Stewart & Hyder

Back on the mainland after a week in Haida Gwaii. It's good to be back on concrete roads. The roadmap to the Yukon includes stops in Terrace, Kitwanga, Gitanyow, Stewart and more. We start driving at 6am from Prince Rupert after a rough night on the ferry. Our first stop in Terrace is mainly for recovering and buying some groceries. After an hour break in a Cafe and a little bit of groceries shopping (+ 2 camping chairs we have been dreaming off for a while), we are back in the car. We decide to stop in Kitwanga for a short walk and a garage sale.

It's a nice break and we get to talk to the lady doing the garage sale for half an hour at least and get to meet her grand kids. We leave them with a soap box (can't believe we couldn't find it anywhere else), a book, a few veggies and a good memory. Later we stop in Gitanyow, know for totem poles.

Then, the magic happened! We finally see bears from the safety of the car. We spot 4-5 of them on the way to Stewart.

And we also get to drive next to Bear glacier. We are quite happy when arriving at the campsite. The cherry on top of the cake? They have showers and they are NOT coin operated!!! (after a week in Haida Gwaii with one 2min shower, that's a celebration for us).

We cross the US border the same evening to have a look at the Fish Creek wildlife observation site in Hyder, Alaska. It's apparently an amazing site to see bears feeding on salmons. The price seems correct but it's a day pass. So, if you buy it at 8pm, it's only valid for 2 hours.

We decide to wait for the next day instead so we can go more than once. We wake up early the next day and manage to be at Fish creek by 7:30am. We pay and enter the observation site. It's cold.. Really cold.. And we don't have a lot of gear with us. It's also busy. A lot of people wake up early for this (the best time to see bears is early in the morning or in the evening). We spend about 30min looking for anything moving around. Unfortunately, nothing happens except seeing a lot of salmons and it's too cold for us.

We instead go back to the car and head up to the Salmon Glacier and also an old mine. The pictures speaks for themselves! :)

We end the day with a little bit of luck back at fish creek spotting a young black bear a couple of times. Unfortunately it is a little bit too far for our camera lens to make a good photo...

We also decide to spend an extra day at the campsite to relax and spend the evening with a couple of British telling hiking stories. They are also traveling and planning to move to Vancouver so there is a lot to talk about. We exchange contact and go our own ways, us to the north and them to the south.

The rest of the way to the Yukon is pretty much driving and catching a few bears on the road. The weather is not on our side so we can't enjoy a swim in some of the lakes we are crossing.

We also skip Mont Edziza which is pretty far and would require 4-5 days to hike to. That's a volcanic region which requires a lot more preparation to hike (definitely keeping this one for later).

And that's how we end up in the beautiful Yukon, nearly 1000km north from Prince Rupert.