Haines Highway: Haines Junction, Yukon - Haines, Alaska; A Road Even Less Travelled 11th-12th Aug

This was without a doubt the most scenic road we had taken so far, and also the most isolated - luckily we’d stocked up on supplies as a sign warned of no services for the next 203km, and we felt very confident, leaving town under some very sunny skies in t-shirts and cycling shorts.

Now if there is one thing guaranteed to keep a cyclist on his toes (or rather his pedals), it’s an imminent raincloud. After seeing various ‘partly cloudy’ weather forecasts, we interpreted these in the Spanish sense (usually no more than two tiny clouds in the sky) and all waterproofs had been packed at the bottom of our panniers. Menacing clouds appeared from nowhere and bullied around behind us, the rays of sunshine were teasing in front of us - no matter how fast we cycled we could not catch up with them. Nasty clouds that they were, we first got pelted with whopping hailstones (partly cloudy!!!) which were quite painful little bastards, and carried on cycling as fast as we could, desperately trying to catch up with the sun. (No doubt providing great amusement to passing vehicles.) We had a break from the clouds but not for long. After stupidly deciding not to stop until the last minute to get all our raingear out of our panniers, by the time we had digged deep and waterproofed up, our clothes underneath had got soaked anyway (partly cloudy!!!). We eventually found shelter from the beastly rain at Dezadeash Lake Campground, and had a very long well-deserved break drying out clothes, eating lunch and most importantly making our first and much-appreciated cup of tea with the now functioning WhisperLite stove.

Having surveyed the clouds ourselves for our own more realistic forecast, we set off and the scenery became very impressive after Flying Squirrel Creek. Eventually the road climbed towards our last summit of the day at which point we were pursued by yet another very menacing raincloud. Of course we were very prepared for this one, but might as well not have been as it sprinkled us with about three drops of drizzle before heading off west! A steep downhill took us to Million Dollar Falls Campground where the lack of shower facilities was made up for with very clean pit toilets (well-done Yukon, but still a smelly!), a warm dinner made with the WhisperLite and shower wipes (basically wet wet ones). The falls were a short walk from the campsite - the quantity of water pounding down was very impressive - too violent unfortunately to jump in for a wash!

After yet another unsatisfactory night’s sleep in the tent, when we overslept once again and therefore headed off late for our most scenic and most challenging day yet. The prospect of staying at another campground without showers for a second night was enough to convince us that cycling 150km in one day is a good idea. The scenery was fantastic (we’ll let the photos do the talking). We also saw squirrels/chipmunks (please can anyone identify animal in photo?), a lynx, lots of crows and various piles of bear poop along the side of the road. We cycled through a high valley which followed massive glacial rivers, and which eventually took us to two summits, the first of which was sign-posted on the way downhill!! The second summit saw us complete half our journey of 70 or so km and all was meant to be rosy as the rest was downhill (a very silly assumption for a cyclist to make indeed).

When we’d cycled downhill for a good 12km (at last!), much to our dismay we encountered a very unexpected steep hill and arrived at the US border panting and sweating with the hope that this would be the last of the hills. The US border guard assured us, after confirming that we were carrying neither drugs, firearms, alcohol, over $10,000, antlers, furs or horns, that the 60 km into Haines was ‘mostly’ downhill. A very welcome pie and ice cream stop 11 kilometres later (the services promised a day and 203km earlier), provided the energy for us to slipstream our way onto Haines along the valley, with very sore bottoms and very glad that over-ambitious rides were on hold for at least a week.

This entry was posted on August 18, 2007 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Two for the Road - On the Road. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.