well down in British Columbia but when the borders were drawn for Alaska, Alaska kept a strip of land down the coast reaching to Stewart. Thus there is a border with Alaska. I think this might have been something to do with it being the most northerly ice free port and vested mining interests when the borders were agreed.
Yesterday we drove across the border into Alaska, expecting the usual rigmarole and inquisition from US customs and Immigration only to find they were not there. You can drive in Hyder Alaska with no checks, no customs, no immigration! [OK the road does dead end after 30 miles.]
Hyder is a bit of a ghost town,
decaying wooden houses are mixed with a few new log houses built by people who want to get away from it all. We wondered about this vehicle
until we heard that the area gets about 20 feet of snow most winters and 34 feet two years ago. In winter wolves are heard howling in town most nights and pets have to be kept indoors.
We are here to see the famous fishing bears. The US Forest Service has built a wooden platform and walkway from the car park. As we walked in we were prepared to be disappointed,
but within minutes a black bear appeared and made several splashy
but unsuccessful forays into the creek after the spawning salmon. We stayed there until dusk hoping to see a grizzly and were partially rewarded by a distant sighting well down stream of a large grizzly who probably caught a salmon and retreated to the bushes to eat in peace. We could not identify the bear but we had a local forest ranger who was supervising the crowds and he said it was a grizzly but he was not sure what one. Most of the bears are regulars and the rangers have named them. For instance Monika is a large grizzly sow who is an accomplished fishing bear with a high strike rate.The ranger was a pleasant change from the recent ranger contacts in Denali who were very inexperienced and sketchily trained. This was a local with a wealth of knowledge on bears and other local wildlife. He patiently answered all questions from the dumb to the arcane while watching at all times for people who wanted a closer encounter with a bear. Apparently people regularly get out of there cars and try and get closer to the bears at the side of the road. There is a special web site for people like this who try to remove themselves from the human
Why build this bridge?
We got Charro
out for a trolly push and encountered one of the famous northern bridges to nowhere.
1 comment:
Great Blog! In my former life I worked for the Telephone Company in Terrace, BC and Stewart was part of my territory. I spent many weeks there and explored the Alaska parts quite a bit. The old Grand Duke mine at the end of the road was still accessible at the time and was always an adventure! We saw a few wolves as well even thought they are very shy of humans.
The snow, as you point out is unbelievable. There were many years when the linemen had to dig down to find the tops of the telephone poles.
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