Prince Rupert, BC >> Stewart, BC (via Rte 37/Cassiar Highway) with a side trip to Hyder, AK 290 miles ridden/6.5 hours
My first night of camping over, I’d soon learn how much longer it takes to strike a tent than set it up.
Diffused light emanated from the gray cloud canopy that hung low in the sky – making the journey shorter for the rain that fell from it – and as I packed up my ridiculously small one-man tent, I surveyed my surroundings: Although the parking lot I’d set up camp in abutted the Skeena River, there was no direct access to the water, so it wasn’t a boat launch. Maybe it was a rest stop for anyone unable (or unwilling) to keep on trucking ‘til Terrace, BC, the next town on the Yellowhead Highway.
As I found out the previous night, there was a set of train tracks running along the roadside opposite. The frequency of locomotives rolling by was not, as Elwood Blues once put it: “So often you won’t even notice,” but it didn’t matter. My first time sleeping on a concrete mattress, I was out like a light shortly after zipping up my sleeping bag. I partially attributed this to the mind-numbing boredom of the last four hours of the nighttime ferry ride, although the fumes emanating from the jerry can may have played a role as well.
From there, I turned north on the Cassiar Highway (Route 37), bound for Bear Glacier Provincial Park near Stewart, British Columbia. Stewart neighbors Hyder, Alaska, the southernmost settlement in the 49th state accessible by overland road. Although traffic at the border is light – and there are no guards monitoring people entering America from the Canadian side – the lone Canadian border patrol agent I met took her job very seriously. She gave me the third degree, asking if I had guns, nunchucks, throwing stars, swords, or other assorted weaponry on me. As if any of that would fit on the bike!
Hyder, Alaska is a sparsely populated outpost; a dirt road runs through “downtown” and the biggest attraction seems to be Bear Glacier, Salmon Glacier, and bear viewing. However, at the park entrance, a ranger greeted me with the sage adage: “No fish, no bears.” But I saw my first bald eagle, so that made up for it. Bears were becoming almost as common as rain at this point.
As I was settling in at camp, the two KTM riders sauntered over and asked if I hadn’t picked up a sleeping pad that rolled off one of their bikes during the day’s ride. Eyeing my gear, they seemed hard-pressed to believe everything I carried was indeed mine. Trust me, there was no love lost when they took off the next morning without saying goodbye.
Nightlife options being limited, I hit the coin-operated(!) showers before I got any riper and hunkered down for the evening. Although I wasn’t getting much exercise, I was sore every day. And after another day of riding, my throttle hand was slowly but surely turning into a bear paw. For now, time to hibernate.
