Wheels Pt 2

Here we go again, another blogg from the bike.

So here I am at Eagle Plains, essentially a few transportable buildings that are close to 30 years old and in their time were at the peak of technology. Because the place is small and in the middle of no-ware (people I tried to ring in the next town south didn’t know where it was and thought it was in the USA) it has to be totally self sufficient.

That means water and sewage management (liquids will freeze in the winter) has to be done on site while you have to generate your own power to run a hotel, kitchen, road maintenance crew and camp site. EP is also the only fuel for around 300km in each direction.

Oh yeh, as there are no cables going in or out TV, telephone and internet are all run by satellite and like any wireless technology is at times temperamental.

From memory the population is around 15 give or take and in the winter is gets below - 40C.

Given the above information, it is no surprise that EP has a few quirks. The local hotel manager’s dogs seemed to have free run of the entire place, including the dining room / bar, and smoking (while banned indoors in the rest of Canada) was commonplace in the communal lunch room.

It was to my surprise then, that I was asked to leave the building when I took off my muddy shoes - as is the custom in a lot of Canada, left them at the door with countless others and proceeded to walk around inside.

On leaving I was about to question the smoking waitress about the dogs at my feet but decided it wasn’t worth the argument.

That said, the food was good and the local people were helpful - if not enthusiastic. The bar was covered in old photos and furs including wolf, bear and muskox - pretty cool.

Most of the photos were of a guy called the “Mad Trapper” who led police on a 2 week chase through the bush in the winter and was eventually killed in a shoot out. The thing about this story was that the average temperature was around - 45 C for the 2 weeks and no one knew the true identity of the guy.

He mysteriously appeared and was linked to all sorts of speculation about a southern bloke who went missing after a large gold heist. Of course all the pictures are of him dead and frozen…nice…

So I was able to pick up some supplies and have a few days off to clean the bike up and relax. Among other problems my gear shifters had exploded while the break pads were wearing too fast and after 2 days of no success I was over it and ready to throw in the towel.

A brief hitching attempt was followed by the decision to stop being a wimp, open a can of “be a man” and continue the ride. Worst case scenario I would hitch further down the road if the bike totally packed it in.

Ok so I’m off riding again with 1 working gear, most of the mountains behind me and over 300km to go...this could get interesting...

Along the way I passed many km of burnt trees. Forest fires are quite common here and can be hard to control given the remoteness of the area. Add to this a sub-soil layer of ice (a remnant of the last ice age) and it’s easy to understand why the trees are always so small.

Still there were patches of taller forest in places. The EP area is unique in that it wasn’t covered over by ice-age glaciers and it’s said that if you stay till the bar closes, you can still see mammoths walking up the valley from the large bar window. I even saw a mammoth tooth found here in an information centre further south.

On the animal theme, despite being in prime moose and grizzly bear country I didn’t see either for the duration of the trip, although there were a lot of foot prints on the road. At one stage a passing motorist asked if I had seen the bear on the edge of the road 100m earlier. Apparently I had passed right by it without knowing and it was only the sound of the car that made it poke its head out of the bush it was feeding in…

One moose related thing I did see (in a museum) was a pair of males that had locked antlers during a fight, become stuck and (unfortunately) had died. I heard that male moose are very big but I wasn’t prepared for this, they were MASSIVE!

For the most part the riding after EP was like being a yoyo due to the undulating hills. The road eventually dropped into the Ogilvie River and followed it for a while. This was the first time for about 2 days that I was below the cloud line and it was a refreshing change in scenery. Earlier I had passed a lot of look-outs and display boards talking about the mountains that I couldn’t see which was a bit frustrating. The views now made up for that though!

For the most part I saw around 4 - 10 cars per day on the road and the challenge was to put up the tent close enough to the road so that it could be seen, but far enough away so that it didn’t get sprayed with mud.

When riding, just about everyone slowed down and had a chat to me as they went past. That said I did wear a rock in the face when a big truck didn’t slow down - not happy! I was really impressed by the willingness of motorists to make sure that I was OK and doing well. A lot of people offered me food and were keen to hear about what I was up to.

One guy pulled up really close in his 4WD and I was starting to get a bit nervous as he was reaching around on the front passenger seat - I thought he might swerve and hit me. He eventually found what he was after and handed me a large carton of orange juice. Greatly appreciated, thanks mate!

That night the clouds were starting to build up again and I wanted to put up the tent before it rained. It was pretty cold but it had been for a few days so I didn’t think much of it. From inside the tent I heard rain gently falling at around 3am and it was still going when I woke up at 8am.

Not thinking much of it I looked out the tent window and everything was white. By the time I got up at 10am everything was covered in around 3-4 inches of snow. Coming from Australia, that’s really cool to see!

I've discovered that cold is a good motivator, once you’re out of the tent that is. It was an awesome day in that there was not a trace of snow any ware the night before and now everything was covered. I also went through the highest elevation of the trip (Forks Pass), was surrounded by the Tombstone Mountains (with a fresh coat of white paint) and was able to stay at a campground hut with a wood stove. Great finish to the day!

The next day was the last of the trip and by lunch I had made the service station at Klondike Corner, from there it was 40km to the next town and the end of the trip.

On the corner of the road I met a guy trying to hitch back up the way I had just come from. On noticing the large pile of cigarette butts at his feet I jokingly commented that it looked as though he had been there a long time - turned out it was getting close to 1 week with no luck as it was so late in the season and there weren’t many tourists around. He was still there a week later when I caught the bus on the way back to Vancouver.

On finally reaching Dawson City late in the night I found a really cool “low tech” campground. It had log cabins, showers, camp sites, outdoor cooking / eating facilities etc; however it didn’t have any electricity or mains water. Pretty cool set up, something that I would love to run myself. Instead of a shower you heated water over a fire and used a small bucket to wash. Candles were the lighting and rain water was used for drinking.

After a few days at the campground it was time to move on. The bus took me south to Whitehorse where I met up with a mate John (who had ridden across Canada from east to west that summer) and hung out for a week or so before catching another bus back to Vancouver.

After 40 hours on a bus Jenn met me in “Van”…but that’s another story…



All in all this summer taught me that when trying to do things that seem difficult, often the hardest part of the exercise is convincing yourself that you can do it.

so

“We are who we believe we are.”

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