Highway 37

km = 17,888

Highway 37 is an amazing road. It’s a minor road and is paved with sealer - essentially, a gravel road with a tar/stone topping. Here we get a taste of the next week’s riding. Frost damages the road easily, heavy rain fall erodes the hills and creek overflow eat chunks of the road, requiring major repairs. We hit several patches of “loose gravel” from repairs and multi kilometre sections of gravel road where entire sections needed a rebuild and apparently, there was no budget for a topping. 

The highway is called the Stewart-Cassiar highway and it is one of only two routes from BC to Yukon and Alaska.

More evidence that we are in the North - snow on the mountains

yeah - snow

I discover later, that Jonathan’s room mate Regan, hails from the village of New Hazelton, a small mining town that we pass through just before turning north to highway 37. New Hazelton is west of South Hazelton, which is South of Hazelton. The villages were founded in 1866 when the first telegraph was installed. The area has a place in Canadian history because it had the only hospital to support the Omineca Gold Rush and it was the scene of two major Union Bank robberies in 1913 and 1914. That’s what I love about motorcycle touring - it connects us to people and history. 

Rapids and a gorge used to spear and net spawning salmon (click on the pic for more detail)

A quick photo at the start of the highway also reminds us that we are near the Alaskan border where it reaches down the coast to Canada. Hyder is a popular destination for many riders, but I have read that it’s also a bit of an expensive rip off. No worries, we don’t have time for that any ways. 

Entrance to Highway 37

We meet a group of riders from Washington who are heading for Hyder. It’s a mixed group with loud Harley cruisers, some adventure bikes and one young buck on a crotch rocket. His dad is carrying his gear but he can’t be comfortable after all these miles. There is only one way to learn … We cross paths several times during the ride. 

We find another scenic place to stop for a photo a bit down the road. As we start to prepare to depart the site, a four wheel drive vehicle stops and a man pops out carrying a commercial video camera. He is doing a documentary on bears and advises us that the creek that’s 50 feet from where we stopped is a popular place for bears - did we see any? No, because we were oblivious to that fact. We head over to take a look and the creek is full of spawning salmon with a few dead fish at the sides of the creek. The Bears like those - easy to catch and starting to get tasty in their own sauce. Alas, there are no bears to see but we watch the salmon pool, then wiggle up the fast, shallow water sections to the next pool.

The photographer advises us that at the end of 37, turn left to Hyder Alaska and we would see many bears. That’s where he was heading to for this documentary. We appreciate the suggestion but that detour will need to wait for the next trip - we are on a tight schedule.

First we stopped to photograph this view - more snow in the mountains

Panorama of the mountains (and videographer who interviewed us later)

Roads good, mountains good, not save to piss by the river due to bears

Salmon pooling, getting ready to go up the shallows to the next pool. Bears love eating here.

Salmon run colours

Salmon river location.

near Stewart-Cassiar Hwy, Kitimat-Stikine

This area has some interesting options. Unfortunately, our timeline does not allow us to explore them since the Dempster is our objective.

We miss this view by turning right instead of left. It would have cost us one more day. Another reason to redo this trip (Tom)

37 is delivering large servings of curves and hills with minimal other traffic. We pass the occasional RV but in one section, a pickup truck becomes annoying because the driver speeds up to prevent passing on the short passing sections and then slows down to below speed limit on the curves. With the radios, once the lead rider passes a vehicle, he can call back a clear road, safe for the other riders to pass. I find an opening on a longer downhill, am ready in a low gear and gun it. As predicted the pickup driver steps on it as well but there is enough room and power to beat him on this stretch. Just as the BMW pulls up beside the truck, a large black bear sow wanders out of the tree line into my lane. She is several hundred feet ahead but in my lane. I execute wilderness rule number 1 for wildlife on the road - hit the brakes hard. With all the gear, the Beemer takes her time slowing down. Fortunately, numb nuts in the pickup hits the brakes as well, but not enough for me to get in front or behind. The bear assess the situation and upon seeing two vehicles bearing (no pun intended) down on her, decides the tree line is the place to be so she pops back into the woods. I gun it and finish the pass, but apparently was yelling into the helmet intercom. Jeff and Cipi were so busy watching the two cubs in the tree that they didn’t see the sow. That was a close call and my heart and breathing rate were through the roof - good news - no need to change parts. 

I am not going to hold myself blameless for the situation since were were driving a bit aggressively on the road in order to keep what we now know is a “way too tight” time schedule, but I wonder what thinking process rationalizes the pick up driver’s behaviour of doing everything in their power to disrupt the motorcycles with the possible outcome of a collision. That’s why we use power to get away from cagers - the farther away we are, the safer. 

Cipi had to dip into his reserve fuel on 37 and we were starting to run low. A gas station shows up in a place called Bell II. The location’s other feature is a resort and heli skiing port. It has started to rain which drives home the North Weather message: If you like/don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes and it will change. We sit out the rain with a baked snack from the resort.

Gas station in the middle of no where (winter pic from Google)

The sky clears and we cross the bridge and just around the bend, out of site of the construction crew, is a small black bear in the middle of the road. Cipi sees his first bear up close. I’m a bit worried because there is no such thing as a single bear cub. Momma is near by watching. We give him a lot of distance but he is in no hurry to leave the road. When he does, we continued and shortly are back into a drizzle rain condition. It’s 3pm so we need to think about where we’ll stay for the evening and since this area is so remote, you need to make a commitment to a location or it may be another one to two hours before the next opportunity arrives. Also, we don’t have food for dinner. 

At 5:30, it’s still raining and we come across the Indian village of Iskut. It has a general store so we decide to buy food for dinner. We ask the clerk if there are any camps here and she mentions the Mountain Shadow RV camp up the street but doesn’t know if it has tenting spots. Back on the road, the camp is literally 2 km up the street (and she doesn’t know about it’s facilities?? - I guess when you are isolated, you get to choose how isolated you want to be). Apparently, the camp is for sale - check out the details. My suspicion is that the asking prices is many times higher than the Net Present Value of all future cash flows, so you would want to live in an isolated winter world for big chunks of the year. From a camping perspective we liked it. Dry camp site and showers - bring coins. 

The camp is down a steep mountain road but the new, well maintained mountain cabin is a good sign. Yes they have tent sites and yes, they have showers. What more could you want for $15. There is a bit of firewood so we can heat up dinner - life is good, even the rain stops long enough to set up camp. Cipi has his new sleeping bag so he should be warm. We also notice that twilight stays past 10:30 - we must be up north.