Kinaskan Lake, BC to Stewart BC – 172 Miles
Today was another rainy day. It started with light sprinkles during the night, and continued throughout our drive south to Stewart. The highway continues to be in excellent shape, most of it recently paved or re-sealed. We drove through a number of sections, each several miles long, that had prominent signs for re-sealing during the summer of 2011, and each was essentially complete. I guess the stories of the Cassiar Highway being a primitive road are a thing of the past. Except for a couple of very short sections that were undergoing maintenance, the entire highway has been paved up to this point. We still have 150 miles to go, so we’ll see if this holds true for the entire 450-mile length.
The highway continues to follow a series of rivers down through what are obviously beautiful, mountain-ringed valleys. According to my GPS, the elevation has varied between slightly less than 1000 feet along the rivers in this southern portion to a maximum of 4000 feet back at Gnat Pass. Many of the intervening passes have been around 3200 to 3300 feet. Unfortunately for us, with the rain and low ceilings today, all we could see for the most part were the lower slopes. As we travelled farther and farther south, the vegetation became more and more lush. The dominant species slowly changed from spruce and aspen to red cedar and hemlock, with a smattering of fir and an occasional pine. Mixed in among the conifers were a few cottonwoods and other deciduous varieties, and of course the edge of the trees along the roadside where the light is brightest was choked with alders and willow. Small creeks flowing down from the hillsides crossed the highway at regular intervals, each adding to the furious rush of the rivers paralleling the road. And all the time the trees grew taller and taller. At one point we had a quick glimpse of a black bear and her cub in the willow and alder scrub alongside the road, and a little bit farther along a small animal which I took to be a pine martin darted across the pavement.
The turn-off to Steward is a T-intersection, configured such that the actual highway spur off to Stewart, Highway 37A, is not a turn-off at all for south-bound traffic. It’s the top crossbar of the T, so we continued straight ahead. Northbound traffic would make a left turn for Stewart or a right turn to continue north toward the Alaska Highway.
Highway 37A is much like the dead-end roads into Seward, Valdez, and Skagway – a 40 mile-long winding highway, descending through a steep valley, with rugged peaks on both sides. As with the other roads, small waterfalls abound along the faces of the steep cliffs which form the sides of the valley. These falls tumble down in a series of cascades hundreds of feet high. Some have cut deep grooves into the cliff face, and with the dense, bright green vegetation covering all exposed rock, the overall appearance is similar to the Na’Pali cliffs on the north side of the island of Kauai. About two-thirds of the way down to Stewart the road widens to create a long turnout overlooking the large Bear Glacier on the south side of the highway. Even in the gray mist and fog of the day, the crevasses in the face of the glacier reflect the bright blue color of glacial ice. This steep glacier terminates into a small lake, and thence into a tumbling stream which the road follows for the remainder of the way down to Stewart.
Nearing Stewart the road levels out, and as we drove into the outskirts of the town another black bear nonchalantly ambled slowly across the road a few yards in front of us. We easily found the Rainey Creek Municipal Campground, picked a spot and checked in. This campground, and in fact the whole town, is located in a temperate rain forest. It reminds me of the Olympic rain forest in Washington State. Just behind our campsite is a small creek, and the opposite side is a dense jungle of large green leaves and moss-covered trees. The ground is a carpet of moss. We counted at least a half dozen different types of mushrooms growing right outside our door. Some are brightly colored, which is usually a sign that they are poisonous, so I guess we won’t be spicing up our salad with any of these. We took photos of all of them, and perhaps Linda from our hiking group can identify them for us.
The town of Hyder, Alaska, is just a mile or maybe less past Stewart. We didn’t make it over there this afternoon as we had our weekly laundry to take care of at the local laundromat. There are a couple of good bear-catching-salmon viewing spots over on that side of the border so that will be a good activity for tomorrow. And hopefully the rain will ease off for us to have a better look at the canyon as we make our way back up to the Cassiar the following day.
No comments:
Post a Comment