British Columbia, Canada –
I left my camp on Seeley Lake Provincial Park in Hazelton Wednesday June 12th. I was planning on hitting the road shortly after midday. I had to fill up water and gas and a few other errands before heading onto the Cassiar where I knew there’d be few opportunities to get groceries or gas and all options would be expensive. However, my date from the weekend ended up being in Hazelton and we went mountain biking after she got off work. I have to say, the greens and blues in Hazelton are some of the best trails for flow. Easy uphill for a couple of miles and then good flowy downhills with berms and optional small jumps. Fantastic track! It definitely makes me wish I had spent more time in Hazelton (and Smithers and Terrace, haha) exploring the local MTB groups.
On to the Stewart-Cassiar Highway. A 450 mile stretch of road connecting the Yellowhead highway with the Alaska Highway in Yukon. It was surprisingly well paved for a good quarter of it. The rest isn’t awful. Tons of wildlife to be seen. I’m also glad I had my offline maps prepared. There’s absolutely no cell signal that I could find while on it. There’s several stops for gas, but they all charge for Internet connectivity.
This is a reminder to yall to stop early. I just drove until it started getting dark and pulled into a rest area. Was full. Ended up pulling into the bushes a bit just to sleep.
The Cassiar was fairly pretty scenery but unremarkable otherwise. I figure the pictures will give the best impression of it. The remoteness of everything definitely grows on you. Tons of motorcycles here too that I kept leap frogging. Sounds like they’re headed to Dawson City too! I look forward to meeting them again and getting to know more about them. It really only took me two days to do the Cassiar. My next night was spent in Watson Lake. It was nice having cell signal finally and having a meal with a beer while on Wifi.
From Watson Lake I left for Whitehorse. What a great little town. It’s surprisingly queer and progressive and young. I’m definitely going to have to make a point to stop there on my way back from AK. I’d love to spend a week and explore more of what the town has to offer. One night spent in a parking lot in Whitehorse, filled up the gas and on groceries and off I went again.
Writing this from The Gold Planner Restaurant in Carmacks, Yukon, Canada. Just a small stop on the road that had beer, food, wifi, and cheap-ish gas. Long line for gas too. Good time to journal!