Whitehorse, black bears, rain, glaciers and lava beds

Still mind blown from the Dempster Highway adventure we set off from Dawson City direction south to Whitehorse. Compared to the previous days the ride was rather monotone through what seemed like eeeendles forests, with the occasionally view in between. Adding to this it was raining. We still enjoyed the ride, stopping for coffee on the way to warm and dry up. To regenerate and sit out the rain we stayed in a cabin on Craig lake near Carcross south of Whitehorse for a few days.

Back on the highway we crossed the boarder from the Yukon into British Columbia heading direction Watson Lake to visit the famous Sign Post Forest. This collection of signs from all over the world was started by a homesick soldier, who erected a signpost from his hometown. Everyone can now add their own sign post – we forgot ours at home..but found a suitable replacement..

Having not seen any bears so far in the whole of Alaska and the Yukon – we finally saw a black bear! and another, and another – over the following two days we must have seen more than two dozen! Not really very settling in combination with wild camping. We set up camp by a river anyway and had a few beers to treat the “bear-anoia”.

Next day we arrived in Steward and crossed back into Alaska through the half ghost town of Hyder. From here we road up a 30 km gravel road to get a view of the magnificent Salmon Glacier. The windy road climbed swiftly into the mountains past an operating gold mine and a long a cliff face at high elevations taking us high above the glacier with breath taking views – just spectacular!

A fellow rider recommended to take the Nisga’a highway heading south – a 50 km forest service road. Signed as a wilderness road we ventured in, not sure what to expect. It turned out to be a smooth ride through the forest with a lovely camp spot by the Dragon lake – with a “bear in the area” sign attached to the entrance. Was this referring to the bear we saw just a couple of hundred meters from the campsite? or the one with the two cubs we saw just after we started the ride the next day? The ride further south took us through the Nisga’a lava beds. It was a really eerie feeling riding for miles through this vast lava landscape. This is the most recent site of volcanic eruption in Canada that killed around 2’000 people and covers an area of about 35 km^2.

Arriving further to the South in Terrace we were shocked to encounter our first “big” city and civilisation since we left Fairbanks. We rushed out of town direction Prince Rupert to reach the Ocean, also a first on our journey, and to hopefully get the ferry over to Vancouver Island – due to large forest fires in lower BC everyone had chosen to take this route and the ferry is booked out for weeks. Even a couple of motorcycles are on the waiting list. Let’s get up at 4 AM and see if we can catch the ferry…