Wednesday – Hyder, Alaska

Well, even with ear plugs in I guess helicopters are very loud, especially when they are landing less than 100 m away!! So, I was woken a few times and ignored them, but eventually struggled up and tried to get some work done.

The work of course was a blog entry, yesterdays, now it was easy to write but an absolute pain to post. After spending 2 hours down the pub trying to upload some photos, I gave up. I would try the RV park, apparently theirs is OK while this pub had had issues for a while, but first I would go and see the glacier. First stop was the Glacier Inn where I scored a massive sanger, this would do for lunch and tea I reckon! Then I headed off up the dirt road for a short while, before stopping to let the tyres down and have a bit of lunch.

As you can see the sun was out, it was a nice warmish day again, beautiful, even if it was a bit hazy! I dropped my camera here and could not get the screen to work at all, so lucky I have had practice with guessing the framing 🙂

The road was quite rough and bumpy, plenty of potholes and heaps of corrugations, lucky I dropped the tyres pressure as the back end was skipping all over the joint. The photos show the good bits, I was too busy hanging on in the rough 🙂 The background of snow capped mountains was great and the glacier was massive, I was already at the toe and the summit was miles away.

I did not stop much on the way up as the road was not the best, but I could stop more on the way down I figure. I eventually got to the summit viewing area and now I could see the extent of the glacier itself, it is massive, but there was no info boards up here about it. I will make something up, it is ice, a lot of it and it has been here a while 🙂

Up here I met a girl called Rev, she was interested in my bike as she bought a 650 last year. I gave her some tips and as she is from Vancouver, I may get a local to show me around, who knows 🙂 There was a lot of biting critters up here and when I asked the ‘Bear Man’, a local selling DVDs, he said they come from all these small pools up there in the hills, so I went for a decko and sure enough, the breeding grounds of the mossies, but nice views from up here as well 🙂 I managed to drop my camera again, but this time the screen came back, a lot easier to take pictures now 🙂

I stopped on the way down and took a variety of shots.

Half way down was a mine site with a large pond and a fast moving downhill stream nearby.

Here is an example of the road, also there was a lot of landslides around here with a good chance of more to come.

I finally get back down to river level and some more nice scenery on the way back to town.

The people at the RV park and the Sealaska Inn must be the same, as they let me use their internet and it had the same password. But, after struggling once again with many failed uploads, I also gave up here, I managed to upload 5 photos in ½ an hour. At this rate I may as well sit in the pub with a beer, what a good idea 🙂 But, I had dropped in to the bear viewing place on the way down from the glacier and asked the ranger some advice. He said to come early and stay late, eat dinner before and be prepared for patience. So, I had my extra half of the sanger and so I went back up the road and I also took a book, in case it got boring waiting 🙂 There was plenty of fish in the blue lagoon, but no bears as yet.

After an hour the wait was rewarded with a black bear arriving just across the pond from me and chewed on some bushes and had a dip, but he didn’t go catch any fish.

He had no care in the world for the clicking of multiple cameras, but he did not stay long and went back into the bush. So, back to my book and wait to see what happens, I was prepared to stay another hour or so, the bears can be active until 10pm, it was now just after 6. About 40 minutes later someone advised of a bear in the creek and he was a lot further away, but he was going in the water, grabbing a fish and then taking it into the bushes, but working his way towards my position, he was bigger than the last one but also a black bear.

That was as far as he came, I waited another 15 minutes but he had gone and I decided to head back. Just outside I met a chap on a GS800, his name was Brian, we had a chat for a while before we convinced each other we could do that just as well in a bar as out here 🙂 We had a beer at the Glacier Inn as I had not had one in here yet and outside was another Vstrom 650, so we ended up sitting with Ken and chatting for a while.

This is the bar where the Hyderised started, we had another beer each before wandering up the road to the Sealaska Inn. Now, I had noticed on Kens bike a TomTom Rider 2 mount and asked him if I could try my TTR2 on it just to 100% prove to myself it is the faulty part, he said fine, do you want it as he is not using it, it is not even connected to power. Well, that is an offer no one could refuse.

So after offering to buy it, we settled on I would borrow it until I get my new one from home(if they ever make a decision), but I would send it back to Vancouver before heading into South America. What a bonus thanks a million Ken. (As an aside, when I tested this later, my TTR2 worked fine on this bracket). So we had a few more beers at the pub and the boys were Hyderised 🙂

They were staying at Stewart, so they did not stay too much longer and as luck would have it, the bar closed at 10pm, the custom was very slow in mid week. After they had gone, I bought some orange juice and was given some ice by Kerryn and sat in the laundry for a short while having a vodka with Matt, a bicyclist I had just met, he was camping as well. Funnily enough, the internet had been working but now wasn’t, bugger and they were closed so I could not reset the router! We were joined by Aurelia and Xavier from France and after I asked the question, he said he had heard of Xavier Rudd, but never heard the music, well I just happened to have some on the pute so we fired that up for a short while, that is Matt to the left.

Matt is on a journey that makes mine seem like a doddle. He flew himself and his pushy(pushbike, bicycle) to Deadhorse in Prudhoe Bay and is currently on his way to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. In fact he is doing the same as me but by leg power, he has been on the road since June and made it this far so far 🙂 We were invited to a fireside party by the French group, over near their camp and also to some tucker. So that seemed like a good idea and so the chatting and drinking continued. I think dinner was served around 1am or so, memory eludes me but it tasted nice. Another late night! 🙂

Day 60 miles and 97 km
Trip – 31,831 miles and 51,227 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom