Alaska highway ramblings to Yukon & back

[Okanagan]

Road trip around the 1700 mile loop that begins and ends at Prince George, BC. From PG we drove west toward Prince Rupert to Kitwanga, then north on the Stewart Cassiar Highway to Watson Lake, Yukon where it connects with the Alaska Highway.  Then east and south on the Alcan through Toad River, Ft. Nelson and Ft. St. John back to Prince George.  Prince George is about a ten or 11 hour drive from my partner's starting point in Bellingham, WA.  Didn't take many photos.  The scenics with yellowing leaves and a big river in the background are along the Peace River, not too far from pitw I think. 

It was so cold when trout fishing the first day that I didn't take any pics of the gorgeous rainbow trout.  That was the only day we kept any, chunky strong fish about 12-14 inches mostly. The wind laid down by early afternoon but by then I had cut up the fish.  The first time we fished, we put in the boat we'd hauled along and I rigged my spinning rod while my partner put his stuff in the boat. Since we weren't ready to go I made a cast from the gravel beach where we launched.  Hooked a large strong jumping rainbow immediately on my first cast.  Lost it on barbless hook halfway to the beach so cast again and hooked another one.  It went like that all day as we trolled and cast.



From the boat I glassed several mtn goats and one bear high on the mtn. that looked like a grizzly.



Folding Mountain below, with the sharply bent rock layers, seen from the Alaska Highway near Toad River.  Stone sheep and white goats all over that mountain. 



Some views, from a spur road that went above timberline, and overlooking some good river bottom moose country.  One lake we hiked in to but it was so shallow so far out that we could not fish it much since we didn't know to carry our waders from our vehicle.   Big trout jumping out in the middle and I hope to go back someday. 

Lotsa sheep, lotsa goats, lotsa black bears, lotsa buffalo, lotsa caribou, but we did not see a single moose, the first time on that loop that I have not seen several moose.  Moose numbers waaaay down.



On the whole way to Alaska there are hundreds of miles of highway that look like the pic below, maybe with mountains out on the horizon, often not, and once in awhile a critter of some kind on the mowed right of way.

[bambam]

beautiful country

[nastygunz]

You have the spirit of a modern day Jim Bridger! Gorgeous scenery, AND TROUT= Heaven !

[remrogers]

Drove to Alaska with a fellow in January of 71 up the Alkan Highway. Gorgeous country and, at that time. 1700 miles of gravel road. Was snow packed most of the way with only a few hours of daylight. Dropped to minus 40 while in Fairbanks and after I left it dropped to minus 60. Was an experience I won't ever forget. Wasn't any open water that time of year and Watson Lake had ice pressure ridges over fifteen foot tall.

Sounds like you had a great trip. Getting worn down by catching fish is hard, but someone has to do it!

[FinsnFur]

Wowwwww
....and that second pic  mercy

[Okanagan]

Wowwwww
....and that second pic  mercy

Right beside the Stewart Cassiar Highway.   In the second pic, we motored across the lake, stopped and did some moose calls, and then trolled along that shore catching rainbows and remembering to look along the shoreline once in awhile in case a moose came out to my call.  Superb tasting trout with firm, salmon colored meat. A bald eagle started following us around so we tossed the smallest trout of the day toward him and he snatched it cleanly from the water in one smooth swoop. 

[Todd Rahm]

Beautiful country and awesome trip.

[Okanagan]

Drove to Alaska with a fellow in January of 71 up the Alkan Highway. Gorgeous country and, at that time. 1700 miles of gravel road. Was snow packed most of the way with only a few hours of daylight. Dropped to minus 40 while in Fairbanks and after I left it dropped to minus 60. Was an experience I won't ever forget. Wasn't any open water that time of year and Watson Lake had ice pressure ridges over fifteen foot tall.

Sounds like you had a great trip. Getting worn down by catching fish is hard, but someone has to do it!

You had a COLD trip!  A cousin and I drove it round trip from Seattle to Fairbanks and on to the Kenai Peninsula in late June of '84.  We went up the Alcan and down the Stewart Cassiar.  Lots unpaved in those days and the Alcan still ran hundreds of extra miles around the endless loops because the hurried WWII route was not surveyed well and followed the military crest of hills and ridges.  The Stewart Cassiar was several hundred miles of mud in the rain.  It is now paved the whole way, maybe a few miles of excellent gravel where it crosses the Stikine Canyon south of Dease Lake, good enough that I don't even recall whether it was paved or not.

I have sort of intended to do this loop in winter purely to call wolves and lynx, but my black ice wreck a few years ago plus getting older and preferring creature comforts has pretty much scuttled the idea for me.  Meanwhile I got a called lynx closer to home and can work on calling a wolf the same so there is not much pressure from my bucket list anymore!

Anyone with interest in this part of the world should consider making this loop, or maybe all the way up to Alaska.  Except for a few spots like near Kluane Lake, most of the rest of the drive past Watson Lake to Alaska is endless moose and mosquito scrub brush. Mountains again in Alaska.  Gasoline and lodging are both scarce enough that a man should plan ahead and find out when gas stations are open.  Dease Lake is a critical one, and it closes early, I discovered once upon a time  .   Hunting is by guide only for Americans, but the fishing is superb and a non-resident fishing license is reasonable.

Here's another photo I took on a late August/early Sept. hunt years ago.  It is looking across Racing River, near Toad River, and the mountain across the river is loaded with elk and mountain goats.  We stopped at the same spot last week and within seconds had spotted two dozen goats in our binoculars, scattered all across and up and down. 

[Hawks Feather]

Thanks for sharing the pics. It is beautiful country.

Jerry

[riverboss]

Wow!! What a trip that must of been, I'm sure your used to that country and its just another fishing trip, but to a guy from Ky it's a dream,. Thanks for sharing it.

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[JohnP]

THANK YOU VERY MUCH !  Do you contribute the lack of moose to the increase (?) in the wolf population or are they cyclic?  That buffalo looks like it had a collar on.

[Okanagan]

THANK YOU VERY MUCH !  Do you contribute the lack of moose to the increase (?) in the wolf population or are they cyclic?  That buffalo looks like it had a collar on.

The experts I trust who are on the ground attribute the drastic decrease in northern BC moose population to increase in wolf population.  Off the record some biologists are saying that due to politics they cannot touch wolves, so their long term plan is to let the wolves kill off moose and likely caribou to a point where they will start over in game management, a decades long process.  On the entire trip we saw more hunters than I've ever seen, not one animal of any kind hanging in any camp, and a total of three moose racks on pick-ups heading south.  It appeared to me that all three of those moose came from Alaska.

We hiked to a moosey lake and walked over a quarter mile around its shore, and saw one old moose track where a trapper had told us a cow moose lived.  On two other lakes and two river banks where we walked and fished, we found only one spot with a moose track.  Ten years ago all of these places were littered with moose tracks, trails and droppings.  Zilch.  The game trails in the grassy meadow/swamps are grown over.  Oops, will add that I found a single days-old moose track at a moose meadow I hiked to and called because it looked good from a distance.  The decrease in moose numbers is drastic and astounding to a know-nothing like me.

In looking at the buffalo pic I also thought that it had a collar though I did not recall that it did, and then with a closer look realized that what looks like a collar is its horn lined up just right.  We did see a caribou cow with a collar.  Resident hunters can draw for a buffalo tag and I put in once with a friend but was not drawn.  You cannot hunt them along the highway and apparently during the season you have to go miles off the highway by snow machine to get to them.

[pitw]

As usual a top notch job of reporting on your journeys with great photo's to add a few thousands of words.
Moose may be on the decline over that away but here they are increasing like crazy. 
Thinking I would love to meet the old trapper.

[nastygunz]

 The moose population in New Hampshire is plummeting drastically due to ticks and global warming.

[Okanagan]

As usual a top notch job of reporting on your journeys with great photo's to add a few thousands of words.
Moose may be on the decline over that away but here they are increasing like crazy. 
Thinking I would love to meet the old trapper.

Good to hear that moose are increasing east of the mountains.  Those grain fed ones are delicious I'd imagine.  I killed a spike elk one time that had spent his summer and Fall in grain fields.  Mighty fine eating.

I'm sure there are still some areas of good moose hunting in northern BC, especially some good pockets.  For the record we did not stray much off of the highways and when we did we stuck with fairly main logging, oil or micro tower roads, where hunters patrol.   It was the lack of sign compared to ten years ago that got my attention more than not seeing any moose.  I saw a lot more moose sign in the Okanagan this summer when fishing there.  That is plumb civilized country compared to Iskut or Toad River.

You'd like the old trapper.  He is my age.

[Dave]

Great write up on your trip.  Sounds like a blast and a great way to spend time going after a moose!

[MI VHNTR]

Okanagan, thanks for the excellent pictures of your trip.