Picto Diary - 14 June 2017 - Haines, AK

The southbound ferry, from Haines, AK to Prince Rupert, BC wasn't leaving until 11:30 PM. So, I had a full day to kill in Haines. I was able to arrange for a 4:00 PM checkout at the Aspen Springs Hotel. The ferry would arrive in Prince Rupert at 1:00 PM on 16 June 2017.

Above: ROMEOs and Shannon at Bamboo Room breakfast. Haines, AK. 14 June 2017.

I had breakfast with these guys about this time last year at Bamboo Room. Buddies of John Galt.

Shannon, and Australian, waitress, has been in Haines for two years. She was married to a Silicon Valley type, got divorced, and has been roaming around the world with her dog.

Alaska stories!

Above: Three images from aborted hike at Chilkat State Park. Haines, AK. 14 June 2017.

I went about a quarter mile down the beautiful, coastal rain forest trail, but, couldn't get the bear warning sign out of my head. This was something I had not better do alone, I thought. Then, I turned back.

Above: Bill S. Haines, AK. 14 June 2017.

Astride my BMW F800GS motorcycle, I was stopped by the side of the road checking a map.

Bill pulled up on his spiffy (new?) Triumph motorcycle (Bonneville?).

At first, I thought Bill was someone I might know. But, no, I hadn't met him. He was a local guy on a bike being friendly with another motorcyclist. Seeing a Utah tag on my motorcycle in Haines was probably a curiosity he couldn't resist exploring further.

Bill, a Haines resident, had been riding (not the Triumph) a BMW 650 up in Dawson when I was there.

"Did you try the Dempster Highway," I asked?

"Yes," he said. "It was horrific. Mud under gravel."

Alan of Oz, riding the 1200GS, had told me the same thing when I talked to him in Dawson.

Fighter had replied, when I asked him about the Dempster, "depends on the weather."

It looks like the Dempster is possible for a motorcycle... but, only after a week or so of dry weather.

I haven't totally discarded the notion of attempting the Dempster. This highway, however, I wouldn't try alone.

I asked Bill if he knew former Haines resident John Galt. "Yes," he enthused, "good guy!"

Alaska (or Yukon, just as good) stories!

Above: Davidson Glacier and my BMW F800GS motorcycle. Chilkat State Park. Haines, AK 14 June 2017.

Above: Haines Sparrow (er... bald eagle). Chilkat State Park, Mud Flat, Alaska. 14 June 2017.

Haines Chamber of Commerce bills Haines as the "eagle center of Alaska." When the Chinook spawn on the nearby Chilkat River, as many as 4000 eagles have been spotted from one position by the river.

Mr. Z3 and Mwah (sic) did a self guided motorcycle tour, (KLR 650) on the Kenai Peninsula five or six years ago. In Homer, AK, the eagles were ubiquitous. I said then, "eagles are the Alaskan sparrow."

The eagle pictured here is one of a half dozen bald eagles I saw while wandering around Haines.

Above: Mud Bay. My BMW F800GS motorcycle. Haines, AK. 14 June 2017.

Houston, Haines has a problem: lowering sea level. Actually, rising earth. Post glacial rebound. Earth recovers still, ever dynamic, from the weight of the ice cover during the last ice age, 15K years ago.

Here at Mud Bay, the sea lowers one inch a year. Steamers came into mud bay 100 years ago. Big boats can't come here these days.

Above: Holland America cruise ship Noordam. Haines, AK. 14 June 2017.

Most large cruise ships coming this far, to the "top" of the Inside Passage, stop in Skagway... 40 minutes by ferry... 9 hours by car (north on the Haines Highway, southeast on the Alaska Highway, then, southwest on the Klondike Highway).

Skagway, best known as the first major way point for the 1898 gold seekers coming by steamer from San Francisco or Seattle, has parlayed its history into a true tourist town, retaining the patina of gold rush days: jewelry stores, saloons, t-shirt stores, and even, I'm told by a local Haines person, hookers.

TIMDT, Mwah (sic), our children and grandchildren stopped in Skagway on our Alaska cruise five years ago.

For me, the highlight of the Skagway stop five years ago was the ride on the White Pass Railway to the top of White Pass. That train ride today follows the route of the Chilcoot Trail, the arduous climb from Skagway to the headwaters of the Yukon River, trekked by the 1898 gold rush participants.

Where Skagway gets two to three cruise ships a day, Haines, during cruise season gets only two to three ships a week.

Haines residents that I talk to about the cruise tourist business seem ambivalent. Locals understand the economic benefits of tourism, but enjoy the isolated, rough and tumble Alaskan authenticity of Haines... which, they say, is lacking in Skagway.

Haines reeks of Alaskan out back, where Skagway seems "amusement park" contrived. Haines started as a mining camp, became a timber camp, a base for road building (Haines Highway), supply and fuel deliveries to the Alaska Highway during WWII, and finally what it is today, an economically struggling fishing town trying to subsist on as much "Ted Stevens" federal money as it can get their hands on. The Feds are paying for the dredging of the fishing/recreational boat harbor there, for example.

Then, again, there is the amazing geography of the Inside Passage area of Alaska. Haines and Skagway are separated from one another by a 45 minute boat/ferry ride. They are eight hours separated by highway!

Above: F800 GS motorcycle parked by Chilkat River. Haines, AK. 14 June 2017.

Soon to be brimming with Chinook salmon.

Amazing thing. The genetic make up of the Chinook which come up this river. The same schools fish and their progeny make it to the same river, every year.

Above: Bar, Hanserling Hotel. Haines Alaska. 14 June 2017.

In the image: The Bishop, Don, Mark, and bartender Candace.

I met Don and Mark last year in Haines when I was riding with John Galt, Earp, and Cal Poly. They're good friends of John Galt and Dagny Taggart, who lived in Haines for fifteen years before moving to Walla Walla, WA.

This trip, Galt put me in touch with Mark who invited me to the Hanserling Hotel for a drink and dinner. Don, who just happened to be there, joined in our conversation once we had jointly remembered our encounter last year at breakfast at the Bamboo Room.

I can see why Galt got along so well with these guys. They're guys who know how to do stuff. Don was an Alaska back country guide for fifty years and Mark is a retired oil tanker captain.

I was curious about the spectacular scenery I saw from a distance in Kluane National Park while riding down the Haines Highway. Canada's highest mountain, Logan (18K feet) is in Kluane.

Don recounted how he had spent a lot of time in Kluane. He told me if I wanted to go there, there were plane or chopper pilots who regularly went into those remote areas. This got me thinking about a next visit and a longer stay to see remote areas.

Mark's tanker sailing routes took him everywhere. Mostly he sailed between Valdez and Panama. But, he took ships to Singapore for maintenance and once sailed a giant oil tanker around Cape Horn. "The weather was great the day we did it," he said.

Mark's wife is an inside passage pilot sanctioned by the state of Alaska. She's away 21 days a month during the summer sailing up and down the passage on the big cruise ships.

Mark was a well spring of local knowledge. I asked him how Haines got its power. "There's a hydro plant on a river up by Skagway. Power is brought from there to Haines by an underwater cable that skirts the short coast line from Skagway to Haines. If something happens to that power supply, there's a large diesel generator here in Haines that can power the whole town.

In a world where so much of the "narrative" is political BS separated from the world of reality, its a real pleasure hanging out with "guys who know how to do stuff," guys who live in the real world... guys from whom assistance will be sought when the mud hits the fan.

Above: Alaska riders await the ferry to Prince Rupert, BC. Haines, AK. 14 June 2017

Alaska and Yukon riders from the lower forty-eight are an amazing bunch. In some ways they remind me of the turn of the century Yukon gold seekers. The lure of far north adventure suffuses the psyches of the restless today as well as then. Only today, its motorcycle adventure, not gold.

Alaska Yukon motorcycle travel winnows out the most hardy (read crazy?) of motorcycle adventure travelers. I want to identify with these adventure riders, but, can't quite see myself on their level. Most of them camp. I do motels and hotels. Most of them are probably better at dealing with mechanical incidents than am I.

Wherever I ride alone, I try to keep my riding to roads which I know will be reasonably trafficked. If I have a mechanical incident or a flat tire that I can't deal with (or find someone to help me with), I can always say goodbye to the bike, leave it at the side of the road and hitch a ride... and, work my way home.

Amongst the group in the image are Steve and Dave from Phoenix, AZ. Both have ridden their Suzuki 650 V-Strom motorcycles as far as Prudhoe Bay, and now are on the return (to Phoenix). They are campers (bears?).

We talk rubber. The three of us are riding Hidenau tires. We speculate as to whether we'll need to swap out tires before we get home. I've worn less rubber than Dave and Steve, but, more than I thought I would compared to my memory of last year's rubber status while at this stage of the trip.

"We got new Hidenaus in Calgary," says the voluble Steve. "We rode up via Edmunton," he says. "Don't ever go that way. The freeway from Calgary to Edmunton, apart from being crowded, is the most boring road I've ever ridden. Its like riding in Kansas."

We all think that we'll be able to make it the rest of the way home on the current tires. Dave and Steve have 700 hundred more miles to go than I do (distance from Park City to Phoenix).

Steve on the Dalton Highway: "At Coldfoot it started to snow. We started riding north, notwithstanding, because the snow was light and not accumulating on the road. It was 25 degrees!"

"Over Atigan Pass (The Brooks Range), the snow intensified and started to accumulate a bit on the road. The temperature had declined to 20 degrees."

"Thirty miles from Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay) the road had been washed out for long stretches by flooding in warm weather the week before. Some oncoming haul truckers told us to be very careful of bad road surface the final stint into Deadhorse."

"The road was, indeed, terrible.. the cold remained, but the snowfall let up."

"Interestingly, the worst snow we experienced on our trip was a late spring storm on US 89 in Manti, Utah!"

Steve: "Somewhere near Valdez, Dave got a screw buried into his front tire. V-Strom tires are tubeless, so we fixed it with a plug. When we got to Anchorage, the tire had lost 10 pounds of air. We put some tire repair goop in the tire, and it has been working fine ever since."

Mwah (sic): "Did you guys contemplate riding the Dempster Highway to Inuvik? I've talked to three guys on this trip about the ride. Two of them rode up twenty to thirty miles (the total route is 400 miles to above the Arctic Circle) and then turned back. They said the route was mud under gravel and made for impossible riding. The third guy, who is from Anchorage, Fighter, the founder of the Dust to Dawson motorcycle event, said, 'depends on the weather. If the Dempster is dry, the riding is fine. I've been up there a couple of times.'"

Steve: "Yeah, we thought about The Dempster. We heard that the biggest problem for bikes was shale rock which would cut into the tire. The guys we talked to said if you're going that route, you should bring an extra tire. But, we didn't do that route this time. Maybe next time."

Motorcycle stories! Fish stories! Guys shoveling sh... Part of the fun.

Above: Alaska Maritime Highway System ferry, Matanuska. Haines, AK. 14 June 2017.

Matanuska nears Haines ferry terminal on its way from Skagway, AK. Only 45 minutes by water separate Haines, AK from Skagway, AK.

Above: "Sunset." Haines Ferry Terminal. 14 June 2017.

Image looks north!

It won't get dark tonight. At 3:00 AM the surroundings will be visible. Its kind of like dusk all evening. The furthest north I've overnighted on this trip was in Dawson City, YT, 450 hundred miles north of Haines. There, the overnight "dusk" was lighter.

I remember my KLR motorcycle ride to Prudhoe Bay, well above the Arctic Circle, with Phil Freeman's MotoDiscovery tours, seven or eight years ago. In Deadhorse, about this time of year, the sun never went down. I would get up in the middle of the night to see a man about a dog, pull the curtain back on the window, and see "daylight!" This is still a wow for me. I traveled to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during summer 1964. I have vivid memories, then I was a teenager, walking outside at midnight when the sun was just below the horizon.

I'm told people who live in zones of day long darkness and day long light have higher incidences of mental illness... that there is also a higher rate of alcohol consumption than "normal."

Addendum:

Good Choice ! Rain 🙈

Mr. Z3,
Ojai, CA

Glad you are able to accompany other riders during parts of your trip, but isn't it dangerous to be riding alone? Accidents, illness, robbery, natural disasters are all possible and nobody would be there to help. Hopefully you carry first aid and weapon protection?

Nathans,
Massapequa, NY


Foreigners can't carry a gun in Canada without registration, which is nigh on to impossible for a foreigner to do. Many US motorcyclists riding in the US carry.


Steve,

The main reason the Haines Highway is in such good condition is that the US taxpayers fund the maintenance under the "Shakwak Agreement."

John Galt,
Walla Walla, WA


So, that explains it. US building highways in Canada!

PS. I'm very appreciative to you and Dagny Taggert for helping to bring Haines to life for me.



Mary Zimmerman directs a fantastic play. I've never seen Odyssey and this one is so imaginative and creative in movement and action. When you come back I recommend seeing it. It's in outdoor theater which adds to charm.
Henry 4 part 2 hasn't opened yet. Saw first act of Merry Wives - silly but good.
Love your trip. Been following on Maps to learn about areas crossed.
Cheer

Aunt Joyce,
Ashland, OR


Good incentive for a repeat trip before Oregon Shakespeare Festival season end.