From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

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!