Yukon, Canada: Burwash Landing to Haines Junction - 9th Aug

After a day of rest and an afternoon in a smelly mini-bus (not sure if smell of BO was emanating from the bus seats or guy in front) from Tok to Burwash Landing, Canada had plenty of adventures in store for us. Due to lack of services at appropriate locations we decided to cover 125km in one day. The fact that it was raining when we woke up made us very reluctant to get out of bed and our early start rapidly disappeared.  Eventually we set out in the drizzle along Kluane Lake, the road we photographed from the plane a few weeks before (see photos 24th July).

Towards the end of Kluane Lake, the weather got better and just as views improved we arrived at some muddy roadworks  where they were widening the road quite literally by blasting into the mountain. We came across our first traffic build up since Anchorage and we did the usual annoying cyclits’ habit of barging to the front of the queue, where we found the ‘flagger’ who informed us we’d have to go through the roadworks in the back of her pick up. As we now had a very valuable 20 minutes to kill, an early lunch was had and we were dropped off 40 minutes later on the other side, giving us very impressive views of the valley at the southwest end of the lake.

At this stage we had only completed half our journey for the day and we faced a good hoof up the hill to the first summit, but one motorist felt it merited a photo, overtaking and stopping to take it as we cycled up the hill!  However, a smooth journey it was not to be. Half way up my clip-in pedals needed a good seeing to, the heat became too much so another stop was needed to strip off a layer, and just as we finally got to the top Paul got yet another flat tyre, just as rain threathened from various directions. Luckily when the tyre was dealt with, we predicted correctly and re-attired ourselves in waterproofs and headed back downhill in the anticipated downpour. The weather cleared quickly and after dodging more rainclouds over many rolling hills, we eventually reached Bear Summit at 1,004 metres. From the summit it was all downhill to Haines Junction but the ever present rain clouds closing in behind us eventually caught us up just out of town, and again we were soaked. Luckily the Kluane Park Inn, its motel room, just-closing Chinese restaurant (hurray - something other then grease and chips!) and sweet Canadian beer was there to welcome us tired and hungry.

This entry was posted on August 18, 2007 at 4:13 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.