In Search of the Toe

Mile 8235. Bear River RV Park, Stewart, BC, straddling the U.S. border at Hyder, AK.

Talk about getting an idea stuck in your head. Yesterday we took a 52-mile day trip to see the toe of the Salmon Glacier, the fifth largest glacier in North America. Only the drive was supposed to be twenty miles. From a picture in a brochure, which I now realize was taken from an elevated position altering the perspective, I imagined a decent sized parking lot at the base of the glacier where we could walk to the toe, like the Columbia Glacier in Jasper. So when we came upon a tiny rest area with an informational “Toe of the Glacier” sign I refused to believe we’d reached our destination. The trees blocked the view of the toe for heavens sake. So we kept driving.

The brochure also talked about a summit view of the glacier further along the road and in both our minds we imagined looking down at the glacier from the head. So when we came upon a slightly larger pullout across the valley from the glacier and an informational “Summit View” sign which we didn’t bother to look at, we didn’t know we had reached the summit. So we kept driving, asking each other, how much further to the toe.

This wouldn’t be so bad except the road to the glacier was narrow, unmaintained, washboard-like, littered with potholes, about 1000 feet up from the valley floor, and with evidence of recent rock slides. It’s a road once used by some of the most productive copper, silver, and gold mines in the valley and in British Columbia, all but obsolete and abandoned now except one. Only upon reaching one of the mining camps, one with a cinder-block structure built into the side of the hill that looked like it could’ve been on the movie set of Mad Max, did we start to question our thinking.

We’d not seen another car for miles, but shortly after turning around a truck approached from the opposite direction. We both slowed and rolled down our windows. “Do you know if we’ve passed the Granduc mine?” the driver asked. We had no idea where we were so of course we didn’t know if we’d passed it or not, but told him there’s a mine just up aways.

“Do you know how far we’ve traveled?” we asked (since we’d not thought to track this ourselves). “36 km,” he replied, confirming what we suspected, that we’d driven by the toe long ago. Later we learned our turnaround point was in fact the Granduc mine. But no worries, because driving beyond the Salmon Glacier, winding our way through spectacular and rugged scenery, afforded us views of other smaller glaciers in the Cambria Ice Fields. We were in awe of all that surrounded us.

By the way, somewhere near Granduc mining camp is the location of Outpost #31 in one of my favorite “B” movies, now a cult classic, John Carpenter’s 1982 film, The Thing. But this is not why we’re here. We’re here for salmon and bear because of stories told by people we met a month into our trip.

We’re a couple of days into our three night stay in Stewart, BC located at the head of the Portland Canal, a narrow saltwater fjord approximately 90 miles long. It’s near the end of the only road in and out of town, the Stewart-Hyder highway, another winding valley road with glacier formations overlooking the highway.

Drive a few miles further and you’re in Hyder, AK, the southernmost community in the state that can be reached via car. The fjord forms a natural boundary between Alaska and Canada.

In its heyday (1920s) these two communities boasted a population of 10,000. Now there are a mere 500 residing here, mostly in Stewart. Hyder is now considered a ghost town.

On the far side of Hyder and at the entrance to the Tongass National Forest is Fish Creek. Something about the geology and weather make Fish Creek the ideal spawning ground for salmon, the Chum larger here than anywhere else in North America, sometimes twice the average size. The bears know this too and come every year to feed. The U.S. Forest Service maintains a bear viewing platform at the creek.

The viewing platform is at the end of the Stewart-Hyder highway, where the road to Salmon Glacier (and Granduc mine) begins. So it’s one continuous road from Stewart BC to Hyder AK to Fish Creek to the glacier, the latter of which happens to be back in BC.

The U.S. does not maintain a customs presence here, but Canada does. So each time we visit Fish Creek (four times so far to increase our chances of seeing bear) we go through Canadian customs on our return to camp. Yep, each time they stop and look at our passports and ask us all those questions. Not only that, with each crossing we change time zones – 1 hour plus or minus depending on our direction of travel. No one from either country cares about the border crossing enroute to Salmon Glacier and Granduc mine, but we do and calculate approximately 4 border crossings the day we visited the glacier.

Fish Creek seems to be a bit of a secret, or else an out-of-the way destination that not many are willing to travel. Yesterday morning there were no more than a dozen of us on the viewing platform and the night before maybe 40, which makes the experience so much more enjoyable. Everyone is there for the same thing and respects what this place is all about. Some wait for hours for something to happen. Everyone is quiet, whispering among themselves only when something exciting happens, like an Eagle struggling to catch a salmon finally finding success.

Sometimes you get a chatty group or a couple at opposite ends of the boardwalk using walkie talkies to communicate.

SQUAWK!
“Peggy, there’s a Belted Kingfisher in the lagoon.”
SQUAWK!
“Harry, there’s an eagle eating salmon at this end.”
SQUAWK!
“Okay. Out”
SQUAWK!

Emotions are mixed, at least for me. The beauty and remoteness of this place, the only sound the salmon splashing in the shallow creek as they they swim up stream and dig a nest in the water gravel, knowing they’re here to naturally fulfill their destiny is all very grounding. I look upon this place with reverence.

But it’s also difficult. Seeing an abandoned half-eaten salmon flop around alive after watching a bear rip shreds of meat from its body is brutal. I want to run down there and put it out of its misery. But I can’t. This is the circle of life in the natural world and I have no part in it. I am only here as witness. Then I think of the freezer full of salmon in the trailer. I’m good at compartmentalizing so I just shut the door on that one.

This is a Coastal Brown bear who wandered down the creek into the viewing area on our first night. She caught and ate three salmon before wandering off into the woods. We learned later from the Canadian customs agent that only the U.S. calls them Coastal Brown bears. In Canada they’re called grizzly bear.

This morning a small black bear, a yearling, wandered back and forth under the viewing platform eating leaves and salmonberries. We quietly followed along, up and down, side to side, watching, until something spooked it and it ran off.

Another Hyder treat is the blue bus (Seafood Express), another gem we learned about on Facebook. The husband catches the fish and later that day the wife prepares it for customers. Two days in a row we’ve had halibut fish and chips. Except for the halibut we ate the night of Mark’s catch it’s the freshest fish I’ve ever eaten. The woman’s son got married last month. The wedding was at the pullout at Salmon Glacier summit view. She showed me photos on her iPad.

The bears at Fish Creek aren’t the only bear on this leg of the journey. To get here we first drove the Cassiar Highway, a road that takes us from the Alaska Highway to southwest BC where we position ourselves for a more westerly route home. This highway has fewer services and traffic, if that’s even possible, and absolutely no cell coverage. Often we count elapsed minutes before encountering another car, 5 minutes being the longest since the trip began. That record was broken on the Cassiar where we went a full 10 minutes before seeing another car. This makes the highway ripe for wildlife.

The best travelers drive early morning or late at night to optimize wildlife viewing. But even for travelers like us, mid-day travelers, there is plenty to see, four black bears in total the last 20 miles before turning onto the Stewart-Hyder highway. The first one startled us, running from the bushes onto the road and then upon seeing us running back. Two more munching on the side of the road so close I didn’t need my zoom lens and a fourth in the middle of the road way off in the distance.

We’ve seen all manner of modes of transportation on this trip, including motorcycles and bicycles. What do they do, I wonder, when they run across a bear on the road. Mark says, “keep going and pray.” I guess if you’re on a bicycle you make alot of noise and have bear spray at the ready.

We’ve had so many changes of weather on this trip, some changes occurring all in one day. We had the most beautiful morning ever a few days ago – crystal clear blue sky, the sun taking the edge off the chill of the morning, barely any neighbors at our campground, not a single car on the Alaska Highway making the morning perfectly still. Only the rustling of a chipmunk in the nearby grass could be heard.

This is what we thought our mornings would be like on this trip and as you know they’ve been few and far between. This reverie didn’t last long, as hours later we drove through blinding rain coming out the other side to a partial clearing. We’ve come to accept it. I no longer look at the weather app on my iPhone.

 

I didn’t bring any make-up or a hair dryer, but I did bring jewelry. Its the one thing that makes me feel feminine. The clothes certainly don’t. Hiking pants in mostly dark colors with practical unfitted shirts that can be layered. I wear everything two days in a row. It’s just easier and it cuts down on laundry. I have a pair of pants that look fresh even after three days. It’s incredibly boring.

Mark’s having shoe trouble. The soles have fallen off two pairs of his shoes. The tennis shoes are history, but the second pair, his hiking boots, he repaired successfully using Gorilla Glue.

The worst of our roads, condition-wise, are over. Yet we still have the occasional trouble in the trailer. A few days ago the ice bucket and all its cubes escaped the freezer. Kind of like the spice jars escaping from the oven on one of our practice trips. I walked into the trailer. Freezer door was shut. The floor was covered in cubes and water, the ice bucket off in the corner.