Hyder, Whitehorse, Skagway and Haines

When I last posted, I was in Smithers, BC, the last place for about 600 miles that was what I would normally call a town, by which I mean a place with a fairly good assortment of what we think of as urban amenities – franchise restaurants, single-purpose stores (rather than general stores), and the like. I drove through mile after mile (or kilometer after kilometer – it is Canada, after all) of spruce forests, flanked by towering mountains, often crossing or running alongside of gigantic, swollen streams. The road was paved nearly the whole way, but the nature of the paving changed from asphalt to sealcoat, a much rougher surface on which lane markings were haphazard at best. In many places the road turned to graded, packed dirt and gravel – mostly where water or slides had washed out the paved surface. One of the keys to building and maintaining roads in this part of the world is ensuring that water has somewhere to go under, rather than over the road. When culverts get blocked, the result is usually a washout or slide, necessitating constant road maintenance. North of Dease Lake, there was also an unfinished section of the road, with about 30 miles of dirt and gravel surface, heavily washboarded. The beemer now looks like it’s been in a bout of mud-wrestling. Because I’m likely to encounter much more of the same until I hit the area past Tok (pronounced “toke”), it seems rather pointless to do a thorough cleaning of the bike right now.

North of Smithers I took a three-hour detour off Hwy 37 onto 37A to Stewart, BC and Hyder, Alaska. So I finally made it to Alaska -- for about 20 minutes, before heading back to Stewart. Hyder is the southernmost town in Alaska reachable by road – and there isn’t much there. Stewart isn’t any great shakes, either -- The reason for making the detour was the trip itself, which was breathtakingly beautiful. I saw perhaps a dozen glaciers en route. I also saw a black bear, and a moose. I've heard from other motorcyclists that the wildlife gets more and more prevalent the further north you go. I also found that mosquitos are especially thick near the coastal areas. Hyder and Stewart are at the head of the Portland Canal, the world's sixth-longest fjord, and the headwaters are very marshy and swampy -- perfect breeding ground for our little friends.

It is interesting to see the difference between Canada and the US, even in these out-of-the-way places. Stewart has paved streets, fairly neatly kept houses, and services. Hyder doesn't have much of anything except for a café, a gift shop, a lot of empty buildings, and a motel that caters to bikers and kayakers. (There was a biker rally in Hyder this weekend -- I saw lots of Harleys on the road to Stewart and Hyder as I was returning to Hwy 37.)

The rest of the ride was beautiful, but in a desolate way -- fabulous mountains and forests, but hardly any people. The only economic activites are extractive -- timber, mining, etc. -- or resorts on the lakes that abound here. The resorts are pretty scrappy, though. The motel I stayed in after Smithers, in Ishkut, was very low end, but it was the only game in town (town is being way too generous -- this place didn’t even qualify as a village). It sort of reminded me of the Pedicord Apartments, by Edward and Nancy Kienholz in the Weisman Art Museum installation, or the one in Barton Fink. Norman Bates would have been quite at home. A number of the people staying there were road workers, who often do 12-hour shifts (remember, it stays light a long time up here).

From Ishkut I rode 450 miles to Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon Territory, all but the last 125 in the rain. It was also quite cold -- only five or ten degrees above freezing at times. I had managed to get all of my gear sorted out, though, so I was actually quite toasty, with the electric jacket liner doing its job well next to my body, and the waterproof liner on top of that, keeping the rain that the mesh Kevlar jacket passes from getting me soaked. The rain doesn't bother me at all -- although the low cloud ceiling made it hard to see much of the snow-clad mountaintops I was passing by. When I got to Yukon Territory, the weather broke, and I enjoyed the sunshine for the first time in several days. (I now look a little like a reverse raccoon, I'm afraid.)

Most of the bikers I see up here are on BMW GS bikes -- the off-road ones, with big, knobby tires and not much in the way of a fairing. There have been some groups of Harley riders, too, and assorted other bikers. I'd say the numbers of motorcyclists are about the same as the number of RV drivers. The traffic has been sparse, but steady. Cars or other vehicles go by every ten to fifteen minutes or so. It may pick up now that the weekend is over -- the truckers may be back in force.

Whitehorse is by far the largest city in the Territory – with 35,000 people it has half of the population of the entire province. I quickly found that accommodations Up North can be pretty pricey. I went to the Tourist Info center (it was still open at 7:30 p.m.), and they gave me good tips, and a phone to call with (a good thing, as I haven’t had cell phone service for several days). I found a decent if not very exciting motel room, grabbed an execrable Chinese dinner (avoid the North Orient Chinese Restaurant in Whitehorse at all costs!), and conked out.

On Monday, I decided to do a major loop, taking the Klondike Highway from Whitehorse to Skagway, Alaska, the ferry to Haines, and the Chilkoot Highway to Haines Junction, where I’d rejoin the Alaska Highway. These two roads, among the most famous in the Yukon region, were developments of the trails used by the miners in the gold rush of 1898. Miners would take the steamer from Seattle to Skagway, and then head over the White Pass to Whitehorse, where they would then continue up to. Dawson. An alternative route was the Chilkoot Trail from Haines – longer, but not as brutal. A narrow gauge railroad was built from Skagway to Whitehorse early in the 20^th century – finished just as the gold gave out. During WWII this area had a major military presence, and the Al-Can highway was built, with Skagway serving as a major port facility for men and materiel. Today the gigantic cruise ships stop at Skagway, the end point of their Inside Passage cruises that can start as far south as Bellingham, Washington. As a major port of call on the cruises, the downtown of Skagway is mostly tourist shopping opportunities – a huge number of jewelry shops and souvenir emporia – nearly all of which are directly owned by the various cruise lines (although this fact is not advertised). There are a few genuine places, but not many, and every time a cruise ship docks (the port can handle up to six at a time), swarms of people descend on the main street. Despite this, the town actually has a certain charm, and its architecture and history are quite interesting. I took the historical self-guided walking tour, went to the City Museum, ate a good Thai lunch at the Starfire Restaurant, and managed to talk to some interesting people before getting ready to board the Alaska State Ferry to Haines – about an hour away. There is a bit of a difference in pricing between the Washington State Ferry system and the one up here. I paid $5 for a trip from Port Angeles to Whidbey Island in Washington – with my bike. Up here a similar short crossing cost $62. (The 4.5 hour journey to Juneau would only have cost an additional $5!)

It’s raining lightly again, but I’m in a wonderful B & B in Haines – the Guardhouse B & B. It’s a renovated officers’ house on the grounds of Fort Seward, a now-decommissioned fort built early in the 20^th century when a boundary dispute arose between the U.S. and Canada. It hasn’t been used as a military installation since 1945, and the buildings are in private hands. It’s late, and time for bed. More when I’m more awake!