July 8-13, 2022

Another multi-day post.

July 8, 2022

Spent the day in Stewart without going to Hyder.  The steep gravel road up to Salmon Glacier would probably be even nastier in the rain and mist would have made glacier viewing iffy.  So, with the Bus Restaurant gone, there was little incentive to cross the border into Alaska.

NOTE:  For more pictures of Stewart and of Salmon Glacier see August 10-12 postings under the label "Alaska 2019."

This is about all you could see of the mountains
most of the time.

An attractive corner store.  You can see how the 
cliffs and mountains overhang the town.

There's an extensive boardwalk extending out into a wetland area at the head of the Portland Canal, the fjord that ends at Stewart.  In the distance I could see a ship waiting at the long sloping conveyor that I assume is used to load ore. There's a picture from the Hyder side in one of my 2019 posts.  The young woman at the visitor center told me that currently the ore is all gold and silver but that copper may start up again soon.  The ore is trucked from the mines, some of which one passes on the Cassiar Highway.

The start of the boardwalk.  If the resolution is good
enough, then zooming in you can just make out a ship
waiting to be loaded.

There were a lot of berry bushes in the marsh so I wonder if the bears come there to forage.  The boardwalk must be a great bird watching spot.  

I liked this foot bridge.

Had a pretty good bowl of soup at the Mexican restaurant.  Ate dinner at a pizza place across the street. That was not so good.  I much prefer thin crust pizza.  This was thick crust and larded with cheese.  I ordered a medium thinking a 10 inch would not be enough. I left half unfinished.

July 9, 2022

I think I've described the road from Meziadin Junction to Stewart before.  It's really half of the reason to take the side trip to Stewart.  Well, one third of it. One third is Stewart and Hyder. The other third is Salmon Glacier.  Anyway this road has everything that characterizes this part of the world.  Lush forest, madly rushing rivers, towering cliffs, glaciers.

Intermittent  sunny and heavy, threatening overcast.  The latter won out as I approached Dease Lake. Had planned to camp at a site on the lake a few miles past the town but the sight of the Northway Motor Inn was just too enticing.

Cassiar Hwy:  Traveled this in 2018 in the opposite direction  If I ever finish assembling posts from 2018, I'll put up some photos. I remember it as a much rougher road and more of an adventure.  It seems that the BC government has been improving it since then.   I also remember it as much prettier,  but that could be the weather or even the direction. The views may be better heading south.  There were still some nasty dirt and gravel sections, actually mud and gravel given the recent rain and plenty of potholes.  I'll see what the last 145 miles from Dease Lake to the 37 Junction is like tomorrow.

I don't know what these roadside flowers are.

A fuel stop. Not sure where. If you have a 100 mile range,
then this highway is not a problem fuel-wise.

Just another seemingly endless corridor 
through the trees.

In 2018 I spent 2 nights on the road staying at Boya and Kinaskin Provincial Parks so made a more leisurely trip of it then. Racing all the way up to Dease Lake and a motel felt like cheating.

July 10, 2022

About to leave the Northway Inn.

Remainder of Cassiar up to 37 Junction reminded me more of the last time I was here.  It's a narrow paved road, no markings, no shoulder. Basically a long corridor through forest.  It's very curvy and very hilly with the kind of hills where you can't see over the crest until you are on the crest and staring down.   A roller coaster.  There is one segment a couple hundred yards long where the road bed was built up to smooth out a deep gully.  With no shoulder and almost vertical embankment it had the feeling of riding across a bridge with no railing.

I saw a brown bear mom with two cubs.  The cubs were cavorting in the middle of the road when I spotted them from a few hundred yards and slowed.  They ran back to mom who was in the underbrush next to the road.  She kept an eye on me and I on her as I slowly rode past.

Typical scenery.

More typical scenery.

Junction 37 where the Cassiar meets the Alaska Highway.

Went to the Big Creek Government Campground 25 miles west of 37 Junction.  It was quite nice but it was just 2:30 and the mosquitoes were swarming.  I couldn't face idling there all day swatting mosquitoes constantly and doubled back to Watson Lake east of the junction and a motel.  This feels like a turning point.

Heading west to Big Creek the scenery was the now terribly familiar corridor through forests.  But once in a while it rose momentarily above the level of the treetops and I could see out over a vast ocean of forest to far horizons.  "Vast" is a descriptor that come to mind over and over up here.

Somewhere in the last few days I saw a fox crossing the road - one more animal to add to the wildlife list.

Watson Lake is one of the full service stops on the Alaska Highway.  There are plenty of motels and a campground just outside town.  I chatted with a couple of bikers who stayed at the campground.  They said the mosquitoes were terrible.  This is no exaggeration - I think the mosquitoes around here right now are almost as bad as the black flies in Labrador I encountered in 2017.

Weather was pretty good.  Windy with alternating sun and clouds.  For the most part the clouds did little more than threaten and occasionally emit a little misting rain.

July 11, 2022

Good weather though windy again - one of the themes of this trip.

Began with a short ride up Hwy 4, the Robert Campbell Highway, which runs some 300 miles up to Carmacks.  I had thought at one time of exploring it.  It's southern terminus was a block from my hotel. I quickly encountered a lighted sign saying it is closed - I think due to fires farther north.   I kept going just to see where the pavement ends and dirt begins. After 6 miles came to a service truck and a barrier.  I chatted with the sole worker there who offered to call his supervisor to see if I could proceed.  But I wasn't interested in  going further.  He informed me that the pavement ends about 60(?) miles on.  Incidentally, there is a nice sounding government campground, Frances Lake Government Campground, about midway between Watson Lake and Ross River. The latter is the only outpost with fuel between Watson Lake and Carmacks.  Carmacks is on the way to Dawson City near the beginning of the Dempster and Top Of The World highways. I"d heard earlier of road closures in that area due to fire.

Stopped briefly to look at Sign Post Forest, a landmark in Watson Lake.  People have hung signs from all over the world.  It's hard to believe that someone would carry a street sign from Germany all the way here, but apparently they do.

A bit of "Signpost Forest."

Kleinblittersdorf, we know what happened
to your sign!

Now the fun began.  I headed east intending to reach Fort Nelson.  Making good time I stopped for lunch at a cafe near Muncho Lake.  Wrong-way-itis took hold and I forgot which side of the highway I was on and left turning right instead of left.  The sky was overcast and gave no clue about direction.  There were no signs. I headed back west.  The scenery looked different going the opposite way, but I really should have noticed.   Nevertheless, I didn't realize the error until approaching a very familiar looking bridge near Liard Hot Springs, a distance of about 70 miles!  

This nice bridge was the clue that I was
going the wrong way.

Finally got straightened out and headed back toward Fort Nelson.  I noticed that anger made me more aggressive riding.  Anger is a bit of a drug.  This didn't combine well with fatigue so I stopped to camp at Toad River Lodge.  

Toad River turned out to be probably the nicest commercial camping spot I've ever encountered:  grassy spot for the tent, a picnic table and a kitchen sink and electrical outlet (!!) under a small shelter.  And quiet, but for the occasional passing truck.  Also, washroom with shower, laundry, restaurant and gas pump.  All for $42 (Canadian). My site was next to a large pond containing an abandoned beaver lodge. The pond was nothing to look at in the evening, but lit up in the morning light when swallows circled catching their breakfast on the wing.  The swallows had their mud nests under the eaves of a nearby building.

In my experience you don't find commercial tent sites
this nice very often.

Wildlife sightings during the ride were abundant: a moose, a family of goats licking minerals from the road surface, one moose and dozens of bison.  The bison were big but sort of lanky compared to those I remembered from 2018 farther north.  Indeed, today I read somewhere that there are two varieties and the northern variety are the really bulky, menacing looking ones.  Even these were as big as me plus motorcycle and I kept a respectful distance and did not linger to take pictures.  The goat family - I assumed it was a family - included one larger which seemed unperturbed by passing vehicles while mom and children that ranged from a tiny one to nearly grown teenagers trotted a distance away every time a car approached.

Mountain goats.

Their coats were scraggly.  I'm guessing they were 
still shedding their winter wool.

You get lost in the vastness up here.

July 12, 2022

A nice sight to wake up to.

Short ride to Fort Nelson.  I decided to stay here for the night.  The road east and then south from Toad River is very twisty and hilly.  Again a roller coaster where you can't see what's over a rise until you are already committed and past the crest and plunging downward. Pity any frustrated truck driver behind me as I slow at a crest unwilling to dive blindly into the unknown.  I try to let them past me since they all know the road and are unafraid.

There were numerous traffic stops requiring a pilot
car to get past road sections being repaired or upgraded.
One yesterday was an especially nasty, hilly, muddy 1 km
jaunt on a bypass around the section of the highway that
washed out last week.  Kudos to crews that managed to open
the bypass in just a couple of days.

Shortly before town I passed the turnoff for BC-77 which runs up toward the Liard Highway which I once contemplated riding.  It is some 300 miles of dirt and gravel across the Territories to Fort Simpson (there sure are a lot of Forts around here) near Yellowknife. That put an idea in my head.  Tomorrow with good weather I would like to ride up to Fort Liard and either camp there or return to Fort Nelson.  

July 13, 2022

I took a shot at riding up to Fort Liard, a distance of about 130 miles.  I was anticipating pavement until the Northwest Territories border followed by dirt.  In fact, the pavement extended another 5 miles about 110 miles from my start point.  When I reached the beginning of the dirt it didn't take long to decide to turn back.  The road was rutted and muddy from rain.  I didn't fancy 20 miles of that on a heavily loaded DR so turned around.  I'd had enough of slippery mud the last few days in construction/repair sections of the Cassiar and Alaska Highways.

The decision to turn around was made easier by the fact that I'd filled my spare fuel canister before leaving Fort Nelson.  Otherwise, the round trip would have been at the bleeding edge of, if not over, my fuel range.  Score one for preparedness.  Carrying spare fuel gives you more flexibility to change plans en route.

Some 20 miles up the Liard Highway (BC-77) I hit a 9 or 10 foot break in the pavement.  It was only a one or two inch drop onto gravel between the two lips of pavement, but hitting it at 70 mph it felt like more when the tires hit the edge on the far side.  I rode on dreading the squirming that would indicate a flat tire.  But nothing happened.  I got off to check both tires but found no visible damage.  There still could be some internal damage but score two more points, one for my obsessive habit of topping up the air in my tires every morning and one for using heavy duty inner tubes.  I'm not sure standard tubes would have survived the high speed impact., especially if the tires were not completely aired up.

Southern part of the Liard Highway. 
We've seen this scene before.

Most state boundaries in U.S.A. are not announced
so proudly.

Interesting construction of this restroom at 
the NWT border.  Note caged rock walls and
double thick Corten steel entry.   Are they worried
that bears or bison might try to use the facilities?

Wildlife notes:  Heading north I saw an inky black form disappearing into the undergrowth, almost certainly another black bear. Coming back a young black bear bounded away from the road toward the shrubbery.  Probably the same guy.  It's too young to  have learned that these monsters on the road won't chase it.

Farther north was a group of maybe a dozen buffalo.  These were the "northern" variety with the massive heads and shoulders.

An odd looking bird about the size of a large pigeon attempted to run across the road as I approached. We missed each other by inches.

I was going to say something glib about Fort Nelson but changed my mind.  My first impression was that it looked like it is dying with many closed businesses.  But walking around I found many open shops and not just necessities like food, liquor and fuel but a health food store, a pizza parlor, a boutique of some kind and so forth.  There seems to be community life here that has survived the Great Recession, Covid and the ups and downs of the extractive industries.