Down the Cassiar Highway - #52-20

August 23, 2005 (Tue)
Dease Lake RV Park, Dease Lake, BC #19 w/e/s $19c B+

Rancheria, YT to Dease Lake, BC (209/9063 miles) Q021380

Up at 6:30 (41°) clear beautiful skies. Off at 8:00 and continued down the Alaska Highway to the junction with the Cassiar Highway. We badly needed gas but the price at the only station in the area was the U.S equivalent $3.75/gal. We bought $20 worth.

Where we come from, the Cassiar "Highway" would have been considered a back road one step up from a dirt road and not a particularly good road at that. It wound and twisted its way into and through the mountains. It was smooth most of the time but there were frost heaves and broken, badly repaired pavement often enough to keep us from going much over 40 MPH. 14 miles of it was a true dirt road with pot holes and wash boarding. There were even a few mud holes that we had to negotiate! The scenery was worth it though and it was all scenery. We seldom saw anything, other than the road, that had been touched by the hand of man. Even the hills were devoid of buildings (houses).

Jade City is a wide spot in the highway with a jade jewelry and gift store on each side - not a village at all, much less a city. One shop was owned by the people who own and operate the jade mines 60 miles east. In addition to retail items for sale there were work areas outside where they were cutting up the jade. It would have been interesting to watch the craftsmen make the jewelry too but that was somewhere else. Jade City was supposed to have a gas station too but it was closed. The next one was 75 miles further south. We made it with the gas gauge on empty and optimism fading but there was over a gallon of gas left in the tank.
The price here was the U.S. equivalent of $3.52/Gal.
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August 24, 2005 (Wed)
Rainey Creek Campground and RV Park, Stewart, BC #41 elec $20c B+

Dease Lake, BC to Stewart, BC (244/9307 miles) Q021624

Up at 6:15 (44°) off at 7:22 High clouds and sunshine. At 7:35 a large bull moose wandered across the road in front of us and stopped to wonder why we slowed down. As we climbed up and over Gnat Pass (4072 feet) the temperature got steadily colder finally reaching 32° before starting back up again. The first part of the Cassiar Highway we traveled today was a lot like the section we on yesterday, rough and broken pavement and some rough gravel (dirt). We had expected some 45 miles of dirt and gravel but road construction this summer has reduced that kind of driving to about 20 miles. Where the road is finished it is silky smooth - or is that in comparison to the rough sections?

A lot of the road was between high steep sided rock mountains - beautiful and awesome but bordering on claustrophobic. At times it felt like the sheer rock walls would topple over on us. We stopped at a pullout overlooking Bear Glacier. It is possible to watch this glacier "calf" into Bear River from there but no ice broke off while we were there. There were several icebergs from recent calving, though, floating in the river.

We pulled into Rainey Creek Campground at about 3:00. Dinner was halibut fish and chips at the King Edward Hotel in Stewart. Delicious! Some of the best we've had.

Hyder, AK is about 2 miles further on and is where there is a area (Fish Creek) on the Salmon River where black bears (mostly) like to come to fish. We saw 3 or 4 bears. Non were fishing but there had been some earlier.
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August 25, 2005 (Thu)
Rainey Creek Campground and RV Park, Stewart, BC (2)

One of the main reasons people, us included, come to Stewart is to see the bears in Hyder. If that's all they do, they miss one of the most spectacular and scary drives in the whole northwest. The southern tip of the huge Salmon Glacier (the 5th largest glacier in Canada) is 17 miles out of Hyder on a very rough dirt road. It is a magnificent sight to behold in itself but getting there (and beyond) was more than awesome. We climbed nearly 4000 feet on a road without guard rails that clung to the sides of high steep mountains. At times we were looking almost straight down to a river winding through the valley a couple of thousand feet down.

The views down were scary but the views out and up were spectacular. The mountains were rugged and rocky. Glaciers of varying sizes filled most of the areas slow to get direct sun but there were glaciers also on the tops of mountains. Mines large and small were scattered all along the road providing periodic breaks in the natural beauty. At about 33 miles - we had no idea the road went that far - we stopped to view another large glacier and get more pictures. We were tempted to go on to the end of the road - we had been told it did end out there - but turned back because everyone was hungry and in need of sanitary facilities unavailable since we'd left Hyder.

We'd been told by some people who were coming back that there was a crew filming a Lexis commercial at the end of the road. We met them coming out (way too fast) as we went in. We came across them again on our way out, blocking the road to film in another location. It wasn't very interesting because, except for a camera mounted helicopter hovering overhead, all the action was taking place around a bend so our patience ran out rather quickly.

After about 20 minutes we ran their blockade to their excitedly expressed disapproval - one of the crew ran over and stood in front of the car. We claimed a partially true medical emergency. That got their attention! Several came running with food. They finally let us through when they were told non of their food was appropriate. Kathy is hypoglycemic and needs to eat regularly. She always carries snacks, but delaying her lunch for two hours could have been a serious problem for her and we were twenty-five miles from any kind of civilization!
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August 26, 2005 (Fri)
Glacier View Campground and RV Park, Smithers, BC #19 dry $16c B+

Stewart, BC to Smithers, BC (200/9307 miles) Q021824

Up at 6:00 off at 7:30 (58°) Raining. Our first stop was to get gas then back up the Stewart-Hyder Access road through misty mountain panoramas. On the Cassiar Highway again we sailed South on a smooth newly paved road. Off in the distance, barely distinguishable, 3 or 4 black bear ambled across the road. By the time we got there they were long gone into the woods.

Just before turning onto the Yellowhead Highway (a real highway this time with actual cars and trucks and lane marker lines), we drove a quarter mile into the tiny Indian village of Gitwangak to see a pretty little Anglican Church and bell tower as well as some totem poles along the road nearby. We parked near a fifth wheel rig driven by a retired military man. He was apparently very unfamiliar with handling a large fifth wheel or incompetent and blamed us verbally and loudly for his inability to turn it around. He refused to listen when we told him the road looped back to the highway and he didn't even need to turn around.

We chose Glacier View Campground "on the fly" (without prior research) and it has turned out to be very nice. It's small but very neat and clean. The young woman who checked us in was very pleasant and friendly in spite of having to do all the paperwork for four units with a 4 month old baby on her hip.

We could look out at a glacier high on a mountain as we relaxed in the sun outside Q.