August 28

It only takes a few towns and a few days of driving to make them all start to run together.

I woke up early on our departure day from Stewart and gave the bears one more chance.  I went to the bear viewing platform in the rain and there were no bears.  Kris wisely stayed home in the warm trailer.

Our next stop was the Hazeltons.  New Hazelton is a modern town on the edge of the wilderness.  Old Hazelton is more of an old mining town that is trying to attract tourists.  The surrounding area is primarily First Nations.  We stayed at the ‘Ksan campground that was on the same grounds as their tourist facility.  Their facility provided an interesting glimpse of their lives, past and present.  It is strange to think of people still living under a social order that is partially determined by birth in North America.  It is also strange to see such different customs and traditions and it is interesting to see how they have adapted these over time. 

Some of their customs are relatively well known.  For example, at their meetings, they use a talking stick.  Only the possessor of the talking stick may speak at that time.  It seems a civilized approach to large group discussions.  I imagine the politics of handing off the stick, though, are a bit more familiar to all of us. 

I don’t know that I could classify their government well.  It certainly has a socialist element of sharing, but perhaps it is more accurately communist as they are organized into separate houses.  Power is handed down, a bit like a monarchy, but the current chief can select from beyond his immediate family and can select a female to inherit the chiefdom which I found rather progressive.  They seem to value achievement in hunting, fishing, and carving, setting up a bit of competition.  They seem to have a peaceful history, although we heard some vague references to raiding and clashes with other houses.  The visit really had me thinking.

I was also fascinated how they changed their traditions over time.  One tradition of hosting a feast has evolved from a month long event to just a day, adapting the elements of rush that go with the prevailing culture of North America.  A more distant adaptation shows the influence of the minerals rush and the big corporations of that time.  Their discovery of new materials, specifically in the form of blankets provided by the Hudson Bay company, changed how these First Nations people clothed their chiefs.  These Hudson Bay blankets became a symbol of wealth and power.  Buttons were added as another symbol.  These button-blanket robes are almost laughable by our standards, but it isn’t hard to understand how new materials could capture even our modern attention.

We drove a few miles up a back road to a native housing development with unpronounceable street names.  At the back of the development was a collection of old totem poles, some of them reportedly over a hundred and fifty years old.  There were no signs explaining anything.  There was no parking identified; we pulled off the dirt road onto the grass.  It was just about a dozen carved wooden posts standing vertically in a mowed field.

The mining and river boat history of old Hazelton has become an old story to us.  It looked like dozens of other old towns we have visited throughout gold rush country.  Their small, but free, museum provided little in the way of artifacts that we haven’t seen over and over again.  Their relics in the park, a large steam engine and a small old gasoline engine, still invite me to stop to figure out how they work, but they are becoming quite familiar.

The town had another odd feature, a 1930’s one-lane suspension bridge across a 260 foot deep gorge.  The open metal decking added to the sense of height, although driving the trailer over it required such a focus on staying between the low steel bumpers that separated the walking areas from the driving lane that it wasn’t that scary.  It was much scarier when I drove Kris’ car across, and downright uncomfortable to walk on.

Our next stop was a short drive to the town of Smithers.  At this point, we are really transitioning from the wilderness to civilization.  The two lane road has become a challenge.  Frequent speed limit changes slow our progress.  Traffic lines up behind slower vehicles and attempts to pass in short, dangerous passing zones.  Occasional steep hills cause larger rigs, like mine, to drop below the triple digit speed limit (60 mph).  I hate passing.  I hate being passed.  Driving has become demanding.

The roads are generally pretty nice, though.  Occasional construction or bumps remind me of what we have driven through.  I hit a few bumps yesterday that dipped the trailer enough to get a slight rebound from my weight distributing bars.  I laughed at the mildness of the bounce in comparison to the frost heaves of interior Alaska and the Yukon.  I no longer have any concerns about the shocks on the van.

The sense of civilization is misleading.  There is only one road in most places.  We have passed only a couple of intersections where another road actually leads somewhere.  Some of the side streets lead off for miles before ending and I imagine there are backroads that parallel the main road for miles at a time.  This is not, though, a lattice of interwoven roads.  The vast spaces of nothingness still outweigh this one strip of seemingly normal civilization.

We are in logging country.  The frequent truckloads of logs seem a little disconcerting.  The piles of logs waiting to be processed at lumber facilities are staggering.  The cut lumber in the yards further explains the vastness of this supply.  I saw two piles of sawdust that exceeded anything I have ever seen.  I don’t think I can even estimate dimensions, but perhaps many acres covered many dozens of feet deep.  Seeing large industrial complexes of lumber combined with what I am guessing is pulp and paper brings mixed feelings.  I still have a love of industry in spite of the unavoidable environmental impacts.

Smithers is a cute town with a Bavarian themed downtown.  We camped in their municipal campground right along the Bulkley River.  We had to move for our second night there because their fair started and the campground had reservations for all the sites with hookups. 

We drove up to their ski area the afternoon we arrived.  The Hudson Bay ski area gives further clues to the past corporate influences on the area and probably misleads people who simply see the name into thinking of an eastern Canada ski resort.  The ski area looked like something Kris and I would like.  It wasn’t a resort.  It didn’t look very big.  A few odd cabins surrounded the base area that was tucked into a spruce forest, but very near tree line.  A t-bar lift drags people from that base area a long way up, probably a painful way up since it is a t-bar (a form a surface lift that requires you to stand on your skis the whole way up the mountain).  It appeared that they had a regular chairlift going to the top from another angle, but it could have been another surface lift.  It was fun to imagine skiing at such a small, virtually unknown area.  I bet it gets brutally cold there, though.

From the base of the ski area, we hiked a couple miles up the mountain.  We emerged from the trees onto a beautiful alpine plateau that we followed back to a lovely alpine lake.  We saw a herd (can birds come in herds?) of ptarmigan and countless curious marmots.  Their marmots appear to be a slightly different species than the Alaskan marmots we have seen as they are darker in coloration.  It was fun to see so many marmots and it felt good to go for a hike, our first real physical activity in quite some time.

The next day we drove back off the main road on increasingly narrower roads.  Our first stop was Driftwood Canyon fossil beds.  A short hike takes you to an eroded slope of shale where they have found countless fossils, primarily of ancient salmon.  It wasn’t a very satisfying stop as it is nearly impossible to provide a meaningful non-destructive encounter with a fossil bed. 

We continued down the road, the last several miles on a virtually one-lane road through a tight forest that had me wondering how I would deal with traffic going the other way.  Luckily, we were arriving reasonably early in the morning such that no one was on their way out and our departure was pretty late in the evening such that no one was on their way in. 

We chose a hike that provided a slow climb up through the spruce forest, by a couple of small sub-alpine lakes, and into a wonderful alpine pass.  The drive in gave no clue to the strange topography of this area.  The dense forest and merely rolling road hides this relatively small collection of tall mountains.  The mountains aren’t quite as organized into ridges as most mountain ranges.  The randomness of valleys and peaks, the unpredictable direction of drainage, provided a uniqueness to this adventure.

I was tired of climbing, unsure if I had the energy to reach what was called ‘the summit’, but once I could see it, I trudged onward.  The views expanded out into yet another direction as we climbed over a pass.  The information at the trailhead added enough confusion with its units of measure in kilometers that I never really thought about distance.  I had noticed on our map that there was a loop option, but expressed in kilometers it simply sounded way too long to be a day hike.  When we reached the summit, we began to contemplate this loop option.  The distance information sounded like it was only slightly longer to return on another trail than the one we came up on.  We knew there would be a hike on the road to get back to the car, but we didn’t think it was far.  We headed off on an unplanned adventure. We were amply rewarded for being adventurous. 

We rounded a bend and found ourselves hiking in a wonderful alpine world with great views in every direction.  We were a little nervous about the weather as there was a chance of afternoon thunderstorms.  When the hail began to fall, we picked up the pace a little in hopes of descending from this high place should a little lightning begin in the cool afternoon.  The peaks still towered above us, but the broad plateau was wider than I like for lighting protection.  When the hail turned to snow, we relaxed and laughed.  The snow gave way to breaks of sunshine, and sometimes a little of both.

The trail was not much of a trail, but markers were well placed to keep us moving in the right direction.  The lack of a worn trail in the tundra is a strong indicator of rather limited traffic.  We headed back between a couple of peaks and soon found ourselves in the land of marmots.  They were shy marmots, never letting us get close enough for good pictures.  We have never seen so many marmots.  Marmots also mean marmot holes so we had to watch our footing in the wide open tundra with nearly invisible foot sized holes almost everywhere. 

Some of the holes were excavated a lot more than others and a pile of bear scat provided the explanation.  There were rolls and dips in this wide open space, so we were on alert for the possibility of marmot hunters roaming about.  As we began descending into an area of sparse groupings of short trees, we both saw a dark critter in a field down below us at about the same time.  We stopped and watched as this black bear bounded around an open field, chasing after something that was getting its attention. 

A strong wind kept our sound and scent from reaching this bear.  It never looked in our direction.  Our trail was headed parallel to the field so it didn’t look like we would be getting any closer, but this bear was very active and when it bounded in our direction, it made a noticeable difference in distance in a very short time.  We moved cautiously and joked that the bear almost looked like it had whirling disease as it spent an inordinate amount of energy trying to get a meal.  It was arguably one of the most amazing bear encounters we have ever witnessed, far more active than the salmon fishers we have seen.

As we approached more trees, we struggled to keep our eye on the bear.  Suddenly, the bear bounded off across the field away from us and continued in a full sprint up a clearing for a good distance before disappearing from view.  Our best guess is that the bear finally noticed us.   It was a good thing, too, as the trail soon rounded a bend and headed much closer to the field.  Had we not seen the bear bound off, we would have been terrified as we picked our way through the stretches of ever denser trees.

The trail was full of surprises.  The strange disorganized mountains made it difficult to tell which direction we were headed, although the trail slowly became more worn as we progressed so we had little doubt that we were on the trail.  One surprise was a climb back into the alpine zone for another dose of marmots whistling all around us with many more sightings of the fat little critters standing up on their rears to peer down at us.

The trail stuck near treeline for many miles and we began to worry about the descent.  Our climb had totaled over 2500 vertical feet, to a high of 5700, and we kept hovering around the 5000 mark for much longer than we wanted.  The trail finally began to descend and much to our joy, didn’t descend as steeply as we feared.  Unfortunately, that is because the descent took place over a much longer distance than was indicated in our brochure.  We hiked at least a mile further than we had expected before emerging onto the road. 

The GPS brought bad news as we emerged.  While the rough map in the brochure had me expecting a mile along the road, it was still over a mile and a half.  I knew the road followed a creek and I knew we would be heading upstream, but the GPS indicated that we had a few hundred feet of elevation to gain.  We marched down the narrow dirt road, keeping a healthy pace for the gradual uphill.  Our total hike was much longer than we would ever plan, in part due to the joy we felt at what we thought was almost the halfway point, but mostly due to an unexpected additional couple of miles not appropriately indicated on the brochure.  The GPS odometer clicked over the 15 mile mark as we approached the parking lot, perhaps the longest day hike we have ever taken, and not far off our maximum elevation gain.  In spite of this torture, I think we both are still riding a high from that hike.

Our progress down the road, over 2500 miles so far, has brought noticeable changes.  It gets dark earlier and earlier.  The start of the fall colors seems to be following us down the road, but the vegetation is changing.  Our hikes have me frustrated as the berries look different.  There are these strange berries that are clearly related to raspberries.  I saw what I am nearly certain are blueberries.  I am pretty sure I saw lots of black currants.  Unfortunately, pretty sure doesn’t cut it when it comes to berries.  The only berries I have eaten recently are some rather pathetic crowberries; they don’t seem to be a particularly successful berry at this latitude.