A glacier, the wilderness and BEARS!

Along Hwy 37A

On Monday, June 18th, we took Hwy 37 north until we turned onto Hwy 37A for a short side trip to Stewart, BC and Hyder, Alaska. Along the way we saw the landscape grow rapidly taller with quite a bit more snow covering some of the peaks.

Bear Glacier

The stream rushing past us was joined by melting snow rivulets from every direction which culminated in a large flat river overlooked by a gigantic glacier. The Bear Glacier is almost 600 feet thick and it fills the valley leading down to Bear River. It was totally impressive. The glacier resembles a giant blue wrinkled tongue dipping into the river below....at least that's what it looked like to me. We stopped to take roughly a million pictures of the blue ice before venturing on.

Top of Bear Glacier

We soon found evidence of a couple of avalanches where they had overtaken the road after first scraping away all the vegetation from the hillside on one side of the road and shoving it all to the other side. Dead trees and branches were scattered in heaps next to the fast moving stream that cut through the remaining snowpack, the leftovers from the avalanche. Evidently, this stretch of road has 72 avalanche paths along it, some active even in summer. Yikes.

Tidal flats of Stewart, BC

Stewart, BC

We continued on to Stewart, a tiny, dark and gray former mining town perched on the edge of Canada, at the mouth of Portland Canal. The town is largely gravel roads, a handful of dusty homes, a few shuttered stores and a motel. At least the roads are level with few potholes. Just beyond Stewart, closer to the water, was the town of Hyder, BC, whose buildings and roads to Stewart and the other Hyder (Alaska) were entirely built on pilings above the tidal flats. We walked down the boardwalk over the flats and could see that all that remains of those historic structures are the hundreds of empty pilings sticking out of the grass and mud. Hyder, BC, saw its heyday in the 1920s when it hosted Hyder, Alaska residents during Prohibition. By the late 1940s, most of it had been reduced to mere pilings.

Near Hyder, Alaska

We found the Stewart visitor center and the guide mentioned that we should see Hyder, Alaska, just two miles farther down the road, as well as the famous Fish Creek, where bears catch salmon during spawning season in mid-July. After first stashing the RV at the provincial park (a potholed, gravel road ending in a tiny circle next to a mosquito lake) outside of town, we proceeded into Hyder. Literally a few feet inside America, just after passing the 'Welcome to Hyder' sign, a road crew blocked our path because they were working on clearing a rockslide that had covered the 'road' into town.

Bridge out - Hyder, Alaska

The road is actually a series of potholes interrupted occasionally by a clod of dirt or a bit of gravel that ends about 3 miles down at a bridge that was recently washed away. Hyder was established by many of the same miners and prospectors that came through Stewart but is now mostly a ghost town with only a few scattered residents, two scrappy little restaurants, a parking lot for an RV park, a cheerful looking post office and a whole lot of broken down buildings. As with Hyder, BC, most of Hyder, Alaska’s old town was built on the tidal flats and is now just pilings. We drove to the end where the bridge was washed out and parked nearby. We walked then to the Bear Platform, a 600 foot long deck above Fish Creek where the bears come out to play (and eat) in summer. We saw no bears, of course, but enjoyed watching the water rush by. We even saw a beaver swimming next to the bank! So cute!

The Bus, Hyder, Alaska

We drove back to 'downtown' Hyder to check out the prices for dinner at The Bus. Sadly, the prices were astronomical (just like we’ve found in Canada), so we headed back to the RV for dinner and many, many more mosquitoes. Nice.

On Tuesday, we headed out early, though the mosquitoes enjoyed us while we loaded up the car as fast as we could. We drove north on Hwy 37 and after about an hour, we saw a bear! And then another! And then two more! Over the next couple of hours we saw 9 bears, either by themselves or in pairs. Wow! And we got pictures, too! They are all black bears (ursus americanus), thankfully not grizzlies (ursus horribilus – real name). Our drive took us past all these amazing bears snacking happily by the roadside and most of them were just as curious about us, and so stopped to stare at us, too.

Between Meziadin Junction and Simmons Lake

One thing we noticed about this area of British Columbia (the northwestern quadrant of the province) is just how incredibly remote it really is. In 500 miles of road, we saw perhaps as many as 200 vehicles, maybe 4 dozen buildings and not much else manmade. What we did see a lot of was the gorgeous scenery….millions of acres of evergreen trees, mountains, lakes, ponds, huge rivers and pastures with little streams running through them. We drove the whole day and the scenery remained the same, with just as few other vehicles and houses.

Simmons Lake

We stopped for the night at about 4:30pm at a pullout next to Simmons Lake, a stunning calm pool of water with a couple of towering mountains above it. We walked around near the lake and touched the melted snow water before dinner. By 10:30pm, we were both still reading by the sunlight and there would have been no need for headlights. Wow. We had a hard time going to sleep with all the light pouring in the windows. Ken was able to confirm that at 12:45am, night had already fallen, but by 4:30am, the sun was already out. Yikes.