2014/06 Haida Gwaii trip - Cassiar & Yellowhead |
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This shortcut turned out to be an “unmaintained” logging road; we just hoped that there were no trees across the road, and that the bridges were still there. It turned out to be quite a good road, narrow in places but almost no traffic. We passed the perfect campsite overlooking this river gorge, but it was already occupied.
When we emerged on the Cassiar we looked for an alternative and found Derrick Lake at the end of an almost disappeared logging road; this one was strictly walking pace only. This was just as well as we came around a corner and met a grouse and a half dozen chicks, balls of fluff.
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Cassiar logging road (6.03) |
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But a rotten road keeps the riff raff away and we had this beautiful lake all to ourselves. It was a bit too buggy to sit out so we positioned the truck to give us this view from 
inside and watched loons and ducks from our refuge.
Saturday July 5th
It was, of course, a walking pace exit out to the Cassiar. In the past, we’ve taken this highway all the way north to Watson Lake where it joins the Alaska Highway but this time we 
were going south to Kitwanga. On the way we met this somewhat casual black bear, who just turned his back on us, so all my other pictures are of the wrong end.
Back on the Yellowhead, we stopped at Moricetown again hoping to see the fishing production line in action. When the fish are running, they are flipped from net to filleting bath to smoker in seconds. But the steelhead trout had not yet arrived and all we saw was a solitary fisherman checking for early arrivals.
Coming out of Smithers we met another bear. Ahead of us was a truck pulling a teardrop trailer similar to ours and the bear came barreling out of the bush as if it planned to attack and eat the trailer. The driver made an amazing U-turn. The bear realized it was in the midst of four lanes of traffic and it also made a U-turn back into the bush. The traffic went in all directions but managed to avoid collisions.
We were headed for Fort St James, our second side trip, and I thought that our GPS was a bit optimistic with its arrival time. Closer inspection showed that the fort was 140 miles away as the crow flies but only 45 miles of driving. An even closer look showed one component was a dead straight line across Stuart Lake with no distance at all – a Startrek wormhole! However, our truck doesn’t have warp drive, and the real distance was more like 170 miles.