September 12, 2008 by
Harry
Of course we took the road less travelled 
Highway 37, The Stewart Cassiar Highway, or simply The Cassiar Highway.
All names for this infamous road, almost 1000km long, known for the
lack of services, bad weather, bears and gravel patches. The latter
issue had been solved we had been promised, but the other?
2nd September: Nugget City - French Creek, 58km
The adventure started sunny, but dark clouds appeared, especially on
Ivana’s face when she noticed the first set of hills. “is this going to
be like that for the rest of the road?” she asked. I truly did not
know, but suspected that this was just the beginning…
Fortunately some nice people made our day by donating a full bag of
cut-up watermelon, just what the doctor ordered as the sun had come
out. Unfortunately the wind had come to and after a week of tailwind, we were not happy to have it in our face again, slowing us down.
Ivana spotted a black bear, right beside the road, I must have raced
right past him on the downhill. At least that made her a bit happier
and when we also found a nice deserted rest area called French Creek
where we -after hanging our foodbags in the trees- could relax near a
good campfire.
3rd September: French Creek - Jade City, 72km
We woke up to a sunny day and followed the road into the mountain
range. Clearly this road was not made for tourism or speed. This was
not only noticable in the many small ups and downs, but also in the
lack of services along the way. We passed the blocked turn-off for the small town of Cassiar,
after which the highway is nicknamed. It does not exist anymore, it’s a
ghost town after demand for its asbestos dried up and access to what is
left is now restricted.
Just before we entered the small First nation town of Good Hope lake,
where some of Cassiar’s residents moved to, I stopped to film Ivana
passing me in front of one of many ‘Wonderful lakes’ we had seen today.
In any other place, such natural beauty would be lined with parking
lots, jetskis and tourist services, but here it is just part of the
rugged landscape. I noticed Ivana had stopped and was gesturing wildly.
“Did you see that?”
“What?”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, then I don’t know if I saw it! What did it look like”
“I saw something cross the street. I could not see a tail, but long
legs and it was dark coloured. It sounds strange, but after browsing
through all mental images of animals in my mind I think it came closest
to being a monkey!”
After some debate we decided that it probably was not a new species
of Canadian monkey, but what was it? Just behind us was a sign next to
the road, saying: “watch for wildlife, next 10km”. Ok, so we agreed:
the animal Ivana had seen was ‘a wildlife‘, a very useful description of all future unidentified animals…
Good Hope lake promised to have a supermarket, which was good, as we
were almost out of food. We noticed a girl with a baby, loading things
in a car.
“Is this the supermarket?” we asked, pointing at the damaged
building where she had appeared from, while a small dog-like creature
(wildlife?) barked annoyingly at our boots.
“You caught me just in time, I was just about to head out”, she
said. This was true in many ways it appeared. Not only was she about to
close the shop for the day (at 2 ‘o clock in teh afternoon), but also
for the season, which became painfully clear by the roughly 23 items
still left for sale on the dusty shelves. Fortunately it included some biketravellers staple diet: spaghetti & noodle soups!
The wind was not so bad here and we entered Jade City
while it was still light. The signs ‘Free Coffee’ and ‘Free Camping’
were both irresistible. We checked the place out, which is basically
not more than a collection of some buildings and a shop where all kinds
of jade thingies are being sold. We helped ourselves shamelessly to the exquisite collection of hot drinks and got to chat with Robin & Claudia and stay the rest of the day, having to pitch our tent in the dark.
I had proposed to Ivana on the summit of Kilimanjaro, 3 months before,
but as I only had a carabiner at the time, we did not have rings, we
both do not like too fancy jewelry anyway. We found some nice, simple,
cheap -and green- jade ones in the store: perfect!
4th September: Jade City - Rabid Grizzly, 88km
We had heard some animals near our tent and the next morning we saw a big black fox
cross the road. After a brief climb we enjoyed many nice downhills
between logged and replanted forests and yet more Wonderful Lakes and
snowy peaks.
Ivana had stopped in front of me and I saw she was looking at a fox
which was hiding in the grass. Though quite shy, his curiosity
apparently won as he came very close to us. We were not only enjoying
being around such a wonderful creature, but also that we could take the
tame and play with him for an hour or so. In the meantime maybe 3
trucks and 2 RV’s passed, at which moment we had to chase the fox off the road…
We got a triple ‘Cassiar-surprise‘ at the end of the day:
rain, very steep hills and gravel, a great combination to ruin your
day. We had though that we could maybe make it to Dease lake, but were
beat after the muddy uphills and called it quits at the interestingly
named Rabid Grizzly (though other travellers also referred to it as Rabbit Grizzly as well as Rapid Grizzly) rest area. It still rained, so we cooked inside the small toilet.
We had to evacuate it soon after as a passing car carried some
passengers that needed it. A few minutes later they came back, stopped
and gave us bananas, noodle soups and other goodies, great! It still
surprises us how generous so many people can be towards total strangers
that might be considered bums or even hippies by others…
5/6 September: Dease Lake
After the rest of the more than 20km long hilly gravel patch we arrived in Dease Lake.
Not exactly a very wild place, hardly alive at all. But it had a very
well stocked supermarket with an ATM, so our moods were indestructible,
we wouldn’t have to go hunt’n for a week!
After our bellies were finally full we went looking for a Wifi spot
and found a great one in the learning center building, also housing the
small library. When we were working, a van stopped and a guy came out,
lit a cigarette and asked with a heavy french accent if we were online.
It turned out that he and his friend were driving the support vehicle
for a totally different kind of cyclist: Swiss Jean-Philippe Patthey is trying to set a record time for cycling from Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia. What will take us about 3 years, he s trying to do in roughly 130 days!
As ‘Jean-Phi’ arrives on his recumbent bike a bit later, we are
amazed to hear that he started only 2 weeks before. Furthermore, when
we will arrive in Seattle, he will be in Panama…
It is impressive as he is not the youngest cyclist. But he is not
carrying anything (all his gear is in the truck), he does not have to
arrange any logistics, places to sleep or food (his team does that) and
he has no time to meet people or see places along the way, which is our
main goal.
Ivana is very happy when she finds out that Jean-Phi is the
logistical partner and friend of Mike Horn and that she had been
reading about him in one of Mike’s books.
We had secretly camped behind the Library as we could charge our batteries from our tent and do some online back-ups on our Elephant Drive while the connection was good.
The next day another van appeared and two fit Californians introduce themselves: Megan and Guy. It is nice to see their small van, a great contrast with the 10+ m Rv’s we saw before.
While we were having lunch with them, and older woman passed us and
stopped for a chat. She mentioned that she would come back later and
that she might have her propane tank filled by then, so we could take a
a shower if we wanted. That sounded great, but when darkness came it
cold very cold and so we quickly fixed our tent again. We did hear a
car late at night, but we were deep inside our sleeping bags as it was
close to freezing outside.
The next morning we found a note, starting off with: “Dear
Travellers”, explaining that her shower was ready and that we were
welcome to come by for breakfast. Signed: Holly Eden (see her picture here). It was accompanied by some great tasting cookies, all packaged in plastic to protect them from the rain and morning dew.
We did get our shower from Holly, as well as a great breakfast.
While we were cooking an Indian man came by, with very long hair. He
was more impressed with our hair -both quite long by now- than our
trip. Holly and her church work with him and of his friends, many of
whom have had serious problems with alcohol. He told with wild gestures
about his recent quad-accident and then went out to help a neighbour.
When we had said goodbye he came towards me and offered me a small
bottle of whiskey, secretly hidden in a pocket. I told him ‘no thanks,
I do not drink that’ and he took off without saying a word with an
expression on his face that showed anger, shame, disbelief and pride at
the same time.
We headed out of Dease Lake, climbing almost 400 vertical meters non
stop. We passed Gnat lake pass, with 1100m our second highest point so
far on the trip. The landscape was probably pretty, but the rain and
cold wind took away any joy that was left.
What goes up must come down and we were treated to some excellent
downhill sections. Alas, it was raining and we ended up going down on
8% muddy gravel with many potholes, which was no real fun anymore.
At the bottom of the slope we ended up at the Stikine River bridge.
Holly had told us about a friend of hers that lived on a ranch, close
to here, so we went to find him. It was further than we though, but we
arrived at a large clearing with several buildings.
Willie Williams (Please see his photo here) is a great man and he invited us in immediately and even let us sleep in his old house, lined with memories.
8- 11 September: Stikine River Ranch - Meziadin Junction, 288km. 2800m up, 3500m down..
Willie insisted that he would take us and our bikes with his pickup
back to the road, over the bridge and halfway up the first hill. When
we saw the muddy 8% uphill gravel road we were glad we took his offer..
We spend the night at the Kisaskan campground, arriving very late,
in the dark. It was a beautiful place, next to a lake. You have to pay
for it, but there was no self-registration and no park warden, so we
got away cheap.
The day promised much good as it was very sunny, but soon we met the culprit of the day: a fierce wind
pushed us back the entire day, exhausting us totally. Thanks to some
huge downhills we managed to arrive at the Bob Quinn lake rest area
(more like a parking space, next to the road, but it did have a
toilet/shelter and bear-containers).
The 10th was a rainy day, a very rainy day. We made it to a wooden
shelter about 25km passed Bell 2 Lodge, under which we could make a
campfire and pitch our tent.
Ivana got quite nervous in the night as she heard footsteps and
noises near the tent. I was too sleepy to get bothered, but the next
day we found quite some mouse scat on our Ortlieb bags
We were now in a new river valley and the going was easy and the
forests and valleys beautiful. We met some Dutch people at lunch who
prepared a nice lunch for us!
Alas, the ‘venom was in the tail’ as we say in Holland: we were
treated on some steep and long climbs out of the valley and some
old-fashioned Rollercoasters to top them off and we were happy when we
arrived at the Meziadin Junction. There were some abandoned buildings
there, in which we could pitch our tent, but it all looked a bit
spooky. we decided to pay for the acclaimed campground next to the
wonderful Meziadin lake.
We were glad we did after hearing from 2 South African motor-biketravellers, Johan & Charmaine
that they spotted some black bears near the buildings, less than 5
minutes after we decided not to crash there! It was the first time that
Ivana had ever heard afrikaans and though she recognized some Dutch
words, she could not make it out (’it’s an older code, Skipper!‘). This is what they wrote about us on their site:
Daar het ons ‘n egpaar op fietse ontmoet, Harry (Holand)
en sy vrou (Argentinie) ry hul fietse vanaf Prudhoe Bay na Usiua, en
julle het gedink ons is braaf?
After I had to ask the RV next door to finally shut off their
outside (!) generator, we could finally sleep. Most of the infamous Cassiar Highway
was done. We hated it at times, but already missed it before we were
done with it… First we were going to go on a nice little side trip
tomorrow: on the 37a highways, towards the small towns of Stewart &
Hyder, Alaska!
———-
Below is a rough map of the section described above. For more detailed and an overal map, see the route map page here.
Related posts
Tags: Angels, Annoyances, biketravellers, British Columbia, Canada, Cassiar Highway, First Nation, Fox, green, Indians, Into The Wild, Jade, Mountains, Native, Wind
