Yukon Ho!

June 15, 2006

July 8, 2006 on 1:07 pm | In Uncategorized |

Biking time: 10pm to 6pm
End: Bonus Lake
Distance: 79km
As we were packing up this morning, one of the pigs (Fatty) started munching on a pannier cover. Sarah was right when she said they eat “everything”. We wrestled it out of its snout and packed up to leave, hoping for coffee and water in the bustling town of Kitwanga. All they had there however was a hardware store, so we pressed on, following a warning sign for “next services 14 and 145 km”. 14km into the trip, sure enough, was a sign leading to Gitanyow Gas Bar, which was “two minutes from the highway” (10 by bike). There was not much there, but they did have a dozen eggs for us to buy as well as the standard gas bar snacks and some pretty good coffee. So we ate some snacks and I went outside to start cooking some eggs on our stove when I realized that I FORGOT OUR FUEL CANISTER at the gas station last night. Great. Problem is, it’s not just a standard gas can, it’s the kinda thing that you can possibly buy in a place like Terrace, or a place like Whitehorse, but nowhere in between. So, looking forward to a 35km round trip on my bike back to the gas station, I gave them a call to be sure they had it. Luckily they did, and even luckily-er, there was an Elder at the store who was on his way to Gitanyow and he brought it to us. Thanks so much! WHen he showed up, we realized it was an older guy in a pickup truck who we’d waved to on our way into Gitanyow. It pays to wave to everyone I guess.

While we had been waiting for him among the collectin of totem poles, we spoke with the cashier at the store and she told us about an unmanaged campsite by a lake just 4km up the road. So we headed there for lunch, and were able to take a quick (cold) dip and clean some clothes. IT was a cool little place, but it was also a long way off the highway on a dirt road. Luckily almost all of the dirt roads loop back to the highway, so  neither of our stops (Gitanyow and the lakefront lunch) required any backtracking. I hate backtracking.

We pushed on, knowing that we wouldn’t see any more civilization today (Meziadin Junction is 156km along the highway), so we hoped we’d at least finnd a rest area at the halfway point to Meziadin (called Cranberry junction). Turns out there was nothing at Cranberry except a deep valley that we had to ride out of and a dirt road off to the side. As an added bonus, we passed a b lack bear on the side of the road just before the junction, so we were really excited about sleeping near his feeding grounds. He was pretty harmless though, he just watched as we rode by. I sang him a PLaskett song to keep him chilled.

Wondering where the hell we were going to stop, we kept climbing for what seemed to be forever. Then in the distance we saw a road coming off the highway. I expected it was a logging road, so we figured we could just sleep alongside it. It turned out to be even better. A small rest area was built by BC Forestry (Bonus Lake Recreation Area), complete with an outhouse, a few picnic tables and a floating dock out onto a marshy lake.

We set up the tent in order to escape the swarms of mosquitos, and decided to do a bit of reading and writing before dinner. Suddenly, we b oth heard a growling sound and froze. We kinda freaked out. THen there was a bunch of rustling in the bushes so we extra freaked out. I ran for the bear spray and we hurriedly locked the food in the outhouse ( so much easier than putting it in a tree). We even moved the tent further from the trees so that we could monitor the situation. A few more rustles were all that we heard, plus the excrutiatingly loud rumbling of our hungry stomachs. Each time one of us rumbled, the other thought it was a bear coming. I’m pretty sure that the initial growl that set it all off was one of us, not an animal. We tried to laugh it off a bit, and we made dinner without any attacks. We ate on the dock where there were slightly fewer mosquitos, and we got to watch a few muskrats swim around and go fishing. By the sid eof the water there was a flurry of activity in the bushes (squirrels, frogs and birds), and after being surprised by a squirrel near the outhouse, we decided that all of the rustling we’d heard was caused by a bunch of critters much smaller than bears.

Part of the freak out, I’m sure, was that an RV driver told us he’d seen a bear a few miles back on the road. We had flagged him down before dinner to ask for some water (it’s so much easier than filtering it), and he told us about the bear as he filled our bottles. I think in the back of our minds we had stopped practically on top of a bear’s den. Luckily we were full of food and tired enough that we fell fast asleep without any more bear related fears. Tomorrow we will head for Meziadin (75km) and sleep a bit closer to civilization.

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