Boya Lake, BC to Kinaskan Lake, BC – 174 Miles
It’s hard to imagine, but it seems like each campground we stop at has a more spectacular setting than the one before. We really enjoyed last night’s campground at Boya Lake, but this one is even better. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare the two because Boya Lake is a much more intimate landscape than this; Kinaskan Lake is several times larger – almost on the scale of the many really large lakes we’ve passed along the way. Plus the surrounding mountains are higher; I’m guessing six to seven thousand feet. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
The Cassiar Highway south of Boya Lake continues much like yesterday, except that it almost immediately enters into and follows a beautiful valley through the Cassiar Mountains, another range of what I’d estimate to be 6’ers and 7’ers. The higher peaks had a fresh dusting of snow. The road soon comes to a small village called Jade City, which is the home to several large jade mines. The one large building is a gift shop which sells jade items, from trinkets and jewelry to large statuesque pieces. Apparently this area is home to something like 40 percent of the world’s jade mines. An interesting fact that I learned is that jade is closely related to asbestos; in fact, most of the jade mines started out as asbestos mines.
The next stop was the town of Dease Lake, named after the large lake that the highway skirts coming into town. It was just before coming to Dease Lake (the lake) that we saw a large black bear along the side of the road, lounging in the grass and leisurely eating something – either grass or berries. We stopped in Dease Lake (the town) for gas and lunch.
South of Dease lake, the road quickly climbs up to Gnat Pass, elevation 4000 feet, then follows the Gnat Pass Valley for a few miles before dropping down to the Stikine River. Just before we reached the river we were lucky to see a lynx cross the roadway a few yards ahead of us – too quickly for me to stop and get a photo. That’s one more species of wildlife to add to our sightings list.
As the road continues south from the Stikine River there is a stretch of construction, or more precisely, road maintenance, that goes for several miles. This is an area of pay-attention-to-your-driving road, narrow and with steep drop-offs along both sides. However, after passing this section, the road improves dramatically, with fresh paving and, after a few more miles, actual center striping and edge striping, luxuries we haven’t seen since leaving the Alaska Highway yesterday. Along this stretch of road Mt Edziza, a 9,143-foot dormant volcano is visible a few miles to the southwest. The peak was shrouded in clouds, but the upper reaches have a solid snowpack down to about 7,000 to 7,500 feet. Shortly after passing Mt Edziza and reaching the striped pavement we reached our campsite for the night, Kinaskan Lake Provincial Campground, located at KM 365 of the Cassiar Highway. It was early in the afternoon, so after setting up the Tiger, we took a short hike on a trail along the shore of the lake to work out the kinks from the last two day’s drives. What a beautiful setting! It’s too bad it’s cloudy all the time up here; the sky must be pitch black and the star gazing a wonder. And again, we keep seeing people from previous campgrounds, which gives every stop a kind of home town feeling as we catch up on what everyone has done since we last saw them. We highly recommend this campground, as well as last night’s campground at Boya Lake, for anyone planning to drive up this way.
Tomorrow our goal is the twin towns of Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK, which straddle the border at the upper end of the Portland Canal, a long fjord that juts northeastward from the Inside Passage. This is supposed to be a favorite spot for watching bears feed on migrating salmon. We’ll find out tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment