July 11 - The Cassiar Highway and First Time in Alaska

We left the 'Ksan Campground and headed north.  First though we had to cross this miniature, one lane, Mackinaw Bridge in Hazelton.  Looks innocent enough.....

But when we were on it, looking down about 300 feet into a gorge, riding on about 22,000 pounds, well, we're just glad it held!

 

 The Cassier Highway started out innocent enough as well, smooth and scenic.  We'll find out tomorrow though, there's another side of it to the north.

We only drove about 125 miles up the highway today.  We wanted to take the Stuart Cutoff Hwy over to Stuart, BC and Hyder, Alaska.  We were told that the National Park in Hyder had a great place to watch bears catching fish.  So we stopped at the Meziadin Lake Provincial Park and set up camp.  Then we headed out for the 40 mile drive to Hyder, AK.

We were glad we took this drive.  Lots of great mountains and waterfalls.  And along the way the Bear Glacier.  Pretty awesome.

Here's a super close-up of the very bottom, where water was running into the small lake.  The pictures are deceiving as this was a lot bigger than it looks.  The blue color is the result of the ice thickness and the fact that only the blue part of the light spectrum has enough energy to make it through, so that's all we see.
 

Finally, we make it to Alaska!  But what we found was the ghost town of Hyder.  There are actually some stores and residents, but the original town is considered a ghost town.

We arrived at the Fish Creek viewing deck at the Tongass National Forest, only to find that the salmon don't really run until mid-August.  No fish means no bears.

One of the rangers suggested we might drive up to see the Salmon Glacier though.  15 miles of dirt road that ends up circling back into British Columbia at a dead end, but we decided what the heck as long as we're here.  So off we went on a bumpy, dusty, and winding road along the mountain sides.

As we got close, the toe of the glacier came into view.  But it was several miles yet to the summit viewpoint.

The road just kept going and going, up and up.  We asked someone going the other way if there really was an end to the road.  She assured us it would be obvious when we got there.  Whew!

Well, it turned out to be pretty obvious as the pictures below show.  No this is not a postcard and no we are not in an airplane!

Just to prove we were both there.....above Roxane's head, between the mountains, the glacier is about a half mile across.

This is a panoramic view of the Salmon Glacier.  Click on the pic to enlarge it.

We talked to a gentleman who hangs out at the top all summer long, selling post cards and DVDs.  Calls himself the Bear-man.  His real name is Keith Scott and he's from New Brunswick.  But the glacier calls him back every year - for the past 22 years.

Here's a close up of the ice ripples at the center.

And if you look at the far right in the panorama, you can what looks like a small lake.  Actually it is huge!  The Bear-man had a photo of himself standing next to one of the iceburgs and it was about 50 feet tall - above the water!  That gives some idea of the scale of the thing.

Unfortunately, we had to leave.  Roxane took this picture of flowers with the glacier in the background on the way back down the mountain.

Finally,back at camp, we got to see the moon come up.  We're not sure if it got completely dark or not.