The Rise Up Ride: Day 129, Ride in the Rain or Pulled-pork Poutine? Duh!
Date: 29 August 2021
Start Location: Haines Junction, Yukon
End Location: Million Dollar Falls Campground, Yukon
Distance: 89 km in Martin's Subaru
There was no way in hell that I was going to load up my bike, leave my dry tent at the Wanderer's Hostel and ride into the wilderness in a storm.
Throughout this journey I've tried to maintain a balance between moving in harmony with nature's rhythms and the necessity of setting some fixed points in my schedule. I had to make it across the Great Plains and the Rockies to the Tetons for the start of Work Week at Climbers Ranch three months ago, reach Bellingham on 23 June to board the ferry around closed-Canada, and get to Seward across the Kenai on a fixed date to catch the train to Denali. But generally I've rolled with the weather, leaving things flexible until getting close to the touristy parts of Alaska, like my upcoming stay in Haines, where tourists were returning and lodging tight.
After contacting Leslie Ross, proprietress extraordinaire at The Inn at Haines, I panicked. She was full till Thursday this week, so I had to find another cool place to chill. I panic-booked an Airbnb for Monday night through Wednesday. That would give me three days and two nights, if I left yesterday morning, to cover 242 km of remote mountainous road, camping and riding self-contained on the Haines Highway. I'd leisurely ride a sustainable 80 km per day, savoring my last days in the wild… and that was the idea until the storm struck on Friday night.
My plan to leave at dawn seemed doomed when the pelting woke me after midnight. I'd said my farewells, packed up my panniers, laid out my cold weather riding kit, charged all the lights, camera and power banks, packed my feedbag with food, and was locked and loaded. I was prepped for two nights and three days of riding and camping over Haines Summit from the Yukon, through Northern British Columbia and across the border into Alaska, down to sea level at Haines. We've all read the novels, seen the movies and know that only an idiot would head into the mountains during a storm at 60°45′N. Instead, I rolled over, slept a few more hours and went to the Mile 1016 Pub to ride out the weather sensibly, consuming a culinary extravaganza of gravy, cheese curds, french fries and the best roasted pig bits in a uniquely Canadian staple called "pulled-pork poutine." Magnifique!
Martin returned yesterday after a few days in Whitehorse to re-take the helm at Wanderer's Hostel. He'd been really helpful providing suggestions on strategies for my assault up and over the Chilkat Pass and knew that the storm had thrown me behind schedule. With the storm predicted to continue through this morning, he generously offered to help get me down the road to the Million Dollar Falls Campground this afternoon, leaving me with better weather and a challenging 160 km to ride tomorrow across the mountains, over the pass and into the US to Haines at the edge of the fjord. Thank you, Martin, for running the best hostel, being a generous font of local knowledge, sharing some wildass stories of adventures that launched and recovered at the Hostel.
Again, the Yukon Government Campgrounds delivered. I set up my sleeping gear in the cook shelter, used a firestarter to get a blaze going in the stove with a handy supply of firewood cached nearby, and rehydrated an amazingly good Chicken Mole dinner. The freeze last night had knocked back the bugs and the combination of clearing skies and shorter days raised the potential for stars after midnight and the prospect of some northern lights. The nearby steep walled waterfall gorge created a lovely narrow microclimate rainforest with heaps of possibly edible fungi and probably several species that would have killed me instantly. (Note: download offline access to the Schroomify app.)
Tomorrow is a long day, with the promise of better weather, tailing winds, and the end of the road in Haines at a comfy Airbnb called "The Nest", perched above the mouth of the Chilkat River.
