By: Bristol
In late July of 2019 my sister and I left Corvallis Oregon to start on an adventure through over 3,700 miles of wilderness in Washington, British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska.
As far as migrations go, ours have never been the farthest nor the most arduous. But 3,700 miles and 52 hours of driving is still a long way to go by most folks' standards. We recommend having a full complement of camping victuals, water in milk jugs, camp fuel, fleece outerwear, and marshmallows.
We left Corvallis, Oregon mostly ready for this trek, and were fully prepared after a pit stop in Bellingham to pick up our food, water, and 2 new tires. Over the border we went, through a little town called Sumas.
Immediately over the BC border it still looks pretty similar to Washington; temperate rainforest. Bald Eagles coast over the red cedars, and Dark-eyed Juncos and Varied Thrushes inhabit the sword fern-dominated undergrowth. We stopped at Bridal Veil Falls, which showcases this biome well. Earlier in the season there must be abundant wildflowers and orchids on the forest floor, but even in late summer it's a verdant place.
Within a few hours from the border the landscape dried out and rose in elevation, the road taking us through rabbit brush and ponderosa pines; cowboy country. It was extremely reminiscent of parts of Wyoming.
As we drove further, this became slightly wetter again, with patchy ponds and lakes. Out the back window we spotted some American White Pelicans flying.
We collected some samples of indian paintbrush (likely Castelleja minata) up the Cariboo Highway near a village called 100 Miles House. In the vicinity were also wild strawberries, purple asters, and wild cranberries. This area was also apparently far enough inland to see lightning storms, and we drove through two of these before stopping for the night near Hixton, BC. (Provincial parks are roughly analogous to the US's state parks, and often have campgrounds with bathrooms, trash cans, and water).
At the town of Prince George the road forks. Driving northwest will take you to Prince Rupert, while north will take you to Dawson Creek. We turned north here, up the Cassiar highway. We didn't stay long in Prince George, only enough time to find internet access and assure the family that we were still alive and well on our trek.
Around the town of Chetwyk (thronged with huge carved wood statues) we noticed a difference in the paintbrushes. Prior to this they'd been red or a washed-out red, and after a little river valley they were bubblegum pink, peach, or yellowish, but never red again. Perhaps a different species?
The road between Prince George and Fort Nelson includes several very long stretches with no services, and only occasional patches of abandoned motels, lodges, and overgrown gas stations. We'd been a little nervous crossing this stretch, but were greeted by spectacular patches of roadside fireweed and pink paintbrush. Large dragonflies covered the road, hunting the abundant mosquitoes. We drove for hours, seeing only a bare handful of other cars on the road.
Our first black bear was sighted just south of Fort Nelson at the end of day 2. We ended up camping not far from there, just past the town. The forest was noticeably wetter, with a dense, low understory of moss and fungi. At night great horned owls hooted at each other through the aspen trees. We did some exploring in the morning, finding an abundance of moss species, including my favorite stair-step moss, and tree mosses, which look like tiny palm trees. A diminutive orchid no longer than my hand sprouted in the company of club fungi, mushrooms in every color, and cranberry and rose bushes.
At Fort Nelson a nice gas station attendant showed us to properly use the pump. Just past the town the paintbrushes became much scarcer, but they were replaced by patches, then fields of seeded-out mountain avens flowers. At the roadside, they look like little pieces of fluff. The seed heads are composed of many long fluffy tendrils with a seed attached. The large, dark lavender flowers must be a sight to see in the spring.
About two hours north of Fort Nelson the landscape started transitioning to black spruce forest, looking similar to the area around Denali Nat'l Park in Alaska. We hit Stone Mountain Provincial Park not long after, the scruffy woods opening into a stark, gray vista of barren stone. As we crested the first hill downwards into this place a small herd of ungulates appeared at the roadside. Cue about half an hour of picture taking.
The sharply bicolored legs and dark gray coloration of these beautifully camouflaged, elegant animals immediately convinced us that they were different from the familiar Dall's sheep. It took some research at the next internet stop to discover what they actually were. Stone's sheep (Ovis dalli stonei) are a subspecies of thinhorn sheep (Ovis dalli), closely related to Dall's sheep (Ovis dalli dalli). According to our Yukon Ungulates pamphlet, Stone's sheep evolved during the last ice age in BC, and are less common than Dall's sheep. The lambs we saw with the herd were probably about 3 months old.
Stone Mountain marks the entrance to some truly spectacular country. A massive volcano yawns beyond a jagged line of shorter peaks, and Muncho Lake offers a wide expanse of turquoise water with white pebbly shores. A cinnamon-colored black bear was spotted in the trees here. Just north of Muncho Lake, a male caribou licked salt from the road, unconcerned at the proximity of trucks roaring past. We stopped to watch him for a bit, eating the tiny, sweet wild strawberries that grew near the road.
Near Trout River, also north of Muncho Lake, we saw our first wood bison. From a distance they look almost like mounds of earth, or a small car that went off the road. Close to, they become a mobile mound of muscle, with massive round heads and shaggy fur, a holdover from the last ice age. We would see more individuals near the road further north, and two herds of about 50 animals. The handy Yukon Ungulates pamphlet informed us that wood bison are the largest animal on the North American continent, and were once extirpated in the Yukon (we only saw them in BC). The subspecies is considered threatened in Canada.
Wood bison can get nearly 7 ft tall at the shoulder and weigh over a ton. They have some slight morphological differences (besides greater size) from the familiar plains bison of Yellowstone, including placement of shoulder hump relative to front legs, horn color, and wooliness. Threatened by over-hunting, wood bison were presumed rare or extinct when a population of 200 animals was found in Alberta in the 50's. Their status has since gone from endangered to threatened, and their numbers are around 7,000.
Liard Hotsprings was a goal of ours on this trip, and is located roughly halfway between Washington and Anchorage. This is a small park, $5 per person to enjoy the delicately eggy-smelling spring, with clean blue pebbles on the bottom and a nice changing room. The area surrounding the springs is a warm oasis for butterflies, wading birds, plants, and more, even as the impending fall chases most of these creatures southward. Here we saw fritillary butterflies, watermelon berry, tiny chub fish, lesser yellowlegs, and carnivorous butterwort and sundew plants. Three bison lounged by the road near the park entrance, and a herd of 40, including about 10 calves, about half an hour north.
Driving the Alcan is strangely soothing to the soul, and therapeutic for the general sense of ecological doom we all (particularly ecologists) seem to be marinating in. Thousands of miles of largely untouched wilderness is a rarity in the world today. There are probably animals living there who have never even seen a person before. Two coyotes outside the town of Teslin demonstrated this eloquently, as one was asleep by the roadside and showed not a bit of fear. It's mate was similarly unfazed. They eventually loped gracefully off into the woods. The encounter made me remember a phrase floating around the internet- "The deer isn't crossing the road, the road is crossing the forest". It's all in your point of view.
The final two days of the road trip were more bereft of large animals. We saw a family of black bears near a lake, a sow and three cubs. Fortunately, a stopover in Whitehorse allowed us to visit the Beringia Interpretive Center, a showcase for some of the massive creatures that roamed the continent a mere few thousand years ago. It's a small but beautifully done building, with life-size replicas of giant beavers and a mammoth family outside. Inside, a mammoth skeleton dominates the space, keeping company with a saber-tooth cat and a giant ground sloth, it's capacious rib cage spanning nearly 5 feet across. If you are interested in the fossil history of the northern latitudes, this is the place.
Moving onwards towards the ever-closer Alaskan border, we passed the remnants of a recent fire. Patches of burned and still-green trees covered rolling hills. It's easy to forget that these are a natural part of the landscape, and this was what a healthy burn looks like.
The border with Alaska is decorated with a multitude of plaques, an obelisk, an anti-invasive species sign, and a wide mown swath of forest between the two countries. The crossing was uneventful, and we were greeted by a lake of Pacific Loons and Trumpeter Swans on the other side. Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge is probably not seen by many people, as it lies nearly as far east as you can be in Alaska and still be in the state. We only have the one highway, after all. I highly recommend a visit here- the refuge is a globally important bird area, and boasts free campgrounds in beautifully scenic wetlands (if you don't mind the mosquitoes). Our night there, we sat by the lake and watched a duck with 33 ducklings, many likely adopted, a beaver, and listened to the calls of Sandhill Cranes and Trumpeter Swans.
The following few hours to Anchorage took us through the Mat-Su valley, giving stunning views of the glacier and the landscapes it carved. Along the top of a cliff was a family of Dall's sheep, and just south of Tok we nearly hit our first moose of the trip with a calf trotting behind her.
Coming home to the little house at the top of a mountain was a perfect end to a long trip, satisfactorily punctuated by our first shower in a week. There's nothing so glorious as that first shower.
If you feel that the world is careening ever closer to becoming an apocalyptic wasteland, covered in invasive species, pollution, and other devastating marks of mankind's ruling hand, go take a long drive. There's places yet that have never bourne a human footprint. Go look upon these endless acres, and fill up your soul with green.
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