Days 51 & 52 - Stewart British Columbia and Hyder Alaska

Day 51
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Iskut to Stewart, British Columbia

We drove about 2 hours on the Cassiar Highway before turning off onto 37A, Glacier Highway, for a side trip to Stewart. The drive was just about picture perfect. The road followed the Cassiar Mountains and the rapids of Bear River for much of the way. Two waterfalls, fed by glacial melt, plummeted from the mountain tops into the river below. There are more than 20 hanging glaciers overlooking the Glacier Highway. A hanging glacier does not reach the ocean, or in this case, the valley floor. The glacier usually stops at a steep slope or cliff. We stopped to take photos of Bear Glacier, noted for its blue tinge, which was right across the river from the road.

Our “wildlife drought” ended. We had two black bear sightings; the first was a sow with two cubs and the second was a single male. We also saw a marmot.

We ran into a bit of a problem while setting up at Bear River RV Park. I was operating the automatic leveler, and the coach was almost level, when poof, all the jacks suddenly retracted. After that, the levelers would not operate. When I checked the jacks, I saw that the pink hydraulic fluid was just gushing out of the left rear jack. In the meantime, we put down blocks of wood in front of the tires on the left side of the rv and then drove the rv onto the blocks. That helped to balance the rv. We arranged for a mechanic to stop by the rv park tomorrow to look at it. Such is rv life!

There wasn’t much more we could do about the rv, so we took the car and drove 4 miles from Stewart and crossed the border to Hyder, Alaska. (I had forgotten we would be returning briefly to Alaska). Stewart and Hyder are located at the head of the Portland Canal, a 70-mile-long ocean fjord that forms the border between the US and Canada. The Portland Canal is the 4th longest fjord in the world.

We drove 6 more miles for some bear viewing at Fish Creek Wildlife Observation Site in Tongass National Forest. At over 16 million acres, Tongass is about the size of New Hampshire, Vermont and Maryland combined. This time of year, both Black Bear and Brown Bear (Grizzlies) come to the creek to feed on the chum and pink salmon.

Jay and I found that just watching the salmon was interesting. The water was crystal clear and there were lots of salmon. The pink salmon were about 18 inches long, while the chum salmon (also known as dog salmon) were about 3 feet long. The largest chum salmon in North America return to spawn in Fish Creek. These chum can be twice as big as other chum salmon. Chum salmon spend three to five years in the ocean before retuning to spawn. We asked the ranger why the salmon were not trying to swim upstream. In fact, some appeared to be treading water. He answered that the salmon had already spawned and were staying in place to protect the eggs.

This was not like watching the bears at Katmai, where we watched several bears at a time, but we did have a good experience. From the safety of the viewing platform, we first saw a single black bear wander along the creek. After that bear left, we waited a while longer and then another black bear and her cub came along. The sow got a salmon and then she and her cub went into the thick woods to eat. Next on the scene was a dark grizzly bear. He was a big guy. He started walking along the creek when we were surprised to see the

sow come out of the woods about 30 feet from where the grizzly was standing and just across the creek from us. They looked at each other and then the sow high tailed it back into the woods with the grizzly hot on her trail. The next thing we saw was the cub, followed by the sow, scrambling up a tree. This was a lot more excitement than we were expecting! The grizzly continued on his way up the creek, while the sow and cub remained in the tree. We watched the sow and cub for a while, but when the cow closed her eyes and appeared to be sleeping, we realized they might stay up in the tree for a long time and decided to call it a day.

We went back to Hyder for dinner at the Glacier Inn, a fun little bar where the walls are covered with Canadian two dollar bills, before driving back across the border to Stewart.

Day 52
Thursday, August 10, 2017
Stewart, British Columbia

The mechanic arrived at 8 am to diagnose the problem with the hydraulic jacks. He determined that the hydraulic hose had burst and would have to be replaced. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the equipment to fix it, so we will have to wait until we get to Smithers, the next big town.

Later, we took the car and crossed the border into the US again and drove to see Salmon Glacier. The 23 mile Salmon Glacier road is a narrow, gravel road that winds along the valley and mountain side from sea level to an elevation of 4,000 feet.

The Salmon Glacier is the fifth largest glacier in North America and the world’s largest road accessible glacier. It borders Alaska, but is actually in British Columbia.

Jay and I wanted a picture of ourselves with the glacier in the background. The flies were so bad when we got out of the car that we dashed out, quickly asked someone to take our picture and then dashed right back into the car. At least 25 flies followed us back into the car. We opened all of the windows as we drove and swooshed them out. The sky in many of the pictures of the glacier that we took was hazy due to the many forest fires throughout British Columbia

We stopped again at Fish Creek Wildlife Observation Site on our way back to the campground. We didn’t see any bears this time, but we did see a bald eagle perched in a tree.