June-July 2017Juneau Tour

The bike is broken down into parts in the big case. The duffel bag contains the panniers and all my gear. Our humble camping site....: Friends of friends gave us a beautiful apartment for our summer use, salmon dinner....... First official day, big mileage....: Spent most of the day on the ferry from Juneau to Haines. Very pretty, but it was a cold rainy day. Campsite is great. Tomorrow also short (33 miles), and then we hit the hardest day, over 5300 feet of climbing.

Today was intended to be a relatively tame introduction to the tour proper, the first 33 miles at least. The terrain was relatively flat; there is climbing but it's I relatively small and gradual increments. Scenery very remote, pretty, even if not quite mountain-caliber.

The first complication was that it rained/drizzled all day. This was expected, but the intermittent nature of both the rain and the climbs made it hard to avoid frequent clothing changes.

Upon arriving at 33-mile Roadhouse ("world-famous hamburgers" that were indeed good) it was clear that they had no interest in our business despite ACA using them. They wanted to charge us $26/person to camp in a newly mown field in the middle of nowhere, despite acres of beautiful grass all around the buildings. Understand that we paid $21 total the previous night for all four in a proper campground, small but pretty. The next campground or any type of service is 60+ miles, but we could wild-camp!

We decide to go on, along with two young women, Brittany and Alicia, who were in the same predicament. Tomorrow is supposed to be the longest of the tour, 62 miles, and an epic climbing day at 5200 feet. We rode 7 more miles to the Canadian border, and then another couple miles until we found a big gravel pull-out on the side of the road. Further from the road a big area had been cleared, though still stones and dirt.

Since a passing driver warned us that he had just seen two bears in the area, we took precautions: cooked away from the tents, put all food and anything that touched food in my Bob bag and hung from a tree. Sadly, not far up the tree, or away from the trunk, but it was the best we could manage.

The last ten miles we moved up among the snow capped and cloud-shrouded mountains, and climbed 1500 feet. After a quick freeze-dried meal we retired to our tents.

Here I sit, listening to the sound of the returning rain, clutching my newly purchased air-horn, hoping not to hear the soft tread of something large and silent passing near....

Today was lots of fun, but it did start out with a tough 3500 foot climb, sometimes 8-9 grade. Luckily, we saved nine miles and 1300 feet by doing the first part the previous night.

....which left us in the pullout deep in bear territory last night. We didn't do a great job hanging the food bag (my claim is that the trees were not suitable), but nonetheless we weren't disturbed in the night.

In the morning, however, a grizzley walked out onto the road maybe a quarter mile (perhaps less) down. It looked at us very intently, dropping its head and stared at us long and hard. I went to my bike and got the air horn, and after a bit he raised his head, chuffed, and wandered off. Luckily down the road towards the US, not the direction we were going.

The next several hours were an unremitting uphill, followed by ups and downs that combined great downhills with more rough uphill. We topped off at about 12.8%.

Really, really tired.

Started the day in a beautiful campgound w/o running water or showers, ended camped outside a gas station w/ both. I prefer the former.

Today was billed as the second highest climbing day, and it didn't disappoint. A lot of up and down rather than unrelenting climbs, but they added up.

Absolutely spectacular scenery as we climbed through the Tatshenshini-Alsek park, the world's largest world heritage site, encompassing area in both the US and Canada. Our wonderful tail-wind mostly continued, but there are certainly indications that its changing. This is okay, as we are changing directions, heading east towards Whitehorse.

We continue intersecting with two 20-something cousins, Bridgette and Kristin, who are up here doing pretty much the same route on the same schedule. They are traveling much lighter, no stoves, etc., but are doing great. One of them has done the TransAm, the other is a big backpacker.

We also ran across a few other tourers today: a woman headed in the opposite direction w/ flags from at least three countries flying from her bike, a guy who started in Denver and is going to Anchorage and then Calgary, and any number of friendly motorcycle tourers, many of them riding BMWs much like the one I'm lusting after :-).

Tomorrow we head to an Indian interpretive center called the Long Ago People's Place. Afterwards we head to Tahini Spings, Whitehorse, possibly one more night of wild camping on a lake, and then Skagway and back to Juneau via another ferry.

Fascinating stop. Our host, Meta, showed us maps of the surrounding territory, pointed out the villages where her grandparents came from, and was a superb host. Her career is in trying to preserve the heritage of her people, but of course she's up to date on modern life as well. The First Nation uses Facebook to plan family gatherings, as well as trips to the grocery store (55 miles away in Whitehorse).

She and the tribe have also been building a replica village that includes examples of many traditional structures. We didn't get the tour (too late), but I did wander through myself and get some pictures.

Long Ago Peoples: Today we packed up our tents at the gas station in the rain, biked to a (good) bakery in the rain, and biked for four hours, in the rain.

The ride was actually great, had a tailwind, gorgeous mountains on either side, and rolling hills that let us go like a bat out of hell for miles at a time.

Finally arriving at the Long Ago People's Place, we found it deserted. A passing kid had no idea of any campground, the rain re-started with a vengeance, and Sarah and I stood outside in the rain waiting for the others to arrive (we were talking politics and it got us both pissed off, so we were moving that morning). Then a little old lady poked her head out of a house and said Long Ago was actually a couple km down the road.

Five km and two steep climbs later, we found a beautiful place with several huts, longhouses, and tea houses. Our host, Meta, was a wonderful Aishi native who first showed us to a longhouse where she had started a wood fire in an oven. She then invited us over to a tea house where she served tea and bannock (fried bread adopted from Scottish settlers).

Harold, a native w/ a masters ethnic studies, came by to help clean up. He had a "bear dog", Nezzy. Dogs are trained to hunt animals by placing a claw on their forehead, such as a lynx, (poking through skin), after which they really don't like them. Moose dogs are placed between the two parts of a cloven hoof before they open their eyes.

Bear dogs are a little different. Harold didn't really want to tell us how they were trained. They are evidently trained to do two things: face down bears, and never bring them back to their master after doing so. For the former, he mentioned a time when he was cutting the bark off of a tree with a chisel made from a log. A bear comes out into the meadow and starts walking towards him. Nezzy trots over and stands in front of the bear a couple feet away, and after a bit the bear wanders off.

Today was a brilliant day, in more ways than one. First, we had sun again after three days of rain and cold. We had so much heat that I took off the wool undershirt, the heavy winter gloves, the shoe covers, and my coat!

We had long, relatively flat roads, beautiful scenery, and my thighs were feeling strong, so today was a good day. Sarah, of course, easily kept up and took over late in the afternoon, but for much of the day I set the pace as Liam and Chris got caught behind some construction delays. Sarah was also useful with the proper-sized Allen wrench (who takes an 8mm ON the bike?), when my right crank arm unscrewed and dropped off the bike onto the roadway a couple miles from the end. Seriously.

After a Mountain Dew, a large Gatorade, and three beers I was feeling human again. We went over to the hot springs to relax bake off the days dust.

Actually, it is not really much. The town was the furthest north the regular riverboats could go, after which they needed wood/steam-powered paddle boats to go further upstream during gold-rush times.

As is usually the case, many suffered and arrived way too late. Would-be miners would trek over the disparate Chilkoot pass up to 20 times, because they were forbidden to go further without a ton of supplies, literally. This was all carried on their backs. Once all was over the pass, they needed to build a boat and sail down to where the gold fields. Pretty much all the gold claims had been snapped up by 1900, and 750f the gold was mined *after* that time.

The town, despite being a territory capital, still has that feeling of being somewhere between more exciting places.

We started in a primitive campground called Conrad south of Whitehorse. The lake was spectacular, but somehow the campgrounds sites mostly have no view of it.....despite being right on the lake. Sigh.

Coming out of the campground up the 13pct gravelly washboard road, however, we had beautiful views of the lake nestled in deep forest. The lake has the turquoise from rock flour/glacier runoff.

The mountains surrounded us, peeking in and out of the clouds. Some off them looked absolutely massive. We saw the remains of old tramways where silver ore was brought down from high on the mountains and delivered to boats down in the lake.

Higher up, the firs started disappearing and the ground was covered with lichen, presumably to feed all those reindeer that we didn't see. Today Liam and Chris DID see three more bears, crossing the road, far in the distance. Sarah and I were riding ahead and missed them entirely. Yesterday this worked for us as we saw two bald eagles swoop low over the road. Of course, we ended up seeing a lot of eagles, not that many bears.

Finally, we reached the top of this gorgeous, hellaciously difficult day (nasty headwind, rough road surface, seemingly endless climbing) and went back through customs.

Then we had a 3000-ft downhill. Suffice to say it nearly scared the crap out of me, and I braked much of the way down.

Done.

Day started where we hadn't expected: another campground. Yesterday we biked straight from the ferry to Lindy and Colleen's house, the excellent people who had given us our own loft apartment (not to mention a wonderful dinner, and sundry other types of support). However, when we go there other friends of theirs were still there, and Colleen and Lindy are in Glacier National Park. Luckily, both Chris and I still had reservations out at Mendenhall campground near the glacier. It was already 8 when we got off the ferry, so we worried that the sites would have been given away. Luckily, not. See the picture showing a view from my site. Absolutely stunning. I think I had the best view in the campground, and about a dozen total people came by to share it during the evening.

We discovered later that Lindy and Colleen had learned of the schedule snafu and texted us an invitation to use their main house while they were away, but we were already at the campground. Cyclists just rock.

This morning posed the problem of how to get both self from campground and bike luggage from Lindy's place to hotel. Luckily, the B.O.B. is truly a beast of burden: I was able to strap the bike baggage on top of the loaded Bob trailer and ride the highways.

Done.