2. AK, BC & YT — Whitehorse

The sun comes up early here in June, and I was up early too. The Klondike Highway is a paved road here but the traffic is light. I don’t think any vehicles went by during the night. Good thing, I was only 60 feet off the road.

It was about 80 miles to Whitehorse from my roadside camp, but that would be a long day on a mountain bike. I decided to camp in Carcross (short for Cariboo Crossing) instead. That was only about 30 miles away and would give me time to get things dried and sorted out. (It rained for most of the rest of the voyage from Ketchikan to Skagway, and some things were still soaked.)

Now it was time for breakfast. But no! I left the fuel for my stove on the ferry. They require you to store it in the paint locker during the voyage. In my haste to start riding, I forgot it. Well, no morning coffee or oatmeal. I ate granola with water instead.

Carcross is a nice little town of about 300 First Nations people. It is on the migration path of a herd of Cariboo. I found a place to camp there for $5. I went downtown to the Cariboo Hotel after I got my wet gear hung up on a line. There I had the worst fish and chips I’ve ever eaten. I should have eaten my can of beans cold instead.

I also called Marcia in Minnesota from the hotel. She and Jane have a nice cabin in Crosby, but it is hot and muggy there. There were no cell phones in the country I was in, but I had a Sprint calling card that let you make inexpensive calls from pay phones. You dialed a Sprint number, and then dialed the number you wanted. I called every few days after that.

It was an easy ride to Whitehorse on the Yukon River the next day. That was the route to the Klondike because the prospectors could float all the way to Dawson City. The Klondike Highway parallels the river most of the way. As I said before, that makes it all — including Whitehorse — (slightly) downhill from here. Sweet words for a cyclist.

I had a great hamburger steak where the Klondike Highway joins the Alaska (formerly Alkan) Highway. It is a busy road with lots of trucks and buses as well as cars. I was in another world. It was only a few miles further on to Whitehorse, and I was soon lodged in Robert Service Campground. (Robert Service is the Canadian counterpart of Robert Burns, Scotland’s venerated poet.)

I bought a copy of Milepost, “The Bible of North Country Travel,” when I was planning this trip. That’s where I found places like Robert Service Campground. It’s a big, thick book, so I disassembled it and took just the pages I needed with me. Here is the map of my outbound journey:

I had the usual bar ends (hand grips) on my mountain bike handlebar. They’re great for climbing a steep hill in the woods, but I found they are too far apart for riding all day. So I tried a radical change. I moved the bar ends inside of the brake and shift levers, which meant those had to come off before I could move the bar ends (now bar middles I guess). It took an hour or two to swap everything, and I hoped it worked out.

The cyclist camped next to me came over and told me she had some problems on her bike. I guess she could see I knew how to work on them. I learned she was from France and was going to ride on up the Alaska Highway in a few days. (I would peel off on the Klondike Highway, headed for Dawson City.) I had the right spare parts to fix her bike and she was very happy. (We’ll learn more about her later.)

Then I went downtown to get fuel, a cord for my bear rig, and groceries. There were many more bicycles in downtown Whitehorse than I could have imagined. Most of them were riding confidently in traffic like they are supposed to. Amazing. Whitehorse is a commerce hub like Spokane, but it serves an area 800 miles in diameter instead of 200. It was bustling.

On the advice of a camp caretaker, I tried some “Quebec True Poutine” for lunch the next day. It’s a big bowl of French fries covered with “lump” cheese (like cottage cheese) and smothered with gravy. Probably 2,500 calories. I later figured I ate 5,000 calories a day on the ride (and lost 20 pounds by the end) so that was about right for lunch.

I went to see the big old SS Klondike sternwheeler too. It’s a National Monument in Whitehorse. It is handsome. Mark Twain would have surely loved it. There was no road to Dawson City until about 1950. Sternwheelers served as the primary transportation.  [Photos of Whitehorse]

I spent the rest of the day watching the Yukon flow and getting things organized for the next day. I separated all the food and other odiferous items from my clothing and other supplies. That reduced the weight of items bears would like. My “patented” bear rig was an combination of some sailing tackle and two stout lines. I used it to hoist my food up to an overhanging tree limb, shelter beam or anything that would put it out of reach.

I don’t remember seeing any bears on the trip except grizzlys in Denali National Park, though. Mother moose kill more people up north here than bears anyway, and I saw plenty of them. But they don’t eat people food. 😉

There isn’t much from here on until Dawson City. Just a couple of places to eat, a couple of sketchy general stores, a few campgrounds and that’s it. I had the bike fully loaded, and was pretty sure I would make the 330 miles without going hungry.

[pictures]

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I have revised the previous post a bit for accuracy…