Whitehorse to Stewart: Nature and Wildlife in Abundance on the Cassiar Highway

11 cycle days

1116 km

10649 m ascent

2 thunderstorms

We left Whitehorse early in the afternoon. We had bought so much food that we had a really hard time fitting everything in our tiny bags and ended up having to use our small foldable backpacks. But the choice and prices at the Real Canadian Superstore were just so good! And that was our last supermarket for a while. In the afternoon we met a cyclist who started in Ushuaia and is cycling the Americas northbound (I am writing this late August and funnily enough we have received a text from him only yesterday! He made it to Deadhorse and even spotted our sticker at the wall of the General Store. If you read this – huge congrats, Steve!!)

One morning I had my enthusiasm for squirrels slightly dampened – one of them had tried to eat through my pannier and get to my peanuts overnight. Even though it was stored in a bear bag! Oh well… We bumped into Jon again today and stopped for a late lunch at the campsite where he was going to stay that night. A thunderstorm came up and we decided there and then to just call it a day as well. 

Hot, hilly and headwind – a really bad combination that makes for a slow day. We finally reached the location where we intended to sleep – only to experience the WORST MOSQUITO ATTACK EVER!! There were thousands of them. There was no way of staying, cooking, eating or even pitching the tent. We went on for another 20 kilometers to a spot where it was slightly better. I still walked in circles while eating dinner to avoid the worst of the mosquitoes and we were back to packing up in rain gear the next morning. We ate breakfast after 10 kms of cycling to a spot with less mosquitoes. On the way we crossed the Continental Divide at one of its lowest points. 

Coming closer to Watson Lake, we had more than one road option for the first time in a while. To continue from Watson Lake, we could either stay on the Alaskan Highway or backtrack 20 kilometers and turn onto the Cassiar-Stewart Highway. We did some research and the Cassiar Highway is more remote, resulting in less traffic, more wildlife and less resupply points. As a bonus, there’s a 120 km return detour to a small town called Stewart with lots of cool things to see. As we were already used to carrying food for several days, we opted for the Cassiar Highway. After all, we’ve been on the Alaska Highway for a lot of kilometers already!

The day we cycled into Watson Lake was funny in a way. While looking for a place to have breakfast, we met a Swiss couple that is also cycling to Argentina. We had planned to get to Watson Lake, have a shower, do groceries, have a quick sightseeing stop, backtrack the 20 kilometers to the junction with the Cassiar highway and wild camp somewhere at the beginning of the Cassiar Highway. 
As planned, we got to Watson Lake around noon and we both had a shower at the local recreation center. We went to the supermarket to get food for the next week. As always, repacking everything into Ziplock bags took some time. We headed over to the sign post forest for a quick stroll. A place where travelers from all around the world have started to hang signs and license plates from their home towns on trees and posts. After seeing this I am surprised that Germany still has town signs in their cities!

Around six o clock we cycled out of Watson Lake. After a few kilometers, we noticed very dark clouds and lightning right in front of us. A quick look at the rain forecast showed a really slow movement of clouds and no coming through for hours. We turned around and cycled back into Watson Lake for the second time today. We chose the same informal campsite as the Swiss couple, they seemed slightly amused by our chaotic day! We finished pitching the tent just in time and the thunderstorm hit Watson Lake hard, with pouring rain and storm. While I sat inside the recreation center, Sebi experienced the first storm from inside of our new tent. 

The next day we left Watson Lake without the thunderstorm, but the day turned out to be the rainiest of our tour so far. We didn’t get a single minute without rain from getting up to going to sleep. At least that resulted in a bearably low amount of mosquitoes… As stopping would have meant feeling awfully cold, we kept going and had our lunch break relatively late at a recreation site. Despite our hopes, there wasn’t a roof, but a big tree gave us at least some shelter from the rain. Shortly before lunch we had our first bear encounter! It was a youngish Grizzly Bear, quite hidden behind a bush right next to the road. After a short moment of mutual confusion, it ran off into the field though.
We continued on towards Boya Lake – a lake we’ve heard a lot about and which is supposed to be incredibly beautiful. And indeed, despite the rain its water was turquoise blue when we got there.

We spent the whole next day on the camp site, which we had been planning for days. It was the first day off bike for a week and what a spot for it! We hung our clothes to dry and after the sky had cleared up over lunch, I got one of the rental kayaks and spent some time paddling on the lake. As beautiful as the water looked – it wasn’t that warm and the white sand was actually quicksand (which I discovered upon trying to step onto one of the beautiful little islands). Nevertheless, soo gorgeous! 

Between Boya Lake and Meziadin Junction it was mostly us, the road and wildlife. One day was particularly exciting, I don’t think we’ve ever seen so many different animals in one day. We spotted a black bear, beavers, moose, bald eagles, rabbits, squirrels and red foxes… 
Another day we passed the small town of Jade City. There was not much more than a Jade Store and a small RV park. The nearby Princess Jade Mine though is apparently one of the largest jade claims in the world. The shop offers free coffee/tea and outside you can see the jade being cut and processed.

Whenever we could, we camped at recreation sites – simple, but beautiful campgrounds maintained by the state of British Columbia. They were mostly located at lakes, had basic pit toilets, rubbish bins, a picnic table at every site and sometimes a kitchen shelter. If that didn’t work out, we stayed at rest areas (which are usually next to rivers or lakes as well). At one of those spots we were about to go to sleep, when something caused our tent to rustle. Sebi peeked outside and discovered his trail running vest laying in the middle of the gravel spot we camped on. Shortly after, we saw a fox down at the river, we still have no idea what happened! Sure enough Sebi put his shoes inside the tent that night as well and we each tightened our bags into one big bundle.

Mosquitoes were still giving us a hard time. There were not as many as close to the continental divide, but they were particularly aggressive and painful. By then my body looked like back when I had chickenpox – and we do try to avoid being bitten all the time. Sometimes it was just too much and a tear or two was shed out of pure frustration. In addition to the mosquitoes, we were now also terrorized by small, close-to-invisible flies, so called no-see-ums.

We arrived at Meziadin Junction – the turnoff towards Stewart – on a sunny afternoon. It’s a 60 km one-way drive from there to Stewart, which we originally wanted to do the next day. But as tent camping wasn’t allowed in Meziadin due to high grizzly bear activity, we continued all the way to Stewart instead. The first 20 km were uphill – with a headwind that Patagonia would have been proud of! At least there were a lot of beautiful waterfalls and glaciers on the way, including the bear glacier. Only ten years ago that glacier reached all the way down to the lake.

While rolling into Stewart, I was reminded of the small fjord towns in Norway and instantly liked it. It has a lot of old buildings, old cars, colorful store fronts and mountains with waterfalls all around. We even spotted a small wooden sauna in a garden! We stayed on the local campground, which to our excitement had a hot shower (as we had mostly stayed at the basic recreation sites, we were not used to having a shower on the campsite and were even happier about it).

We had planned to have a rest day or two in Stewart. Those turned into a few more, as Sebi wasn’t feeling so well and needed a lot of sleep for a couple of days. We used the time for doing our laundry, eating pizza and uploading a new post on the blog. One day I cycled to Hyder, which is literally just around the corner and actually part of Alaska. Its slogan is “the friendliest ghost town in the world” and a lot of buildings and businesses are indeed abandoned. It has a nice vibe and view into the Portland Canal though! I spotted a few bald eagle and took way too many videos of busy beavers in a stream next to the road. In Hyder is a place called “Fish Creek” – a shallow stream with thousands of spawning salmon. That attracts bears and a viewing platform was built for the bears and the humans safety. I spent a few hours there but didn’t see any bears.

Once Sebi was fit enough again, we left our luggage at the campsite and cycled up to the Salmon Glacier. It’s a ~40 km ride from the campsite to the glacier, with a lot of elevation gain on mostly gravel roads. On the way there we stopped at the Fish Creek and saw two black bears! But only for a second, they simply crossed the creek and went into the forest. We made it to the Salmon Glacier early in the afternoon and despite some rain in the morning, the view was so good. On the descent I lost my rain pants and unfortunately didn’t even find them when cycling back up to look for them… To this day I have no clue where they could have gone to. We stopped at the Fish Creek again before returning to Stewart and got so lucky! A big grizzly came up and spent nearly an hour there, fishing one salmon after another, slowly eating them right in front of our faces. As if that was not enough, we also spotted some marmots for the first time and got to see a baby beaver.