Black Bears, Grizzly Bears and Smokey Bears – It’s a Bear thing

Having entered the Yukon we get a real taste of why they say it is bigger than life. Everything about it is vast. The rivers, mountains and vistas all defy description. Signs saying “Next services 200km” are the norm. After a night in Whitehorse, named for the rapids that the gold rush settlers couldn’t sail through, we are heading east along the Alcan Highway. It stretches ahead of us for a 1,400 miles but we are just going as far as the Sign Post Forest at Watson Lake.

Started by a lonely GI in the 40’s who was working on the Alcan it now has over 60,000 signs, and the task was to find the one Kevin and Julia left on their Trans Americas Guinness World Record ride. After a night in remote cabins we are off down the Stewart Cassiar highway signed “South to Alaska”. There is a strip of Alaska that runs down the coast several hundred miles and we are running parallel to it. Bear spotting is the order of the day, and various techniques are tried. Slow and steady staring into the bushes; Fast and catch them by surprise, or ride normally and wait for one to walk out in front of you. By then end of the two days running the highway only Tim is without a bear spot. Although he does have the most magnificent photo of an Elk swimming to shore!

We have a day off in Stewart which is a true old frontier town. It is at the head of the Portland Canal which is the most northerly ice free port on the west coast. Stewart is a mile from the border with Alaska and Hyder, another tiny frontier town. Looking almost like a Disney recreation it is in fact the real thing, with wooden sidewalks, dirt roads, a few old shops selling guns and feed a bar and a great welcome sign that reads

“Welcome to Hyder, Home to 200 happy people and two or three old S…t heads”

We visit Salmon glacier the fifth largest glacier in North America. Obligingly it appears through the mist and cloud as we arrive on the dirt road. With fish and chips at the famous Bus in Hyder the rest of the day is spent catching up on blogs and checking over bikes having finished the worst (best?) of the dirt roads for a while. The only thing left to do is to visit Fish Creek the best bear spotting point around. We arrive at 7.30 and after a couple of hours patience we are rewarded with “Jaws” coming up the river. Jaws, a Grizzly named for a loose flap of skin on his jaw as a result of a fight, obliges us by romping around the river and pulling salmon out at will. After three or four he has had enough and wanders off into the growing gloom of the dusk. As we wander back along the road, next to the stream a black bear pops his head up to see what’s going on, sees four bikers and decides discretion is the better part of valour and disappears back to the creek. Obliging wandering along for two or three minutes just a metre or two away providing more opportunities for what are now very gloomy photos.

So as a group we are properly bear’ed out. The next days is then over kill as the best spot was SEVEN bears and most people saw at least another two or three as well as Elk and Moose. How fickle we are that two days ago we were desperate to see them and filling the camera memory cards with blurred photos of what could be a bear or more likely is a rock, and now we stop smile and think well that’s not a very big bear and ride on!

The ride takes us back to a bit of civilisation and Prince George. Two separate groups of riders also get close encounters with bears of another kind. This time its Smokey Bear, CB slang for the Police! Having been warned about US and Canadian Police cars having forward facing speed radar in their cars three riders are stopped. Fortunately some shared Irish Heritage, Military Service and a bit of eye lash fluttering and they all get let off with warnings. Obviously I am not saying who was fluttering their eye lashes as all the stoppee’s were male and all the police were male, but whatever works in these situations is good.

We are riding towards the Jasper national park. Wilderness has been swapped for farm land and giant bales of hay are scattered across the fields. The road sides are lined with pink, yellow and blue wildflowers and the back drop is the Rockies. It is all pretty stunning. Stops at Mount Terry Fox (look him up – great and brave man) and Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Rockies, provide coffee and ice cream but no real respite from the never ending beauty of the day.

In Jasper we are taking a day to ride Mailgne Lake, the Cable Car and photograph the Deer wandering between the cabins. This is the only night where we stop in the same place as our Trans Canada trip, and we had been promised that they had left us something here after they passed through a few weeks ago. Our anticipation is slightly dampened when we find it is two bags of crisps, six beers and a bottle of mayonnaise.

Which reminds me I must go and light the Barbeque.