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Published: June 28th 2007
***CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE***
***IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE MY PREVIOUS DIARY ENTRIES, PLEASE CLICK ON THE ‘PREVIOUS JOURNALS’ ICON AT THE FOOT OF THIS BLOG***
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***PLEASE FEEL FREE TO FORWARD ME ANY EMAIL ADDRESSES THAT WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE MY DIARY AUTOMATICALLY***
Kitwanga to Meziadin Junction - 165km
12 hours in the saddle
I was awoken at gone midnight by a very loud bang. I jumped up listening to the remnants of the bang echoing around the mountains. It sounded like a gunshot.
I took my earplugs out and sat in the dark listening. I wear earplugs in the tent because I would rather not know if something is outside. Ignorance is bliss as far as I am concerned.
Then it happened again, it was a bloody gunshot.
Oh my God! I switched my lantern on and sat waiting intently with my knees up and my chin. What the hell was going on? There must have been 20 or 30 gunshots over the next hour or so. Each one echoed out into the night, like one of those
old western movies. I guess it was someone hunting, but I never found out and didn’t really want to.
The firing had stopped, but I couldn’t get back to sleep. When you are in a tent and you hear gunshots in the middle of the night it tends to have the effect of 10 coffees. There were a couple of loud cracks in the trees near my tent and then a Coyote started to bark (and they sound really weird). Oh my God! What is this? I now felt like the tent scene in The Blair Witch Project.
Then to cap it all off, the Rooks started up at about 5am and they make a hell of a noise. Thankfully it was now morning and I was still alive. I emerged from my tent into pouring rain, fresh and alert, having had no sleep whatsoever with 165km to ride. Great!
The road onto Meziadin Junction has changed and is much narrower, with dense bushes and brush coming up to the road edge. This is real bear territory and there is lots of bear poo everywhere to prove it, some of which is very fresh. As the traffic
is much lighter now I am taking the precaution of cycling in the middle of the road. That way, if something does run out in front of me, then I have a little reaction time.
It didn't take me long before I saw my first black bear, with two adorable cubs. They didn't hang around too long and neither did I, because mummy bear was looking back at me. About 5 minutes after that a coyote slowly made its way across the road ahead of me. Looking like a large fox, but silver/gold in colour, I knew that today was going to be an interesting one.
I began to sing along to my mini-disk, partly to take my mind of the animals (and the fact that I must appear like a tray of food slowly moving along a conveyor belt in front of their eyes) and partly to make them aware that I was coming along (hopefully scaring them off).
This was a mistake. I was just at the finale of 'Summer of 69' by Bryan Adams and was belting out the words "Yeah, it was the...." when, perhaps in a desperate attempt to save all bug
kind, a mosquito shot straight down my throat. This kamikaze had me coughing my guts up. However, having laid down his life, his mates seized their opportunity to descend in squadrons - it had been a trap. A trap for which he had made the ultimate sacrifice, so others can feast. I desperately tried to get my bike moving, but had received numerous bites around my face by the time I could get up some speed.
It was a couple of hours further down the road when I saw my first Grizzly. It was immediately apparent that this bear was a Grizzly, because they are about twice the size of anything I had seen to date. It was absolutely massive and it lumbered along the forest edge. I really wouldn't want a close encounter with one of those things.
Having been awake in my tent all night listening to various horrendous noises outside, I was absolutely exhausted by the time I reached Meziadin Junction. I pulled into the provincial campground at about 8pm having cycled all day against a headwind. I hadn’t had a proper shower for 3 days and I was beginning to smell like an Orangutans
posing pouch. As I circled the camp looking for some grass to pitch my tent it was like ringing the dinner bell for every mosquito within 1000 yards. To them I smelt like a 5 course meal at one of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants.
The annoying thing about provincial campgrounds is that they are all geared up for Recreational Vehicles (RV’s). They only have hard gravel spaces for tents and if your tent is not a freestanding one (i.e. they require pegging, like mine does) then you can really struggle to pitch your tent.
I saw a beautiful piece of grass just about the right size and cycled up to the RV that was next to it, to ask if they minded me pitching my tent. Tina & Hans were from Holland and were touring around in a rented RV.
“Oh my” said Tina, “You look as though you have had a tough day?”
I told them about the headwind that I had to contend with and the mosquitos and the bad nights sleep. I also apologised to them if I smelt. I didn’t want to lay my tails of woe on too thick, but when the
violins started up I knew that I had overdone it.
“Would you like a coffee?” asked Tina.
“Oh you are a star!” I said gratefully, “that would be smashing”.
I began to unpack my sodden wet tent. Everything smelt moldy and the damp seemed to congeal the material into one big lump. At that point Tina came out with my coffee.
“Oh thanks so much. I haven’t had a coffee in ages”, I said warming my hands up on the cup.
“Would you like some pasta? I have just made some and there is plenty to go around. It has fresh salmon & crab in it”. God I must have looked bloody awful to be deserve such generosity. Hans convinced me to have some pasta (I had held out for about 5 seconds). With that he also gave me some cookies and a beer.
As I pushed the tent poles through the material, supping my coffee and beer and nibbling my cookies, something was wrong. The tent, which I have now named ‘Dean’ (after someone I used to work with, whom I vehemently hated), didn’t resemble a tent at all. It had bulges where
there shouldn’t be bulges and nothing was aligned.
I knew what the problem was. At Kitwanga I unclipped the inner cocoon of the tent in a vain attempt to dry it out and empty it of the dead bugs, crisps, chocolate, cornflakes and other such accumulated bits n’ pieces. It is strange, but when I clipped Dean back together I knew that he was going to be trouble. He has always had it in for me from day one and it is going to end in tears and they won’t be mine.
“Right you b*stard, don’t muck me around. I am not in the mood” I whispered. At that point the door zipper jammed and I lost my temper.
“Just give me a f*ing break. I mean it, I’ll get rid of you at Whitehorse”
Half an hour later I was still nowhere with Dean. He seemed to enjoy the fact that the more annoyed I got, the less he resembled a tent. I hit him with a tent pole.
“Are you ok?” said Hans, “You seem to be having a lot of trouble”.
“Oh hi Hans. I am trying to break the world
record for the longest time it takes to set up a tent. With any luck the sun will be coming up for morning and I won’t have to bother”.
Before I knew what was happening Hans had slid himself under my tent and Tina, who had brought out my pasta, was answering to his instructions.
“Tina, just unclip that hook and pass me that line”, “Tina, push that through there and hand me that clip”. It was like Hans knew exactly what to do. He had obviously camped before. I stood there helpless whilst two Dutch people, who I had never met before, put my own tent up. I felt so embarrassed as I ate my pasta and sipped my beer.
Thanks so much for your help Tina & Hans, I would probably have burnt Dean to the ground if it hadn’t been for your kindness. I bet you are glad that I camped next to you!
Now I know that you think I am a camping moron, but I would point out that I have not camped at all previously to this trip. The problem with camping is that you have to do everything yourself.
If you want a cup of tea, then you have to make it yourself. If you want clean clothes, then you have to wash them yourself. If you want to stay dry, then you have to put your tent up. It’s all work, work, work and nobody bloody tells you any of this stuff when you are buying your camping equipment.
Also, everything either wants join you (such as spiders, mosquitos, flies, wasps, bees, ants and slugs), or wants to pad around your tent at night to see what is inside the ‘red’ sweet wrapper.
I have however, learnt many things about camping and here are a few tried and tested tips.
1 The tent is not your friend. Okay, so it keeps the rain off your head, but it only does that because it has to.
Never let it know that you are in any way an amateur camper, or show any emotions like tiredness, desperation and panic or that you are in a rush. The tent will feed off these situations and enjoy tripping you up on a tent pole or jamming a zip, thus allowing the Mosquito equivalent of the M25 in rush
hour through your door.
2 Always, and I mean always check the wind direction when using a lighter to start your stove. The flame that comes out of the end is very hot and will burn you. This in turn could result in burning the tent roof as you jump up in pain (see point 1 above).
3 Never set your tent up on a hill, with your groundsheet sticking outside the tent. When it rains the groundsheet turns into a waterslide and will channel lots of water into your tent and soak everything that isn’t already soaked. This can be a very depressing experience that will make your tent chuckle (see point 1 above).
The morning came and it was tipping it down with rain, as it had been all night. That's 3 nights on the trot that I have camped and had gotten soaked. The worst thing about the rain is that the mosquitos try to find cover and Dean seemed to be the central hotel.
Soon there were at least 20 of them circling around in the lobby. Right, this is bloody war! I lit a couple of mosquito coils, which emits a
smoke that they don't like. This funneled them down towards my cocoon where I was waiting. In the end I was talking to them softly and waving my arms around. "Come on, that's it, come to papa", "I have been expecting you", "look at my nice juicy arm, Mmm nice and tasty", "come and have your Sunday dinner"......then blam, a swift smack of the hands and down they went.
The floor of my tent resembled the film Zulu (with Michael Caine). It was littered with bodies of the fallen. I started shouting “Reload, fire. Reload, fire”. I decided that I had to leave the Junction and fast. The tent was filling up with new Zulu's as quickly as I was getting rid of them and I was beginning to retreat back to the inner compound.
Believe me, there is no more a miserable experience than packing your tent up in the rain, with everything getting soaked, with hundreds of mosquitos still trying to get at you through your bug repellent jacket. All the times I have moaned about something insignificant - the train being 20 minutes late, or there being no toilet paper, or the shop running out
of Toffee Crisps - NOTHING compares to this experience.
I hope that Stewart & the Glacier Highway offers me a better experience.
***CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE***
***IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE MY PREVIOUS DIARY ENTRIES, PLEASE CLICK ON THE ‘PREVIOUS JOURNALS’ ICON AT THE FOOT OF THIS BLOG***
***THERE ARE TWO PAGES OF PHOTOS. CLICK ON ‘2’ TO SEE THE SECOND PAGE***
***PLEASE FEEL FREE TO FORWARD ME ANY EMAIL ADDRESSES THAT WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE MY DIARY AUTOMATICALLY***
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Ron and Carole, New York
non-member comment
Saturday morning reading....
Thank you so much Colin so starting our day out with so much laughter! We found your last 3 blogs this morning - what a great way to start OUR day......... Laughing about your encounters, it is such a wonderful treat to come right along with you...mind you we are in bright sunshine, 80 degrees and no humidity!! ha ha ha ... good luck, can't wait for the next days adventures!