PowerCycle

07/31 My last day in Canada! Maybe. It started raining a couple hours ago and it’s supposed to be like this all day tomorrow. I’d rather not make my big ride into Alaska in the rain. It seems like it hadn’t rained in forever but I looked back on some old posts and it was only 7 days ago. Hopefully this will help with some of the fires burning in area around Fairbanks. My right foot is a bit sore so resting it for a day might be a good idea anyway. No luck trying to figure out what the noise is on my bike. It only does it when I’m pedalling so it could still be the bearings. Hopefully it will hold out because I’m not sure when I’ll be near a bike shop again.

Today was fairly quiet but it was a bit cooler than yesterday so I didn’t drink water like it was going out of style. Only had to dip into a lake once. Saw a juvenile black bear walk across the road and wander around some buildings. Didn’t take any pictures. I was hoping to see some grizzlies and eagles along one of the rivers the Milepost mentioned but when I got to the “scenic overlook” the river was a good 2 miles away. At that distance everything looked like it could have been a bear.

Finally had dinner at a place that had some Yukon Red and Yukon Gold beer. It’s brewed right up here in Whitehorse. The Gold was much better. Ate a delicious plate of lasagna and was informed by the waitress that she’d never seen anyone eat the whole thing. She would have been even more impressed if she knew I came back to motel room and ate an entire bag of cookies for dessert. The place I’m staying at is called Buckshot Betty’s. And no that not the name of some girl I picked up.

GPX Track

07/30 Tacked on 78 miles in the heat and the haze which should get me into Beaver Creek tomorrow and Alaska on Saturday. Had a bit of a headwind but only for the 2nd half of the ride. There are lot’s of forest fires burning north of here so there’s a thin blanket of smoke that makes it very hard to see anything far away with any detail. I haven’t seen the pictures from today but I’m sure a lot of them are not going to be worth keeping. At one point I would have had a view of Mount Logan which is Canada’s highest peak.

Staying in a weird spot tonight. At mile 65 for the day I started looking for a place to crash and more importantly, a place with water because I was almost out. Spot #1 had a perfect creek with a road leading down next to it but I could see someone parked there in a car-camper already. Spot #2 about 5 miles later had a creek but when I looked over the guard rail there was another touring rider camped next to it already. I said hi and we talked for a bit but I didn’t feel right asking to stay there so I left. 5 miles I found this place. A gravel road leads off the highway into the trees and then his a ‘T’. Both ends of it stop after a few hundred feet. At one end was a fishing camp that looked recently used. At the other was someone else in car-camper! Well I was done riding so I ended up going over to see if he would mind if I camped down the road a bit. Wasn’t a problem. Ziv even gave me some much needed water. He’s on an epic post-layoff car tour around the US and Canada.

Other than the fun I had trying to find a place to stay tonight and worrying about water it was a pretty decent day. Stopped in Destruction Bay and bought some food. Lunch ended up being at the lodge in Burwash Landing and it was great. Chatted with some road crew guys having lunch and they said the fires shouldn’t be a problem. I ended up seeing them a couple hours later down the road working on a bridge.

At Destruction Bay I saw another rider heading South but he was coming into the store just as I was leaving. Well down the road a few miles I ran into another rider who knew the guy from camping the night before. The 2nd guy, Barry, is from Ireland and he was sitting in the shade taking a break from the heat.

Something started clicking every so often on my bike and I’m really, really hoping its not the bearings in one of the hubs again. That would suck a lot. I’ll try to pin it down tomorrow. Could just be something knocking around which is possible since the roads were very rough for a good part of the day.

GPX Track

07/29 The scenery today was nothing short of spectacular. In fact the stretch from Haines Junction to where I am now has some of the most magnificent mountain ranges I’ve seen so far. Ending the day camped next to the largest lake in the Yukon was the perfect finish to a great day. I ended up taking 89 pictures so I’ll be working on getting that number trimmed down.

The great Northern heat wave continues. Not sure what the temperature was but I heard someone say this area was the hottest in the country. My face got a little red so I’ll have to remember to put on some sunscreen tomorrow. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky all day and only once did I run into some shade. My water consumption was pretty high thanks to a lot of hills so I had to procure some water from the streams (except for one that had a few too many things floating in it).

Stopped at The Village bakery in Haines Junction and grabbed a cinnamon bun and coffee. They had wifi so I posted the last couple days from there. On the way out I made room for a milkshake and some cookies. Then it was over to the store for some more camp fuel, bug spray and toothpaste. This is also where I saw a notice that effective yesterday all open fires are banned in the entire Yukon Territory.

The CG here is right on the lake shore and all the tent sites are along it. It has wifi, showers and electric (in the laundry room). The only negative is that the generator is loud so unless you are at the far end of the CG it’ll be what you fall asleep to. The lady running the front office was very friendly which is rare for service-oriented people up here. I’ve stopped at every lodge and in at least one store in every town on the Alaska Highway and with 2 exceptions (now 3), the people I dealt with gave me the impression that they couldn’t care less about my being there or in engaging in any kind of conversation. Or I’d watch them talking to someone else and they’d act the same way. Someone else had commented on this on another blog but I’m too lazy to find it again. Their write-up went into the why a little more. Could be my bad luck but I’d be curious to hear what other riders have run into.

The area around this CG has the highest concentration of grizzly bears in North America so they have a guy on an ATV driving around looking to shoo them away. No food storage bins (oddly enough) so I’ll have to keep my pannier in the laundry room tonight. There are also no garbage bins. Met a nice couple who reside in Fairbanks. They gave me some good intel on the road between there and Denali. Ran into 2 guys heading down from Fairbanks on the road earlier. They were from The Netherlands so they were happy to see my bike since that’s where it was born.

I get to add my Cateye bicycle computer to my thankfully short list of things that are in bad shape. After taking a pit stop I noticed that the speed wasn’t changing from 0 mph after I started up. I’d just changed the battery in both it and the transmitter so that couldn’t have been it. It was plenty close enough to the magnet on the spoke to get a reading too. It magically started working again an hour later.

Actually the Cateye is a piece of junk as far as I’m concerned because I’m sitting in my tent 7 feet from my bike and according to it I’ve ridden 0.95 miles since resetting it 30 minutes ago. So now I think my total miles are wrong. Damn it. My GPS tracks all the same info and standing still the only thing that changes is the elevation so at least I have a backup. Maybe my laptop or cell (which is off) is interfering with it? Other things not doing well: my tent– the main zipper doesn’t seal the door but luckily the other zipper does and my (2nd) air mattress– still leaks so I’ll be looking to replace it with a closed cell one. Minor issues in any case.

GPX Track

07/28 Sometimes things just have a funny way of working out. After riding for 55 miles I reached my planned stop for the night, Otter Falls Cutoff. They wanted $17 to camp plus another $3 for the shower which seemed a little steep. Well after how much yesterday set me back I’m probably the cheapest guy in the Yukon these days. I said no thanks and headed back on the road. To get motivated to find a spot I bought some Yukon bannock from a kid selling it from a little shop at a rest stop. Yum.

10 miles later I found a great spot right next to Marshall Creek. When I first reached the creek I went left into the woods along an old, grass covered road. I made it about 1/4 mile before the devils of the North, the mosquitoes, found me. Holy crap I never pedaled so fast to get out of a place ever. On the other side of the river the road is covered in stones and it ends after 500 meters or so. There are a lot of mosquitoes but nothing like what was on the other side. I’ll be testing out my new mosquito shelter tonight which should be interesting.

It was another hot one today so after setting up my tent I changed into some shorts and headed for the creek that’s only 10 feet away. It was so refreshing. Got cleaned up, washed some clothes and am relaxing as I enjoy my mountain view and the sound of the rushing water. I’m once again too lazy to filter the water so I drank from this stream and another one earlier today. Hope I don’t get sick but I don’t think it’ll be a problem.

Still riding in the valley but the St. Elias Mountains are getting closer which means I’m close to Haines Junction which is where I head Northwest for the final stretch before Alaska.

Met 2 south-bound cyclists today. The first was a woman heading down from Deadhorse. I didn’t catch her name and after 20 seconds I was looking to end the conversation anyway. Tip: When you meet other riders it’s really not necessary to critique how much stuff they have. Fully self-supported long distance touring isn’t about how little you can bring with you; it’s about bringing what makes you comfortable. And I’m needy. So you have less stuff. Awesome. Can you claim to have the ugliest backpack in the Rocky Mountains? No you can’t! The next rider was a younger guy heading to California from Prudoe Bay. Didn’t catch his name either but he was nice enough and will probably make a lot of friends along the way.

GPX Track