Sitting here in Queen Charlotte City waiting for the ferry to load. It will not leave till 11 pm and it is only 6:30 pm now so time to write about recent experiences in Canada’s north.
Since I last wrote – well, I have fallen totally in love with the north. Steve, not so much so I guess we won’t be moving here. But there is a profound and utterly peaceful beauty here that speaks to my soul. The winters? I know, I know.
But the people who live here revel in the winters. For one thing, I have noticed a proliferation of artists and creative personalities that is out of all proportion to the general population. And they are good. Every little town has a museum/gallery featuring the arts and crafts of the locals and they are not hokey. Not at all.
Seems like every little town also host a summer arts and music festival. We missed them, sometimes by days so when we return I will plan my itinerary so that we hit these festivals one after another.
Atlin is one of those big little towns that is renowned for its arts and music festival. Have no idea how they manage to draw such a crowd (2,000+ this year), because it is an awkward town to get to. It is in BC but to travel there you have to follow the Alaska Hwy through the Yukon almost to Whitehorse. Then you nip south into BC for 97 km down a gravel road which opens onto one lake after another, each mirroring the mountains towering over. Finally, you come to the grandaddy of them all, Lake Atlin.
But of course, I am thinking like a Vancouverite. We are so egocentric. Atlin probably draws its crowds from Whitehorse and Watson Lake, only hours away.
Atlin is a product of the gold rush but it’s dramatic beauty and accessibility to the coast by boat through the lake system turned it into a tourist destination for the well-heeled travelers of the 1920s and 30s.
It’s a real funky little town with its own spirit. No restaurant, but you are welcome to the Friday night pot luck at the recreation centre. If you don’t have anything to bring go see the lady at the General Store – she’ll find you something to take.
We stayed at the Norseman RV park and marina right on the lake. It’s owned by an old geezer from Abbotsford who comes up every spring to run it. He’s not much on fixing things up – the restroom is a Johnny-on-the-Spot. But he has location, location, location. And he’s not expensive - $13 per night and that includes electricity.
A local fellow keeps his Beaver floatplane tied up in front – although not tied up so much as on the fly. He was up and down all day, contracted to fly tub after tub of salmon in from the aboriginal fisheries up the river. On the “out” trip he strapped 2x4s and sheets of plywood to the struts for somebody’s project somewhere.
“Our tax dollars at work,” the geezer wryly commented. Apparently you could also rent him for a flight-seeing trip over the glaciers - $600 for an hour. We’ve seen glaciers.
But the constant activity amused us through a long and mellow afternoon.
The next really interesting little town we wandered into was Telegraph Creek. You find this by following the Stewart Cassiar Highway south to Dease Lake. At Dease you make a right turn towards the ocean and follow a gravel road west for 112 km.
The road is quite the adventure. In fact, the travel guide we were looking at called it an “expedition.” We could not resist. Narrow, cliff hugging switchbacks with steep hills boasting 20% grades. Holy cow.
Telegraph Creek is another of those gold rush towns that transitioned to tourism because of its location on the river system. In this case, it sits in the spectacular Stikine River Valley, widely lauded as “Canada’s Grand Canyon”. That might be over reaching a tad, but there is no doubt that this trip was worth every one of those 112 km of gravel there and back.
There is a lodge at Telegraph Creek. Called the Riversong, it is located in the historic 1898 Hudson’s Bay trading post. They cater to river rafters and nuts like us who have to see what is at the end of the road. You can sleep over at the lodge or camp in their parking lot for $7.50 (use of toilets and showers).
In our case we carried on a further few kilometres and set up camp at the free forestry service site on the river. This is a beautiful spot with a sandy river bank. The locals have a fishing camp directly next door. A few minutes after setting up an elderly native lady came by to tell us that a grizzly sow and her three cubs made a habit of walking through this area so we might want to relocate to one of the sites off the river.
We thought, no. We would be careful – keep our bear spray in our pocket and a sharp eye out. We hoped that from the safety of the van we’d get a chance to see her and the babes, but no luck. The night passed peacefully – although her paw prints were all over the sand in the river bank beside us. We did see a lynx though and that is apparently quite a rare sighting.
Final place I have to tell you about in this email is Stewart/Hyder.
If you look at a map, these towns are just off the Stewart Cassiar Highway, with Stewart in BC and Hyder in Alaska. They are so close that they actually share a joint chamber of commerce and Hyder uses Canadian money.
There is no US customs service but there is a Canadian border service when you cross back into Canada from Hyder. Apparently our government is concerned about us Canadians overdoing the cheap booze and tobacco. Unfortunately, no cheap gas as Hyder’s one petrol pump is non-functional.
Stewart is nothing remarkable – an economically challenged town that shows its struggle on its face – a main street with too many boarded up storefronts.
Hyder is the real draw – dirt roads and RV parks, bars and bears. Yes, grizzly bears. The Fish Creek Wildlife Observation facility is 3.5 miles north of Hyder. This is the place that is renowned for its spawning salmon and its fishing grizzlies.
But to my mind there is something even better because if you keep going about 12 miles beyond Fish Creek you find yourself welcomed back to “Beautiful BC – the best place on earth” and traveling alongside the Salmon Glacier. This is one massive glacier – just spectacular. But the really cool thing is that the road actually carries you higher than the glacier so you are looking down over it. I’ve never seen anything like it before.
Then if you keep going down the road another few kilometers you come on another glacier, this one calving into a glacial lake. Keep going another few kilometers and you come on a massive valley stretching forever into the mountainous horizon.
Very few vehicles come out here – it’s a rough gravel road that intimidates, but is not nearly as bad as it looks just out of Hyder. Well worth the effort to travel into this wilderness paradise. Very few people do so you find yourself alone with the wind and the wild.
This is where our self-contained van proved its value. We pulled out onto a natural promontory over the far glacier, put on the kettle and spent the night listening to the ancient ice grinding and groaning its way down the rock face.
When we returned to civilization we were asked, “Did you see the grizzlies? Four of them live up there.” No, sadly we did not. Saw a huge paw print in the soft dirt at the side of the road so perhaps we were investigated in the night. But no visuals on that.
So we returned to the Fish Creek Observatory. What this consists of is a long boardwalk that is suspended over a shallow gravel creek. Apparently every species of salmon spawn in this creek so there is normally an ongoing run of some kind or another. The grizzlies, therefor, show up at the creek to gorge on the salmon.
Except this year. This year the fish are not returning in great numbers so the grizzlies are staying in the bush. One young fellow, probably a teenager in grizzly years did show up to graze on the grass bordering the creek. He was a beautiful fellow – sleek and healthy with well-defined musculature.
That actually has the wildlife officers concerned. By this point in the season the bears should be looking fat and cuddly, not sleek. If the salmon don’t show up soon the bears are going to start looking beyond the grass for something to fatten up on before winter.
Time for us to leave, we thought.
So we moved on down the Stewart Cassiar Hwy to Terrace, a great little town with an excellent municipal campground on the river. Great place to get the van cleaned up, re-stock the larder, have a shower, do laundry.
While we were busy housekeeping the cell phone sprang to life for the first time in weeks – it was our son, Aaron. He works on the tugs, traveling up and down the BC coast pulling barges around. He was going to be landing a barge at Kitimat the next morning, just a scant 70 km down the road.
So off we went, spending a beautiful night at the Moon Bay Marina where Douglas Channel ends at the town of Kitimat. This well-planned little town was actually built from scratch specifically to house the workers of Alcan, the Aluminum smelter and now Eurocan as well, the pulp and paper mill. So it’s a really pretty town, residential areas well separated from industry and parks with great views of the water.
We had some “fun” trying to figure out where he would be coming in the next morning. Locals were helpful in giving us the heads up on how to get past security – “Just drive on through like you own the place.”
So we did that, cruising on past a lot of big equipment in the works yards then down some private “Do Not Trespass” roads that finally, about ten km later ended up on the private, Eurocan docks. We were challenged at the docks but when we explained our purpose there were lots of smiles and “Just stay clear of the equipment.”
So the next morning when we were sipping our coffees at the marina, watching the channel, we caught Aaron chugging into port pulling the hugest barge I’ve ever seen. Great to see him after two months and interesting to watch him and the other guys doing their thing.
So, with him back enroute to Vancouver Island with another barge we had to figure out where to next ...we were not due back on the coast for another 10 days.
We’d never been to the Queen Charlotte Islands and they are just across the pond from Rupert. No reservation so we had to get up at 5 am and go standby – no problem. Fares are stiff. For 2 passengers and one 21-foot van - $566. That’s for a 7-hour crossing return.
The Queen Charlotte Islands have been stimulating. To do them justice I’ll do so in a future report. For now, suffice to that they are as wet as their reputation. This makes for mystical, moss-shrouded forests that look like something out of a Disney movie. Spooky and ethereal and spiritual all at once. Expansive beaches that go on forever. Disappointing, at first, to realize that they are predominately rocky. But once you get walking on them you realize these rocks are like none you’ve ever seen before. I am carrying BAGS of them back to study.
There are only 90 km of paved roads on the Charlottes, but we’ve put 563 km on the van – we’ve been up and down every logging road on both Graham and Moresby Islands. If there is something to see, we’ve seen it. Poor van, in two months it’s aged ten years, I’m sure. But it’s all great.
Much more on all that later. We board at 11pm and will be spreading our sleeping bag and pillows on the lounge floor of the Queen of Prince Rupert – people who plan last minute trips to places do not snag cabins :)
Ciao for now.
.
