Stewart/Hyder

One of the dozen or so glaciers on Rt 37A

It's 7:00 in the morning, not very light outside yet. It's not raining, but everything outside remains wet. We're parked in a roadside rest area, just west of Kitwanga, BC on route 16. Later today we'll make our way into Prince Rupert, BC, to check into ferry crossings to Ketchikan, AK.

As we continued down the Cassier Highway, it kept getting better and better. When we left the Alaska Highway, the Cassier was under construction, really bad. After about 20 miles, it improved into a rough dirt road, then a sealcoated road, all for about 200 miles, except for one 15 mile stretch dirt stretch that was steep and windy with hairpin turns as it descended into a valley and then out again. Then it was rough paved road again, shaking everything in our house. Finally, we got to a section that had on it, and it was pretty smooth. We were out of the permafrost areas, so the sudden dips were gone.

Chum Salmon in Fish Creek

We finally arrived at route 37A, which leads about 35 miles to Stewart, BC. This road crosses an unnamed pass through the mountains, and is said to have the largest concentration of glaciers along a roadway. A couple of them must have crossed the highway at some point, perhaps before the highway was there, because the evidence of terminal moraines on the side opposite the glaciers were very visible. Three glaciers came all the way down to within a few hundred feet of the road. Several more were visible draping down between the peaks of the mountains. They continued into and beyond the town of Stewart.

Brown bear fishing

Stewart used to be an important port community, now fading. It lies at the end of the Portland Canal, a natural fiord that extends some 20 miles to the ocean on the inside passage north of Ketchikan. It lies nestled between the mountains. It boasts a fairly large number of houses, considering its remoteness, but most are small and not in good condition. One whole block of apartment buildings was completely abandoned. Likewise, downtown was small and a bit shabby, with some older commercial buildings abandoned. They did have a couple groceries, and a nice Visitor Centre, but it was closed every time I went there. That's where the free wifi was, and it still worked.

Brown bear eating

We stayed in the municipal campground, Rainy Creek, nestled up against the bottom of a cliff on the northern mountain boundary. We arrived at about 5:00 PM, the tiny office was closed with a sign that said, “Back at 6:20”. We wandered around until we found the 30 amp sites, then parked in one of them. A dozen campers or so were scattered in the 60 odd sites.

As we parked the car, we noticed that the rear hatch window was crackled, thousands of cracks laced through the glass. Somewhere along the way, it had shattered. There was no apparent sign of an impact. It seemed to be holding together for the time being. Around 6:30, I went back to the office to register, and asked the man about window repair. He said there would be nothing for several hundred miles.

Downtown Hyder, Alaska

A mile or so up the road along the canal is the US-Canada border, and the tiny town of Hyder, Alaska. Hyder has a little main street with a few shops, about ½ of them closed. All the roads are dirt. It's so disconnected from the rest of the US, that there is no customs post at the border, just drive right on in. Supposedly the ferry arrives there once a week, so Canada controls its side of the border with customs agents. We took several trips to Hyder, and needed our passports to return to Stewart, always questioned about purchases and firearms.

The main attraction in Hyder is the Tongass National Forest Fish Creek Wildlife Viewing Area, about 3 miles up the Salmon River from 'downtown'. Several people said we should go there to see the bears. The parks people have built an elevated boardwalk along a narrow spit between Fish Creek and a lagoon, near the Salmon River. It is patrolled, and a $5.00 entry fee is charged, unless you have a Golden Age pass, which I do. Schools of salmon were clearly visible swimming up fish creek, and salmon bodies littered the shore along the creek. We spent about 2 hours there in all, never seeing a bear. But they told us that they had been there. Our luck. But on the road leading to the park, there was a crossing down to the river, and seeing several cars parked there, I stopped down, and got a few pictures of a grizzly bear searching for salmon. He never caught any live ones while I was there, but he did scavenge some dead ones off the bottom and look them over.

After 2 nights, we packed up to move on. We applied some duct tape over the rear window to hold it together while we traveled. We wound our way back though the glaciers, over the pass, and back onto route 37, continuing south. This section of the highway was even better, with posted speeds of 60 mph for most of it, passing though meadows and along streams, until we reached Kitwanga and the junction with highway 16 and turned east.