April 3, 1898.  This is also where the Chilkoot Trail starts, and it does so very steeply.  It definitely would have been a challenge for the Klondikers to have had to haul a ton of supplies across this trail.  And this isn’t even the steep part!

Tonight we are camped at Squanga Lake campground on the Alaska Highway.  We did look at the Tagish Campground on the way, but decided that it wasn’t really very good.  This is a very nice site beside a lake.

Carcross desert

We decided as we were leaving Whitehorse that we had enough time to visit Skagway for a day, so we drove south to Carcross.  Tonight we are camped in the Tagish/Carcross First Nations campsite at Carcross.  It is a nice site, similar to the Yukon government sites.  We wondered why it didn’t show up on our Yukon Government Campgrounds map, but seemed to be marked as a campsite on the highway map and is described in our guide books.  Unfortunately there is no water here.  That didn’t bother us as we filled up in Whitehorse, but another couple left when they learned from us that there was no water here at all.  You would have to go into Carcross to get water.

Along the way we passed the “Carcross Desert” which is a very large sand area of dunes on the shore of Bennett Lake.  Apparently this is the remains of an ancient glacial lake that has long ago dried up, and now the wind blows the sand into these dunes as it is uncovered by the river.   There were several ATV’s out on the dunes, and a couple of parasailors.  The parasails didn’t seem to be working very well, so perhaps it wasn’t windy enough, though there is a westerly breeze tonight.

Moutains of Kluane National Park and Kluane Lake

We passed the 10,000 kilometer mark yesterday, and still have many more to go before we return.  Although it was a long drive, and very rough road through the Beaver Creek area, it was still beautiful to drive along the mountains that make up Kluane National Park.  It is definitely fall now, and cool at night and in the morning.  It didn’t freeze last night though, so it’s not the coldest night we’ve had.  It’s so cold in the morning that Enid actually likes to wash the dishes, as it warms her hands!

We drove a long way yesterday after we found that our tire couldn’t be repaired, since we decided that we would go to Whitehorse and get new tires.  Since it is Saturday todaywe wanted to make sure we got in before noon, and drove all the way to Haines Junction, stopping at the Pine Lake campground about 8 pm Alaska time.  Since the Yukon is on Pacific Time we’ve lost an hour, so that we arrived at 9 pm Pacific, and it was getting dark by the time we had a quick supper and got the tent up.  This morning we drove to Whitehorse and found a place to get four new tires, so the reason for the late night and early start was justified.

We will now be heading down through the BC interior to Prince Rupert, where we take the ferry to Vancouver Island.  We may not have any Internet access for the next few days.

Trans-Alaska pipeline

Well, two actually, as it’s our second time here, but now we’re on the way home. 

It rained about three o’clock, but the fact that it was cloudy also meant that it was fairly warm all night.  It stopped raining before we rose, and the sun was out enough to make things reasonably dry.  We drove to Delta, and stopped along the way at the Trans-Alaska pipeline.  It is interesting construction, since almost all of it is above ground, and it zig-zags to allow for thermal expansion and contraction.

We stopped at Delta Junction to see if we could get our tire repaired.  However the service station said they wouldn’t do it until two pm, so we left and drove in to Tok.  There is a service station on the outskirts of the west end of town, and we stopped there to get the tire fixed.  However, the winch that lowers the spare was jammed, and it would only come down about six inches.  The repairman tried and tried to get it down, and eventually gave up.  I decided to try again, so I raised and lowered it a few times and gave it some pretty intense kicks, and finally it broke free.  We were then able to get the tire mounted on the other rim.  The old tire was ruined.  It had a big bulge in it where the plies were broken, and so we just left it there.  We will probably buy two new tires in Whitehorse.

Speaking of Whitehorse, that’s where we’ll be tomorrow.  We plan to stop somewhere in Canada tonight, and then will go in tomorrow to re-stock with groceries.

Tundra colors and the Alaska Range

Two flats today, but only one of them was ours.  More on that later.  It was very cold in the night, and the inside of the fly was covered with frost when we awoke.  Even after it had hung in the sun for an hour, there was still some frost on it which I shook off. 

We drove back as far into the park as you can drive a private vehicle looking for moose, but saw nothing at all.  However the colors on the hills and tundra

were again beautiful with red, oranges and yellows, and we could see the top of Denali this morning, as there were few clouds.  Later on we got a great view back to Denali as we drove east along the Denali Highway.  This road which goes between Cantwell and Paxson is hardly a highway, though it is as good a gravel road as we’ve been on, though quite rough where they were doing some construction.

We stopped at the Nenana River put in, which is where they launch canoes to float down the 18 miles to the highway.  A short while later we stopped at a pullout, and climbed up the hills to the south for great views both north and south into the Alaska Range.  The colours of fall are just spectacular on the tundra.

It was not much farther down the road that we came upon two vehicles pulled off into a gravel pullout.  A woman was standing waving her arms, so we stopped.  They had had a flat tire on their rented half ton truck, and they could not figure out how to lower the spare tire from the winch that held it up under the truck box.  The other people that had stopped to help them out weren’t able to get it to work either, though the man had slid under the truck and was trying to loosen the spare with the jack.  I tried too with the mechanism, but you couldn’t see it, and it was not very easy to tell how it should work.  There were no clear instructions in the owner’s manual.  Finally I pounded it on with the hammer, and was then able to winch it down some, and we got the tire part way down.  When we had done that, we could push the tire aside enough to see the winch, and I realized that we were trying to use the bars provided backwards.  By turning it around it fit well on the winch and then we were able to get the tire down.  After that the other couple left, but I stayed and completed the tire change for the man and his wife.  They were from Florida, extremely appreciative of our help, wanted to pay us, but of course we refused that.  However we did exchange email addresses, and they invited us to stay with them sometime in the future in St. Augustine.  Who knows, perhaps in our travels we will take them up on their invitation.

So that was tire change number one.  It took us at least half an hour.  We continued on the Denali Highway, and by now the clear morning had become quite cloudy.  There were some very large thunderstorms building up to the north of us.  We stopped to take some pictures of some trumpeter swans on a tundra lake, and there was a tremendously loud crack of thunder as I was getting back into the Yukon.  We saw no lightning at all, so it must have been sheet lightning above us.  At 21 miles from Paxson the road is paved, so I felt that we had weathered the gravel road ok.  No sign of a flat tire.  That was not the case, as about 50 miles up the Richardson Highway the “Check Tire Pressure” warning light came on; we pulled off the highway, and had our third flat in the rear passenger side tire.  It was quite cold and windy as we unloaded the back of the Yukon, including the large supply of wood we’d picked up from a free camping area, and proceeded to change the tire.  I no longer trust this tire so plan to get it removed tomorrow in Delta Junction, and put on the best of our two spares in its place.

There was a major rain storm that hit us just after Paxson as we drove by Summit Lake.  Fortunately it had cleared by the time we got the flat, and as we got farther north the weather continued to improve.  Again we had talked about getting a room in Delta Junction if it was raining, but because it was so nice as we arrived here we thought it would be ok to camp.  In fact we put up a clothes line and everything is nice and dry again as there was both sun and a breeze.

We are on the east bank of the wide Delta River.  It is at least a mile wide here, but really is just a bunch of braided streams.  All along the way up this highway there was creek after creek, each one grey with glacial silt.  Either the creek, or the branch of the river closest to our campsite is very clear water though, so we got water from the river to replace the terrible chlorinated water that we got in Denali.

Alaska Range across the Delta River

There are many glaciers in these mountains, and across the river you can see the high snow-capped peaks of Mt. Moffit, Mt. Stroud, and McGinnis Peak in the Alaska Range.  It will probably be quite cold again tonight, as there are so many glaciers around us, and it never got very warm today, just about 15 degrees Celsius when we drove in here tonight which was the warmest part of the day.

Bull Moose, Denali national park

The night was miserable.  It rained almost constantly until around four this morning.  I lay awake thinking “what an incredible waste of money the bus tour we have booked tomorrow will be.”  Nevertheless, we awoke just before six and after a quick breakfast where it did look like the clouds were breaking, as there was a bit of a sunrise, we were ready for the bus at 7:15

By this time the clouds had descended, and we were completely shrouded in fog.  I wore my hiking hat, and commented that I was an optimist.  Everyone at the bus was trying to be positive, but really it didn’t look like much of a day.  That turned out to be the wrong prediction, as in a few hours the day had turned very nice.

Within a few miles of the start we saw our first wildlife, a bull moose grazing in the tundra.  He had a very large rack, and most of the time had his head down eating.  By the time we reached our first rest stop at an hour and a half into the trip, there were some breaks in the clouds.  Things kept getting better, and shortly I spotted a Golden Eagle sitting on a cliff.  We also saw two groups of Dall Sheep on the way in, and three Grizzly Bears, what appeared to be a sow and two yearling cubs.

At the Eielson Centre we hiked up to the ridge on the north side.  This was about a four kilometre hike with an elevation gain of a bit over 300 m.  The trail was well maintained so the hike was quite easy.  It took us to the top of the ridge, so that you could see both the Alaska Range mountains to the south, and the other mountains and valleys to the north.  The views were great, though Denali only poked its summit above the clouds for one brief moment.  We were able to see many of the other lower snowcapped and glaciated mountains clearly.

The fall colours of the tundra were spectacular.  There are reds, oranges, yellows, greens, and browns all intermixed.  Sometimes the sun would shine on a patch of golden or red leaves highlighting it so that it stood out brightly.  At other times the entire broad plateaus were intermingled colours as far as you could see.

Dall Sheep, Denali National Park

On the return trip we had to wait for a second bus.  However it wasn’t a long wait, just about ten minutes.  Coming back we saw the same types of animals as we had seen on the way out, Golden Eagles circling in the sky, Dall Sheep, and Grizzlies.  However, we saw all but the eagles much more closely.  The Dall Sheep were eating the leaves from the trees right beside the road.  A couple of them walked nonchalantly and very slowly down the road as our bus driver followed them.  All the sheep were rams, and they were quite complacent about each other, and the tourists, so obviously the rut has not yet started.  Next Enid spotted three Grizzlies.  They were very large, about a mile away, and two of them were chasing the other out of the small river.  They moved incredibly fast as they charged the smaller bear on shore.  A while later we saw another bear, smaller than the ones in the water, but very close as it walked right in front of the bus, crossed the road, and then ambled up the side of the hill beside us.

Everyone on the bus was quite tired, and a few of the passengers had fallen asleep.  It was a very pleasant day in a spectacular park.