Whitehorse - Cassiar Hwy

7/26/07
I set the alarm on my Screamin Meanie to get me up at 6 but I was
already up anyway. I quickly packed and waited a couple minutes for
the gate of the campground to open. When it did, I got to the Tim
Horton's but found a long line. I got in the queue and chatted with
the woman behind me about my trip.
When I was finished, I asked the 5 RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted
Police) about headlight modulators. I had to show them what they were
but they then said they were ok to use in Canada. It didn't escape my
notice that there were lots of police at the donut shop...
I then headed south on the Alaskan Hwy. I'd ridden this route to
Whitehorse at the end of June and needed my Gerbings because of the
cold and today it was the same. The only difference was that it
wasn't raining so it wasn't as bad. It was overcast though.
The road was good and wide. I spied a black bear on the side of the
road and thought to myself, its a cloudy day, the critters will be out
more than yesterday. In about an hour, I spied another black bear
that ignored me enough that I could get some photos.
About 1:30 I approached the turnoff to the Cassiar. There was a sign
saying to check fuel as there was no gas until Lake Dease and I was
low. The two stations in town were OUT of gas so I had to go into
Watson Lake to get gas but its only 13 miles so no big deal. I then
returned to Sally's Diner and met some bikers having lunch. Two were
going north but Lamont was heading my direction. He was riding a
Suzuki that he had LOADED with bags, tent, milk crate, etc but he
really made that thing move. About 10 miles down the road, we ran
into construction. The flag person (woman) warned us about how
slippery the road was. She said it had washed out and was needing
lots of repair and there was a light loose layer on top of the road.
Lamont had knobby tires and went before me but he was sliding so I was
alerted to the road. I almost lost it a couple times as it was 100
times slipperier than the road to Eagle yesterday (which was already
an 8 on the slippery scale). After we got through that, we continued
south. Lamont and the truck were riding much faster than I wanted to
go so I set the cruise on 80 kph and just cruised.
At first, the Cassiar is a rougher road; the surface is rougher, there
are stretches of intermittent gravel and the sides are not as well
maintained so the animals will be closer when you see them.
Then, you read a mountainous area. Here the road is a bit wider and
there is more room but the road got rougher with even more gravel and
pot holes.
I noticed a couple of bikes ahead stopped so I slowed. It was Lamont
and another guy that saw some Dall Sheep on the side of the road. We
had 3 ewes, 2 lambs and 2 rams running around there. I got some
photos and continued on. Another sheep ran across the road in front
of me.
I came across one of the few "towns" here; Jade City. THis is really
just a couple of stores that sell BC Jade mined in this area. They
had jade jewelry and carvings that were interesting and a huge jade
saw out front cutting stone. As I left here, it started raining.
A few miles down the road another car was stopped. I again slowed and
this time it was for a fox. It was elusive and didn't allow me to
take a picture.
Nothing more happened as I approached Dease Lake. I filled up with
gas and got some fruit for the morning. While I was inside, it
stopped raining and cleared. I then got a chicken sandwich at a bar.
The cooks birthday was today so they had a cake and sang to him. I
also chatted with some locals about bikes and my trip. They are
either always interested or just very polite. I then headed the 6
miles to the Tanzilla Lions campground to set up my tent. While
setting up the tent, a dog came up and stole my bag of tent stakes but
I was able to distract him long enough that he dropped them and I
could get them back. I built a campfire and was going to write, but
it started raining and thundering again so it sent me to the tent
early.

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Todd Ryan; Hudson, MA
Westborough HS Science Teacher
MSF RiderCoach