Day 72 – June 14
After having plugged every imaginable entry point for the mosquitoes that had plagued us the night before we went to bed. I don’t know what woke me at 3:00, the bright sunshine or the hoard of mosquitoes buzzing over our heads. I have no idea what their point of entry was but I had visions of a line up of the little blood sucking vermin at a tiny take a number please dispenser awaiting their turn for the all you can drink buffet awaiting them inside.
After trying unsuccessfully to ignore them for half an hour I finally got up, flashlight in one hand, wet face cloth in the other and and set off on my own personal mission of genocide. Smashing and swinging my way from one end of the beast to the other I cut a satisfying swath of devastation through the buzzing winged hoard, leaving a path of carnage in my wake. I did make one unfortunate discovery on my tour of duty as I noticed a hole chewed in the package of corn left on the counter, we had picked up another even more worrisome stowaway, a mouse.
Having reduced their numbers considerably I returned to bed. Through the night Diane had perfected a way of sleeping burrowed under the sheets with only a small breathing tube left. Unable to sleep in those conditions my bald pate became the pâté du jour for the constantly increasing number of diners and sleep was far from my mind.
By 5:45 I was willing to take my chances outside so I grabbed my fishing gear and headed for the wharf. The gale force winds of the previous night had abated and the lake was mirror flat, perfect mosquito weather, so I was prepared for the worst with my can of bug spray along with my bear repellant as we had been advised that there had been a bear sighting in the park. So I was ready for both ends of the spectrum of species that might want to eat all or part of me. I fished from the wharf, not the most likely vantage point, until 7:00 when I knew our alarm was set to go off and then returned to the BRT to find Diane in full antiseptic clean up mode. Everything that might have come in contact with our four legged nocturnal visitor was wiped down with antiseptic cloths and put back in place, sort of a forced spring cleaning.
Due to the cleaning delay we did not head out until after ten. We wanted to drive to Stewart, a westward diversion from our northerly route. Driving to Stewart is the epitome of the saying ‘it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey’. The road to Stewart is called the Glacier Highway, and as you might have suspected, there are glaciers along the way. There are places where the road is at elevations of 7000 feet and higher. The snow caps that we had been seeing in previous days only at the mountain tops were now, in places, right at road level. The Bear Glacier, the most spectacular along this road sticks it icy tongue right down into the Bear River that parallels the highway. With very little effort one could have glacier ice for a beverage.
On the road to Stewart
Bear Glacier
B & W for Carmel
As was the case the day before, the sides of the mountains and hillsides are marked with waterfalls, fed by the melting snow and ice of previous winters. Full of sediments gathered on the trip down the mountainside these waterfalls run a milky white, a real contrast to some of the beautifully clear streams we had seen on Vancouver Island. Most of the rivers we have crossed over the last couple of days, including the Skeena are running at close to flood conditions, swelling to their banks and full of debris. We had a couple of wildlife sightings, a wolverine (very rare to see one of these), a mother bear and her cub, a very mangy looking wolf who wasn’t quite as nervous of us as I would have liked and one unfortunate sighting of a dead bear cub alongside the road.
We arrived in Stewart which reminded me of a small Skagway with its low buildings and numbered avenues situated right at the base of tree covered hills. We stopped at the information centre after a short walk along the Estuary Trail, which due to disrepair of a bridge is no longer a loop trail but a return trip. The woman who works in the centre was very helpful, a former resident of Upper Stewiacke, some 37 years ago. Based on her recommendation we went to the local bakery for coffee and muffins, it was sort of a baked goods and java version of Cheers with locals coming and going, helping themselves and one character seemingly a permanent fixture, I think his name was Norm.
Stewart’s Estuary Trail
Bear Glacier
Following a stop for gas and a visit to the hardware store for some welcoming devices for our furry co traveller we were on our way back again to highway #37 and north towards our destination for the night Kinaskan Lake Provincial Park. The drive north was uneventful and the road was in good condition but the scenery was spectacular, it is hard to get complacent about mountains, snow and forests, even when they go on for hours and hours. We arrived at the park about 5:00 and quickly found a lovely spot right by the lake. We nervously stepped out of our vehicle in anticipation of hoards of mosquitoes but to our pleasant surprise only found a few.
Diane felt the need for a bath and plunged into the very icy waters of the lake emerging gasping for breath and I swear a full inch shorter, who knew that women suffered from shrinkage too? I busied myself trying to fashion a shroud for the outside intake for our vents, the prime suspect for mosquito entry and proceeded to drop a pair of scissors down into the engine compartment. Anyone who works around equipment knows the sickening sound of clink, clank, clunk as some tool unbelievably comes to rest before its logical destination of the floor or ground below. Half an hour later I was on my third revolution through my vocabulary of four letter words, seriously contemplating launching into the hyphenated section when from under the vehicle with the aid of a mirror I spotted the scissors resting in the bottom of the radiator fan shrouding, a very bad place indeed for them to be on these bumpy roads. Tens minutes later, grease to my elbows and in a lather of sweat from working around the heat of my 10 cylinder monster I emerged, now also in need of a bath.
Learning from Diane’s experience and lacking her tolerance for cold water I cowardly turned on our hot water and showered using the outside shower. We had bought wood for a fire, a generous bundle by some of the southern standards, as it was a beautiful calm night but a darkening cloud on the horizon moved in quickly and even before we could run around and get our laundry off the line it began to sprinkle. The sprinkle quickly turned into a full blown rain and the lake that moments before had been mill pond calm was whipped into white caps. I was thankful that I wasn’t out in a canoe. Almost as quickly as it came the storm passed over and slowly the lake returned to calm.
Having abandoned the notion of a fire we had retreated to the BRT and were playing crib, at 10:30 and it was still bright enough to not require a light. We interrupted the games to step outside and watch a beautiful sunset before retiring to bed, the skies still dimly lit. We won’t be seeing any stars for a while.
