From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

The second part of the Cassiar Highway was even more beautiful than the first one. Even if the weather was not nice every day, we enjoyed the pretty landscape.

We encountered many bears, mostly black bears which were scared of us as soon as we arrived by bike, but did not mind the cars, the motorcycles or the trucks!

We had to face a head wind more intense. Even if we are not scared of bears anymore during the day as we encountered many, this fear is still the same during the night, especially now that the nights get darker and darker, as we are going south. It is now really dark for several hours.

Half way, we had a day of rest in Bell 2 after having biked 120km in a day. it is a place well-known for heli-skiing. We enjoyed their sauna and hot pot, as well as the large screen for watching a movie!

Lots of people advised us to go to Stewart (BC) and Hyder (Alaska). We hesitated for a long time, as we had to take the same road to get there and leave, as well as this long day of 156km … So we changed our plans when we learnt that there was a bus going from Stewart to Terrace.

We biked the 70 km from Meziadin to Stewart and we saw many bears especially around Stewart and Hyder … We also met our first grizzly bears (except for that cub that we encountered the first day on the Cassiar Highway).

Yesterday we took the bus to get to Terrace; we skipped 350km. We arrived in the town of 13.000 inhabitants. We had trouble with the noise and the traffic! We went for groceries and did not know what to choose as there were too many choices in the supermarket… we are not used to that anymore!

Today and tomorrow we will bike towards Prince Rupert to take the ferry for Vancouver Island: 145km in 2 days.

When you travel by bike, you hate two things: head wind and humidity (rain, snow, etc…).

When you travel by bike, you always need two things: water for drinking and cooking, and food! Much food!

We are now in the middle of the Cassiar highway, in Iskut (population 300), which is the last town before 400km to the south. We then need food for one week.

We were very disappointed yesterday in the groceries store in Iskut… It was quite empty! No bread, the plastic cheddar cheese was distributed in 1kg package… Fresh products which couldn’t be called like that anymore, and so many out of date products!!! The cheese we have chosen was out of date since two weeks, cereal bars since one year… We have chosen the two last apples which have not begun to rot… Carrots in their plastic were out of date since 5 days… For replacing the bread, we found frozen tortillas… 2 years out of date… So, we bought what disgusted us the less…

For water, no problem: we have a filter, and there is water everywhere in the creeks.

Speaking about water, the weather forecasts are not very good for the next few days… It should rain! And we will have head wind…

We have been able to repair our panniers with Chatterton, this thick grey cello tape!

Not to camp in the bush with bears, we have 4 days left of biking: 37km, 115, 90 and... 154!!!!

We might have another day of rest before the 154 km day.

The Cassiar Highway keeps its promises!

The first day was quite boring as we biked across the plateau of the Yukon territory. Fortunately the mountains appeared far away to embellish the landscape. We had to go across a zone of road works. Instead of following the pilot car as any other vehicles, we had to put our bikes at the back of a pick-up truck … We thought it would last for some kilometers, but it was finally only 700 meters! We wanted to go to Jade City, but the head wind slowed us. So we stopped in Good Hope Lake and knocked on a door to ask if we could put our tent next to the house. Sean, who had passed us by car during the day and encouraged us, took us to the lake where there was a nice little beach. It was close to houses, which reassured us. It was the best camping spot we had since the beginning!

Fortunately we did not stop in Jade City the day before, because it was going up all the way to get there! The city of Jade City has only 2 shops, one of them is abandoned! The other one was a good touristy shop for tourists we are not! The mountains on the Cassiar are one of the biggest places for jade in the world. We were biking around the mountains. The landscapes is very scenic and changed all the time.

On Saturday, we had gravel road: 20km of steep uphills above Dease Lake. We were quite tired and could not see the end of that road, especially with head wind, once more!

After a day of rest in Dease Lake, we biked to Iskut : 90km. We had 2 passes: the first one was 1241m high, to go down to 685m, and the second pass was 1086m high! We are now staying next to the lake Eddontenajon, with llamas as neighbors, for another day of rest: we have long days to come (above 100km!).

Of course, the wildlife is very present on the Cassiar highway and we bore the brunt of it … We first met a red fox, flies, mosquitoes, horses on the road and 2 bears … Far away, Sébastien thought the first bear was a raven! This young black bear did not hear us coming (head wind …). We tried to tell him that we were coming by talking louder and louder, with fear. When it saw us, we were just in front of him and it ran away as fast as a rabbit. Phew!

The second one was taken first for a red fox by Sara, but it was a grizzly cub ! When we realized it was a cub, we looked for the mother …. Terrified, we looked everywhere. We did not find it. The cub was afraid when it saw us and ran across the road, certainly to get to its mother …. As for the moose, this is the worse situation: to be between the mother and its baby, because the mother can attack any time to protect. Phew!

This is finally the squirrels which attacked us! They smell the food we carry, especially bread, and want it absolutely. During the night, they even made holes in our panniers to get to the food. So now, we have 2 big holes in our panniers that are waterproof!

This is the itinerary we finally decided to take, after long hesitations.

We will take the Cassiar Highway to Kitwanga: we planned some long days to get to a campground every night so we will not have any night in the bush.

Then we will take the direction of Prince Rupert where we will take the ferry to go to Vancouver Island.

Careful bears, we are coming!

Monday afternoon, Didier dropped us after Whitehorse. Once out of town, we took the Alaska Highway. We only biked 25km and stopped in the first Yukon government campground at Marsh Lake.

On Tuesday, we biked 85km with a light tail wind and some showers, to Jonsons Crossing.

Wednesday was a day full of encounters and culture. We met 3 cyclists who were going to Prudhoe Bay (extreme North of Alaska): one from England (Cazy), one from Switzerland (Florent) and one from California (Jack). When we arrived in Teslin, we went to visit a museum about the history and the culture of Tlingit people, native population of the region. After all these breaks, we finally put our tent 10 km after Teslin.

Thursday was a long day: 115km in 7H15 on the saddle. At the beginning we had planned “only” 100km, but when we got to Swift River, the motel and the restaurant were closed for sanitary problems. So at 7pm we had to keep going to the next place, called Continental Divide. We arrived at 8pm exhausted! We did not pinch our tent that night; we took a room at the motel: we had a real bed, a bathroom and a tv … with no mosquitoes and no worry about putting our food away because of bears!

Friday, our bodies were very tired from the previous day: our legs did not want to move, our knees hurt … So we decided to go to the next lodge: 18km away! We put our tent next to the river Rancheria, a nice place! We even heard a moose crossing the river when we were trying to sleep. We did not dare to get out of our tent but now we regret it: the footprints were so huge!
Saturday was a big day, 98km, to get to the Cassiar Highway where we spent a day of rest (Sunday).

Now we have to decide:

• Take the Cassiar Highway, very scenic, with not a lot of traffic, but a lot of bears. There are not a lot of services on the last 400km, which makes us hesitate.
• Continue on the Alaska Highway with more traffic, more services, more kilometers … and some bears!