Yukon Ho!

June 8, 2006

Biking time: 11AM to 6PM
End: Woss
Distance: 76.4KM
Day one! After camping in a parking lot last night, we woke up at 6AM and drove to Sayward Junction for breakfast at the Cypress Tree. After eating, we spent over an hour using their freshly paved parking lot to spread out all of our junk and pack up the panniers. We gave them some leftover beer when they came out to see what was going on, and rather than using it, they put it in the back room with our names on it so that we could stop in and get drunk at the end of the trip. They probably think we will forget, but they’re wrong. We then drove to Lorraine and Lyle’s place to drop off the van. Their property is amazing. Their house is up on a hill in the trees, and down below they have a huge circular driveway with a small pasture in the middle on which they graze a few sheep, a small goat and a llama (named Maggie). We got to feed the llama and chat with Lorraine for a while before she had to leave to pick her daughter up at school, leaving us with a lot of stuff and two bikes to load it onto. Fully loaded, my bike is unliftable. Amy’s is… but only barely. Our first goal was getting out of the driveway without falling. Not easy. Once we hit the road, we were a bit wobbly but we got used to it quite fast. Its a good thing too… a few kilometres into the ride and we were already up against a mountain climb and a serious headwind. With Woss as our goal (70 km away), we pedalled onward and upward. At lunch we stopped at a rest area and fought with the stove for 15 minutes in order to make some instant backpackers food. Unfortunately we were almost out of gas (shoulda filled up in Sayward!). A lawn maintenance crew helped us with a little spare fuel, so we were able to have lukewarm reconstituted chicken curry with rice. Mmm! We pressed on for the rest of the afternoon and thankfully hit some payoff for all of the climbing we’d done earlier. The last hour or so was mostly downhill into Woss, where we were able to grab some real food (and gas) before heading a few kilometers out of town to the nearest rest station. After dinner, we fought with the trees for a good half hour in order to get our food hoisted, then set the tent up in the corner for some forbidden camping. Don’t tell! After all of our “learning” today, we decided we may need to lighten the load a bit. We are carrying to much food and too many tools to start with. Perhaps in Port Hardy we will invest in some lighter thermarests as well. All in all, we’re pretty happy to have made it 76km on day one. Some perspective however: The speed limit here is 100km/h so we spent a day travelling 45 minutes of car-distance (not counting speeding). Thanks, oil!

Click here for today’s pictures