Day 59 (July 12). BC 37, Part 2

From: Iskut, BC

To: Smithers, BC

Miles today: 331

Total miles: 12233

Walking or riding/driving a vehicle into true wilderness in 2015 must be done in stages; coming back is no different.  Route 37, aka the Cassiar Highway, aka the Stewart-Cassiar Highway, aka the Dease Highway, along with other names, is almost entirely in the province of British Columbia, and thus south of sixty degrees.  It is also paved for its entire length, and there is gasoline available every hundred miles or so (“practically everywhere”).  Because of these facts, Route 37 is less remote than other routes I have driven recently. Nonetheless, it is 500+ miles of winding road that is difficult to go more than 50 mph on for long stretches.  The northern half has no centerline, and there are no shoulders anywhere.  There is no cell phone service anywhere along the route, including the “towns,” and even where WiFi is available the hosts ask you to use it sparingly because their rates are tied to usage and quite expensive.  An intermediate level of wilderness.

In the bed and breakfast I stayed in last night (more or less halfway), which was a few miles outside the outpost of Iskut, I talked to the cook (from Austria, but here for 15+ years now), who told me that most of the people who stayed there were neither Canadians nor from the US but “International,” mostly from Europe.  (This is consistent with the Alpine theme of the lodge, and with the fact that the host family spoke German most of the time, even though they had been in Canada since 1971.)  Her take on the attraction of the place is that Europe is so crowded (her term) that people see the remoteness of Alaska and northern Canada as exotic.  Not only can you go a hundred miles without a town, you are likely to see a wild moose or bear on the way there; this does have a primordial appeal.   Yet at the same time, it is both easier to travel in and presumably safer than traveling through, say, northern Russia. 

The Bear Paw Lodge along BC 37.  Primary language: German.

I continued south on BC 37 today, and eventually a painted centerline appeared on the road surface, and it did become less twisty.  It continued to rain on and off as usual, as it wound its way through various forested valleys between impressive mountain ranges (but not the famed Canadian Rockies, well to the east of here).  Finally I hit “Highway 16,” the Yellowhead Highway, which runs from Winnipeg to the town of Prince Rupert on the Pacific coast.  If I turned west, Prince Rupert was about 100 miles away, but I was heading east now.  Yellowhead is still just two lanes wide here (as many Interstates are in the more rural regions of the US), but now there were paved shoulders.  My phone pinged like crazy; there were dozens of “new emails” that I now had access to, along with the ability to make a phone call.  The gas station had an ATM inside; I felt obligated to take a picture.  Then, after a few miles, I began to see them – farms.  I have not seen a farm since Alberta in early June; another step back from the Wilderness.  Next I saw horses, and then, finally, the ultimate sign of this level of civilization: Cows.  I was still driving through scenic mountains, but it was the presence of farms and cows that impressed me now.  There is a photo I wanted to take of this mountain, called Hudson Bay Mountain and dominating the skyline of the town of Smithers (where I am now); but rather than this shot, it had cows in the foreground.  There was no place safe to pull off to take that picture, so please use your imagination and imagine a caption that reads “Wow, look at that! No, not the mountain, the cows!”

Hudson Bay Mountain, which overlooks Smithers on the Yellowhead Highway