10 July, Cassiar Highway and 10,000km mark

10 July



Cassiar Highway (at least in part), and Stevie rackes up 10,000km on North American soil (literally!)

I arose early for a change to pack the bike up for a reasonable start. I bid fond farewells to Bob and Louise and made my way over to the bike shop to get the new rear tire by 9:00am. The place was in a bit of chaos with blocked hoists and other work, so once again several issues were resolved by me pulling the wheel myself.

After it was all back together I went to the local Tim Hortons for a quick breakfast, but it was not to be. There was a queue to start with, then a bloke at the table beside was an expat Kiwi living in Whitehorse, so we had a bit of a chinwag, then outside, a car stopped in the carpark to see if the NZ on the bike was for real, and they turned out to be Kiwis from San Francisco on holiday up north and very excited to find another Kiwi.
By the time this was all over, it was just after 11:00 that saw me riding out of downtown Whitehorse for the last time (this trip) and heading south down the Alaska Highway. Whitehorse is a relly nice town. There are only about 35,000 people in all of the Yukon Territory, and over 20,000 of them live in Whitehorse, but it's not too big.

I made reasonable time to Teslin, all the while worrying that I'd cocked up my distance calculations and needing to have been on the road a good 2 hours ago to achieve my goal of Dease Lake at a reasonable time. Nevertheless, I did stop off at the Tlingit Cultural Centre at Teslin, as I had yet to see much First Nation culture (except briefly at Nenana).

Totems outside the Tligit Cultural centre in Teslin

I wanted to buy an eagle ring but they were $200 and did not fit my hand that well, so I settled for a pewter eagle pin. Back over that dodgy long bridge with the steel mesh deck and just a transport run to the Cassiar Highway turnoff. I decided to eat and found myself at Sally's cafe, where I shared a table with the Alberta-based parents of the owners.
Back on the road, which is quite nice for scenery and swervery, and I had the kind of ride which reminded me more of NZ roads, although this part of the road was more swervery than scenery.

Close to the beginning of the Cassiar - looking promising so far, but them clouds is there waitin'

I managed to find some mountains and some weather,

Waterfall at the very evocatively named 2nd North Fork Creek

Curves yay! Clouds boo!

but it was not too bad until the last 30km into Dease Lake, where the first bit of unpaved road (expected) came up, my favourite, wet clay which just covered me, the lights and the panniers with crap. Somewhere along this piece of road construction, I passed the 10,000 km mark for distance travelled in North America, but the enormity of the event was lost in the battle to stay rubber down. I managed to stay upright and sloshed my way to Dease Lake. ALL the accommodation people at Dease are ARSEHOLES. The place was full, but everyone would just point me to the next place when I asked where I should go, without bothering to tell me these places also had no vacancies.

The next point on the map (they are too small to be called towns), Iskut was 80+km down the road and one of the arseholes begrudgingly called ahead for me only to be told they were full too, hard luck. I gassed up and filled the cans in case I needed to pull an all-nighter. On the road again only to find my headlight is not working. Blow! I wonder how long that's been out? Looks fuse-related, maybe that's what the problem was with the compressor. It's getting important now because I'm far enough south that there is a bit of dusk when it's overcast. Not to mention the legal requirement for any vehicle to run headlights at all times in Canada. Oh well, the weather's too inhospitable and there is nowhere safe to stop now. I do spot caribou on the road, at one stage one of them loped along the road for a good kilometre and a half before I realised I needed to stop and give it a moment to get it’s stuff together and pick a place to wander off the road.

Moose's rear end

Not much opportunity for a good photo of the moose, but when I first came across it, it was stood in silhouette against the sky, just as if posing. I saw another a bit later down the same road, same pose and everything.

Pretty place when it's not bucketing down

I eventually get to Iskut and find a place with a room at 10:15. Whew! It's called Bear Paw lodge and is a huge chalet style building built by Tony from Austria back in 1991. It's a really nice place, quite upmarket for the middle of nowhere, but apparently when it was forst built there was huge traffic in hunting, fishing amd wolderness treks. It seems everywhere around here now is full from road construction crews and miners. I'm glad I found this place because I didn't fancy the tent tonight. Once I stopped, I realised that although the pannier water retention system has it's faults, it does keep road dirt and mud off the bags when the dirt roads are soaking. Now I have mud bags!


time on the road, 11hrs15, 652km, 70km unpaved. 60.85/50.2 mpg imp/us.