Thursday, June 15, 2017
We left the Salmon Glacier on the morning of June 15 and drove back to the Stewart-Cassiar Highway.
The 450 mile highway starts at Kitwanga in the south and the junction with the Alaska Highway to the north. It is one of the only two British Columbia roads that links central BC to the Yukon. The other is the Alaska Highway.
The services available along the highway are limited. There is a helpful map with the services marked on it at the sign for the highway.
There are a few communities along the road, but most of them are very tiny.
The scenery is beautiful.
We saw lots of animals along the way. On June 15, we saw 10 black bears along the side of the road. They were eating plants.
We saw a mother with two older cubs. We stopped long enough to get photos, but we were careful not to get out of the vehicle or block the road.
We also saw a moose, but didn’t get a photo of it. We heard about a wolverine, but didn’t see it, just the remains of an animal spine that it dropped when crossing the road.
We passed the occasional vehicle, but not a lot of them. We saw a German Overland vehicle stopped at a gas station.
The road is paved for the most part, but it was gravel or dirt for large sections. The road is not exactly flat. It is a real challenge to maintain the road in the severe cold temperatures up here.
There are also lots of rivers and streams that need bridges.
There aren’t too many places to camp, so we looked over the map to find a place to camp for the night. We found a British Columbia Forest Service Campground that was at a good distance for today.
Sawmill Point Recreation Site BCFS has ten free campsites along a lake. There is a steep road down to the lake and campground which isn’t a problem for us.
We settled into a nice campsite along the lake.
The German Overland Vehicle came in while we were eating dinner. I was able to get a quick photo of their rig, but we never saw the people inside. Sometimes that is the way it goes.
It was a quiet night.