The Alaska Highway Revisited
In the early evening of a late August day back in the 1960’s, a 15 year old boy stood at mile zero of the Alaska Highway located in the center of the small farming community of Dawson Creek, British Columbia. He carried a large packsack and a sign that read "University of Alaska student needs a ride." The boy, who had been sent by his father to work for the summer with a tourist outfitter in northern Ontario, had just arrived from the small town of Metagama via a series of freights and hitchhike rides. His goal was to be an Alaskan wilderness trapper. After a short wait, a 16 wheeler bound for Fort Nelson 300 miles up the Highway stopped and picked him up. So began a four-day, 1523 mile journey to Fairbanks, Alaska....
On July 16 of this year, I flew into Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, to retrace most of my boyhood journey of four decades and three lifetimes ago. But, this time, instead of freight trains and hitchhikes, I traveled non-stop from Vancouver on a modern Air Canada Boeing 737, quite a contrast from my earlier arrival on the Alaska Highway. My goal for this trip was twofold: see how the famed highway had changed since the 1960’s, and visit some of the off-highway sights I missed the first time around. My starting point was Whitehorse, 916 miles northwest of Dawson Creek. From here I would backtrack south to mile zero.
The town of Whitehorse, named after the nearby Yukon River rapids that reminded people of white horses, is located off the Alaska Highway and on the banks of the river. Jim Kemshead from Yukon Tourism picked me up at the airport and taxied me to town. Immediately, some changes became apparent. Whitehorse was still a sizeable town, but gone were the family restaurants that characterized this community. Instead, I was greeted to a small modern city of 22,000 plus, complete with a main drag that features a KFC, Subway and, God help us, a McDonalds!
The next day, I took a side trip to Skagway, Alaska, 90 miles to the west. Cathy Lonneberg from Yukon Tourism drove me to the railhead for the White Pass-Yukon Railway via the Klondike Highway to Fraser, British Columbia. The rail trip over the Coastal Range was a spectacular one, but a subject for another story. My focus was the Alaska Highway, and I planned to start my journey the following day.
The Journey Begins
The traveling was slow going, but the boy was grateful for the ride that would take him closer to his destination. As the truck bumped over the graveled, potholed road with its sharp turns, he passed the time counting the handful of Volkswagen buses and sedans towing silver Airstream campers that were making their way southward back to civilization.
Wednesday, July 18 was my first day on the Alaska Highway. I drove a Budget Rental Toyota Camry and traveled alone this time around. My first stop would be Watson Lake, 296 miles southeast. But, before I reached Watson, I wanted to check out a couple areas of interest.
For the first hour and a half I just took in the scenery -- boreal forests of spruce with snow-capped mountains in the distance. At one point a coyote walked the roadbed. I saw him a mile up ahead, and that was one notable change in the highway. Most of those curves I remember from the 60’s were gone, replaced by long straight-aways. And, though the infrequent sign read "Maximum 100 KPH (62 MPH,) most cars and even RV’s sped by at 70 or 80 MPH on what is now a modern hardtop highway.
The Alaska Highway is patrolled by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who have barracks in major communities. They are responsible for enforcing the speed limit. Unlike my earlier adventure, RV’s, campers, and fifth- wheelers now outnumber cars and SUV’s ten to one. In fact, the Alaska Highway, once called the Alcan Highway, is a virtual RV heaven.
Even with the changes, the Yukon Territory remains an undiscovered paradise for those who like traveling to out-of-the-way places. If you get off the Alaska Highway and subtract the 22,000 people living in Whitehorse, what’s left is the less than 10,000 full-time resident humans in a territory larger than the state of California. That compares with the estimated 10,000 grizzly bears, 50,000 moose, 25,000 mountain sheep and 185,000 caribou that inhabit this land, so you can imagine what a vast, wide-open place it is.
My first stop that day was Teslin, meaning "long lake" in Tlinget, the native language of the people there. The village lies one-third of the way down the 90 mile long lake. Here, I visited the Tlinget Heritage Centre that had just opened in early July of this year and viewed the masks, totem poles, primitive tools and photos that are the essence of this ancient culture. The Centre also has a big open room used for tribal meetings.
My second stop was the Natural History Museum, right next to the Yukon Hotel, at mile 804 of the Alaska Highway. This museum houses all the Territory’s large and medium-sized mammals and some birds, mounted and positioned in natural settings. Among these are musk ox, lynx, Arctic white and gray wolves, Dall sheep, snowy owls and many more.
As I continued my drive, at a point just outside Swift River and before the Rancheria River, I crossed the Continental Divide. This was not as dramatic a shift as in a high pass in Colorado, but it was significant nevertheless. From that point on water flows to the McKenzie River and the Arctic Ocean. I had left the Yukon River-Pacific Drainage behind. The Rancheria Hotel still stands alongside the river. It is one of the oldest tourist hotels along the highway.
Watson Lake
Watson Lake was one of the infrequent gas stops along the highway where truckers could fill up and move on. It is home to weird signs: travelers hung up home town or mileage markers pointing the direction to home. There seemed to be a couple thousand of the signs, but the boy didn‘t leave one. The trucker had to get moving. Maybe some other time, he thought.
When I reached Watson Lake, I found it had changed since the 60’s, but not as dramatically as other Alaska Highway stop-offs. The Watson Lake Hotel was still around, albeit a larger refurbished version. What was once a one-building lodge is now a motel with extended rooms adjoining it. But, I was happy to see the "sign forest," begun by an American GI from Danville, IL. in 1942 during the highway construction, was still there, and it has grown to more than 50,000 signs. This time I added mine, including dates of both my early and present trips.
One point of interest in Watson Lake is the Northern Lights Centre. During the day and evening, on a screen that rises above you like the sky, is a show depicting Yukon wildlife followed by a display of the Northern Lights accompanied by a local folk song. I was amazed at how realistic the lights were.
In keeping with my goal to check out sights beyond the hardtop, I decided to hike to the canyon of the Liard River before retiring to my hotel for the evening. The trailhead is some six miles east of town at Lucky Lake Campground. I had been warned about the problem with aggressive bears in the area -- these were black bears, not grizzlies -- but I wanted to make the 1.5 mile hike anyway. Though it was early evening, the sun stays up until 11 p.m. in July in the Yukon, so I had plenty of light. I pulled into the empty campground and followed a path downhill to a narrow canyon where the Liard, a major river in the Canadian northwest, is constricted down to rapids by canyon walls. Luckily, I didn’t meet up with any bears.
On the road again
The highway, the boy learned, develops a certain rhythm of its own - clumps, bumps and clangs -- the result of potholes, ripple marks and loose stones. The 16 wheeler played this rhythm as it continued its trip north, bringing him closer to his goal.
On Thursday, July 19, my destination was Fort Nelson, 320 miles to the east. I wanted to make three major stops, so it would be a long day. Fog hung heavy over the Watson Lake area that morning. After driving 10 miles, I was in British Columbia. There was no traffic that morning, as the Alaska Highway narrowed to a country lane, more like it used to be. I passed a black bear gorging on the wild berries that grew alongside the road. Then, the fog began to lift west of the small settlement of Fireside, aptly named because what followed were signs of a major forest fire that hit the area in 1982, burning 400,000 acres. Young poplar and birch grew up next to the charred skeletons of spruce.
A well-known natural phenomenon that I missed the first time around is the Liard Hot Springs, a popular stop-off with the RV crowd at mile 492. To get to the springs, I walked over a plank boardwalk that after one-half mile leads to the lower hot spring. When I got there, I saw a dozen people bathing in the 120 degree water that was bubbling out from deep within the earth. These springs are in the heart of what was once a remote, untamed wilderness some thought was a tropical valley in the far north.. Plants --250 species, some rare-- grow near the protective warmth. Some of the many ferns, like ostrich ferns, are only found hundreds of miles south. "We’ve been waiting to give springs a try," a retired man from Florida told me. "But we wanted to wait for the return trip down," his wife added as we walked the planks. I joined them for a swim in the sulfur-laden, warm water.
From the springs, I drove another 42 miles to Muncho Lake, part of the magnificent Muskwa-Kechika Management Area, a wildlife-rich expanse of high mountains and untamed rivers. In fact, Muncho, which means "big lake" in native Tagish, another local tribe, is considered the Serengeti of North America because of the abundant big game and predators that roam there. Muncho is set in a basin and is framed with snow-capped peaks. Its waters are emerald green because of floating sediments from glacial runoff reflecting the sunlight, making for ideal habitat for dolly varden and rainbow trout and arctic grayling.
The Alaska Highway around Muncho Lake is a winding, narrow road that really hasn’t changed much from when I went through in the 1960’s. I crossed one river, the Toad, that was beyond flood stage from the particularly rainy summer of 2001 in the Canadian Northwest. In one place there was a roadblock, and a construction car called a "Pilot Vehicle" led a caravan, of which I was a part, 20 miles over a partially washed out gravel highway. At another detour, I had to drive through two feet of water.
My second stop was Summit Lake, at 4250 feet the highest point on the Alaska Highway. It is now part of Stone Mountain Provincial Park. Here, I met Heather MacRae and Peter Goetz, the Park superintendent, for a three mile hike to Flower Spring Pond in the high country. Tundra, low bushes and alpine flowers lined our narrow marked trail that skirted the North Tetsa River; a female caribou crossed in front of us. When we finally got to the small glacier-fed pond, Peter remarked, "If only I could get the RV drivers out of their vehicles to try trails like this."
After the hike, I followed Heather and Peter in my car the 90 miles to Fort Nelson, mile 300 of the Alaska Highway.
Fort Nelson
As the trucker drove along a low ridge, the boy could see the Rocky Mountains off in the distance. They were the gateway to Alaska. At last, the truck made its scheduled stop at Fort Nelson, the first real layover for the boy on the Alaska Highway. Fort Nelson was a sleepy little town where fur trapping and trading were a major industry, but the place was perfect for a boy who wanted to become a trapper. He felt right at home.
My arrival at Fort Nelson, founded by the Northwest Fur Trading Company in1805,
was significant; it had been my first stop on the Alaska Highway. But there were
changes. For one, the highway had been re-routed and the new section was lined
with restaurants, fast food places, gas stations and motels, all reflections of
the town’s growth to more than 6000 people since oil was discovered in the
area in the 70’s and 80’s.
Instead of a motel, I stayed at a bed & breakfast owned by former Fort Nelson Mayor Frank Parker. His B & B, Ardendale, sits along the old Alaska Highway route, six miles out of town, today just a side street of Fort Nelson. I remember traveling that old route that followed a ridge where openings revealed the Rocky Mountains off in the distance.
One important place I wanted to visit in town was the Fort Nelson Alaska Highway Museum since its proprietor, Marl Brown, had been in Fort Nelson since 1957. Marl, looks like a old-timer of the north, with his flowing white hair and long beard to match. He is a collector of old cars and construction equipment, and outside the museum sit original dozers, jeeps and even old cars that had traveled the highway. Inside, the museum holds historical memorabilia of the early days of the Alaska Highway and mounted animals of the area, including an albino moose. I showed Marl a couple of my old travel brochures from the 60’s, which he enjoyed. " Back then," I said, "distances were in miles, not kilometers." "I wish they still were," Marl lamented.
Final Leg of the Journey
The boy hadn’t gotten very far north on the Alaska Highway yet, but already he was treated to some of the sights and promises of the Alaskan wilderness to come. A small herd of woodland caribou dotted the hills as the truck he hitched a ride with weaved along the winding roadway. Rolling hills, none very high, characterized a virtually unbroken landscape marked with spruce and lodgepole pine mixed with aspen, so characteristic of the northern forests.
My final leg of this journey was the 300 miles from Fort Nelson to Dawson Creek, which had been the beginning of my boyhood trip. There had also been major changes in this section of road. Gone were the hairpin curves, replaced by very long straight-aways. In one stretch near Adsett Creek, an hour out of Fort Nelson, there were an estimated 132 major curves in the highway in 41 miles. They were replaced by a re-routing in 1992. This stretch is now a long straight drive. I didn’t see caribou on this trip, but I did see signs warning motorists to be on the lookout for caribou and moose as well--lots of signs--especially near Pink Mountain, 100 miles from Dawson Creek.
I knew I was getting closer to mile zero of the Alaska Highway when I reached Fort St. John, 47 miles north of Dawson Creek. This was also an end to the northern forests section; I was now in the agricultural Peace River Valley. Fort St. John, founded by Alexander MacKenzie in1793, is a major center along the Highway and billed as the "Energy Capital" of British Columbia because of the extensive oil and gas fields near the town.
I crossed the Peace River bridge at mile 35. The Peace is the most formidable river that the highway engineers had to cross. It was first ferried, then a wooden structure was built. That collapsed in 1957 and was replaced by a modern steel bridge, the longest span bridge on the highway.
A little over a half hour later I arrived at Dawson Creek, the end of my three day journey, and took more than a moment to reflect on the changes, not only with the Alaska Highway, but with me.
Final Thoughts
To make a long story short, my trapping venture lasted all of two days, after which I called home. My father Western Unioned me money for plane fare back to La Guardia Airport in New York from Fairbanks, the last stop on the Alaska Highway, via Anchorage and Seattle. I was reprimanded to say the least. That ended my Alaska wilderness trapping career.
There can be little doubt the Alaska Highway has changed
since I first traveled it. Yes, the winding curves have been straightened,
making for a less exciting drive (the expectation of what lies around the next
bend all but gone), and some of the forests near the road have been pushed back,
giving it a more open feeling in many sections, but the Highway is still the
ultimate road trip in North America, if not the world, for soft adventure
travel. And, from the Highway there are many trails that lead to the wilderness
beyond the hardtop.
Back then, just making it down the Alaska Highway, a thin ribbon of civilization
in a very wild, untamed world, was an accomplishment. Today, the highway still
provides breathtaking scenery and jump-off points for those seeking less
traveled paths.
For me, this recent trip showed me how much I’ve changed. As a teenager doing the Alaska Highway, I didn’t own a watch or camera, and wherever I was dropped off from a ride was okay. Time seemed endless and irrelevant. On my recent trip, all my destinations were planned out in advance with clear goals well thought out ahead of time. I knew where I would be spending each night. I brought along not only a watch, but two cameras and a high-tech camcorder, and whenever I got the urge to wander far a field, I reminded myself that I had a job to do--at least this time.