Luck: Just the bad sort at the moment
After leaving Prince George confident we were fixed, we headed South towards Whistler. In the end we didn’t set out until almost lunchtime as we needed to do some laundry and get a water fill for the Beast. So at the end of the day we were only about half way to Whistler and decided to spend the night in a Provincial Park at Lac Le Hache. We really didn’t want to be too far from people – just in case. But no problems and in the morning we set off towards Whistler again.
Around lunchtime we stopped in the small town of Lillooet to have a bite and fill up with Diesel. And then we set off…..leaving the Petrol station we could hear a loud rattling sound coming from the Beast. We quickly pulled over and I leaped out to see whether we were dragging anything – but the sound was coming from the engine – so we switched off and took stock.
On trying to restart there was nothing. Here we go Again! At least this time we were actually in a town – even if it was a pretty small one.
Our first challenge was to contact somebody. We went to the local pharmacy and the lady at the till was very helpful and phoned round town trying to find us a mechanic. She eventually got someone who would come to the side of the road to check us out.
About 30 minutes later Greg arrived (the owner of the local garage) and had a quick look – he diagnosed a piston stuck because of a broken injector and said we should get a tow to his garage and he would look at us on Monday (this being a Sunday).
So the next task was to get a tow. We went back to the pharmacy, the IDA, to get more help. So this time things were more complicated. There were two towing companies in town. One of them said we were too big and the other (Bobby from Me Too Towing) said their truck was out of town but agreed to come by and have a look at us.
We went back to the truck to wait. After about 10 minutes Bobby rode up on a big Harley and looked the truck over. He then said that his truck would likely be out of town until the evening but he would try to tow us with his pickup. The one problem here was air for our brakes. Without the engine running our compressor doesn’t work so we have to rely on air in the tanks to run the brakes. If we run out of air the brakes lock on and then we won’t move without getting more air (we do have glad hands at the front to take a fill).
The good thing was that we hadn’t been broken down long and therefore still had air in the tanks and we only had to go about 1km down the road. Bobby went to get his pickup and a tow rope. He attached the rope to the front of the truck and started pulling. I was in the driving seat – fighting with the steering wheel as with no engine you have no power steering and Sarah was up front with Bobby.
This was the longest 1km I’ve ever driven. Whenever we hit an up slope the pickup started wheel spinning and only just managed to pull us. I can tell you I was relieved when we reached Greg’s garage – the local Mohawk service station – and the air tanks were almost empty so this was just in the nick of time.
We spent the night parked outside the garage and the next morning at around 8am Greg came to have a look. It took him only a few minutes to realise that his initial diagnosis was wrong and instead what had happened was that our starter motor had failed. When we moved off the starter didn’t disengage and when the engine started spinning at full speed it spun the starter hard causing the interior to begin to disintegrate. Fortunately by stopping so quickly we prevented bits falling off into the engine and causing more damage.
Our challenge then was to find a new starter engine. It didn’t take long to realise that the local parts company, Lordco, couldn’t find a replacement. It has taken us a week to actually track down a replacement. My dad has been amazing helping us find a starter. He’s been our UK agent in phoning people and working through all the issues for us. We managed to order a starter from a company in Toronto on the advice of one UK dealer but unfortunately when this reached us it was clearly the wrong part. So we were CAD$200 down in shipping and no further forward.
DAF in the UK recommended one starter but then changed their minds after a couple of days – the military spec starter was different to the civilian one because of a heavy duty fly wheel.
After breaking down on Sunday we finally got a starter on a plane from the UK the following Friday – due to arrive on Tuesday. We have seriously crossed fingers that this will work.
In the meantime we have been camped in the parking lot at Greg’s garage. The one saving grace of this whole week has been that the people of Lillooet are so wonderful . Everyone has been incredibly friendly and helpful.
When the first starter didn’t work out Elsa, the wife of Greg’s mechanic – Sunni, gave us a lift to Kamloops (the nearest proper town but still 2 hours drive away) so we could rent a car and get some freedom. There is no public transport from Lillooet so without the kindness of people in the town we were really stuck and this wasn’t the only person in town who had offered us a lift.
Bobby De Roy, the towing guy, has also been amazing . He gave us some vegetables and a big sockeye salmon which we BBQ’ed up and it was gorgeous.
Lillooet itself is set in a valley with big mountains surrounding it. It frequently records the highest temperatures in Canada and in fact when we arrived it was at 35C. The temperature dropped in the week though to the 20’s. The scenery is more akin to what you would expect in Nevada or Arizona –they even have rattlesnakes near here.
When we arrived the town was on serious fire alert and some maniac had lit 7 fires that day. The volunteer fire service had worked for almost 24 hours straight putting them out. The whole area is so dry that 1 fire could take out the whole town. In fact one of the fires was only 200 metres from where we were parked so we were a bit nervous when we spotted it and very relieved when the fire fighters arrived, although the first fire engine flew straight past as we were standing there but thankfuly doubled back shortly after.
A Step Back In Time
We needed to go somewhere around 100 miles from Prince George in order to give the engine a run and test out the fix for the fuel leak. After a quick trip to the visitor centre, the most helpful we’ve ever been too, we decided to head to Barkerville.
Barkerville was one of the key gold mining towns in Canada in the 1800’s and in its day much bigger than Vancouver. In fact at one time it was the biggest city North of San Francisco and West of Chicago. These days it has been restored and is now one of the hidden jewels in the crown of BC tourism. A number of actors breathe life into the town providing both set presentations to visitors but also ad hoc street scenes depicting life back when the town was a busy gold mining centre.
The town is named after the first guy to discover gold here, Billy Barker, who hit paydirt in 1861. In the late 1860’s the population of Barkerville hit its highest point of 5000 people.
One of the first buildings we came to was the school house where the school mistress was preparing to give a “Lesson”. Well Sarah thought this would be fun so dragged me in. We started off by lining up in height order outside in two lines (boys and girls). We went into the building and sat down at the tiny desks – boys on the left and girls on the right. The girls had to cover their heads before the lesson could begin. We then had a series of lessons – an object lesson where we were taught about some words and what the objects they referred to were (eg. Hemp and Fool’s Gold). Then we had a lesson on writing using slates and copper plate writing. We finished up with a spelling test. Then the final thing was to be shown what they did for fun in schools back then – which was singing “She’ll be coming round the mountain”. This was all done in character and we were told off for things like deportment and not addressing the teacher as Ma’am. Not really my cup of tea but Sarah enjoyed it until she was told she had to do all the writing and spelling exercises with her right hand as being left handed was a sign of the devil.
We explored the buildings. Perhaps the most surprising bit was the substantial Chinatown. We also went to a talk by another actor about the darker side of the town. We learnt about massacres by Indians and cannibalism by stranded miners on their way to the town. The last thing we did before leaving was to go to the courthouse where another two actors gave us the history of justice in the town. A judge from the UK appointed by the Queen (Victoria) was a circuit judge in the area and was known as “the Hanging Judge” because of his tough justice.
Who Said This Would Be Easy
The last week or so has been fairly tough for us as we’ve been hit by another round of mechanical problems.
After leaving Whitehorse we headed South trying to find a proper Summer and to escape the rapidly worsening weather. Whitehorse temperatures were hitting 0C overnight and only reaching single figures in the day.
At our first break we came to leave and tried to restart the Beast and nothing. Not so bad only a flat battery. The large amount of cranking we’d done the previous day at Kenworth had emptied our batteries. Fortunately we carry spares, so we jumped ourselves and were back on our way.
We kept on heading South but when we reached the turn-off for the Cassiar highway we chickened out. We were worried about our reliability and on the Cassiar you are a long way from anywhere. So we decided to take the sensible option and head down the Alaska Highway where there are towns interspersed along the way and you get more road traffic (i.e. help when you are in a tight spot!).
The first evening we made it to Liard Hot Springs for a second time. We had a great soak on getting up the next morning. Much better than our last time because it was colder out and there were far less people, we had one of the pools all to ourselves.
We spent the morning driving to Fort Nelson. However mechanical problems were rearing their head again as our oil pressure had dropped right down and the alarm was coming on when we were coming to a stop. We went to a garage in Fort Nelson to have things checked out. Here we discovered that we had diesel fuel getting into our oil. We had an oil change and 18 litres of watered-down oil came out where there should only have been 12 litres. That’s a lot of diesel, also explains why every time we dipped the oil it was always full even though the pressure was dropping. The mechanic here really scared us by telling us that we needed a new engine which would cost around $10k. However he also said get further south as it’ll be cheaper and when its that kind of diagnosis you want a 2nd opinion.
So we got back on the road and made it to around 90km short of Fort St.John where we spent the night in a muddy turnoff just off the road. In the morning we went to leave and stalled after moving around 10 metres. Same problem as we had before in Whitehorse which Kenworth were meant to have fixed – air in the fuel lines. Argggh!
It wasn’t so bad this time – we thumbed a ride 5km down the road to a place called Wonowon (101 miles on the highway – cool name huh!). Here we arranged another tow to take us to Fort St.John (a bigger town). This is where the nightmare started. Nowhere in town would take us – a couple of places quoting at least 2 weeks until they could see us. It’s an oil and gas town and the garages are constantly busy… if you’re a mechanic this is the place to be, they’ve been advertising for over a month and only had 1 applicant and the money for a mechanic out here is good! You don’t make the big bucks working in an office in these towns.
In the end someone recommended a friend of his called Reuben, a mobile mechanic, who lived out of town. We spoke to him and he told us to get the tow truck to drop us at the Northwood Inn – in their car park – and he would swing by later. So a bit worried we did this and then waited. When we got to the car park there was a pub called Cheers attached to the Inn, however upon closer inspection the ‘pub’ was in fact a strip joint, not the best place to be parked on a Saturday night in a town like this.
Around 5pm Reuben arrived in a pickup and started looking at the engine. He didn’t fill us with much confidence and he wasn’t a big talker. When he did speak he had an Eastern European accent though he swore he was Canadian born, as were his parents (hmmm ok!). There was something a little dodgy about him and he did the work for cash but he was a good guy, determined to fix us and 5.5 hours later he got us started. There aren’t many people who’d stick around working in the dark until 10.30pm on a Saturday night, so we were very grateful. He had replaced half the fittings on the fuel line – and even managed to find parts at 9pm on a Saturday night (which he got free through a friend). One of the fittings was a real Frankenstein monster of five adaptors to get it to work. However we were going. We knew we needed proper work to be done on it and we still had the fuel in the oil problem to worry about so the next morning we headed South to the biggest town in Northern BC – Prince George in search of a garage.
Here we managed to find Total Truck and Repair. These guys have been brilliant. The work that they did took three days but they let us camp out in our camper in their workshop. Not the prettiest campsite we’ve been in but better than having to fork out for a motel. We made the best of it and even setup our table in their yard for alfresco dining.
They completely replaced our fuel lines and all fittings. So we won’t have the problem with air in the lines again. They tested the fuel pump and replaced the rubber seal which sits against the engine, they tested the injectors and replaced the rubber seals on these, tested the cylinders by compression testing, heat testing and visual checking and then replaced the hood gaskets – a couple of which were leaking. They didn’t find anything conclusive but we are all pretty sure the fuel pump was leaking into the oil somehow. There are only so many places that you can get fuel into the oil !
Before setting us on our way they put a UV dye in our fuel and told us to do some miles so that we could check if the problem is sorted ! We went for a road trip and covered over 250 miles and went back in for the dye check. We had a really restless night’s sleep before going in to check it out, I can tell you. But good news – no dye in the oil. We were leaking a bit from the cylinder heads – but new gaskets and this was soon sorted.
Problems sorted – time to head out. So we got on the road and headed South to Whistler.
On The Road Again
After 5 days in Whitehorse we have been seriously desperate to be on our way. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we were mobile or even able to go anywhere.
So we arrived on Friday night and went into the garage first thing on Saturday morning. They told us, reasonably, that they couldn’t see us on Saturday but could probably get us in on Monday. Then started a process of being told “we’ll try and fit you in this afternoon”, “maybe tomorrow morning” and “we’ll try really hard for tomorrow”. Every time a new truck arrived at the garage it went ahead of us in the queue.
We finally got a mechanic to look us over at 3pm on Wednesday. Just under 3 hours later he was done. The problem of no fuel to the engine was solved by two things:
1) Replacement of the mechanical secondary fuel pump (probably not necessary)
2) The real problem was that the fitting for the fuel line into the first fuel filter (more of a screen to sieve out the big stuff before the real fuel filter) was loose and letting air into the system. This meant no vacuum and the fuel would just run back down into the tank.
So a bill of over CAD$700 later and we are back on the road. This was a bit of a shocker.
So tonight we’ve run around fuelling up, getting water and stocking up. Tomorrow first thing we hit the road – and We’re outta here ! One step ahead of winter.
Disaster Strikes
It was a morning much like any other morning (as the cliché goes) – we got up had breakfast and moved to the cab of the truck and started up. We moved off and drove from our parking spot by the Takhanne river and turned on to the highway ready to accelerate down the road. And then nothing – the power disappears and the Beast stalls.
We pull in to the side of the road and try and restart her. The starter motor ticks over but doesn’t start the engine. This is not good. Trying to stem the rising panic we resort to our Auto Repair for Dummies book and diagnose a problem with the fuel pump. That’s way beyond our ability to fix.
Now the worry is that there really aren’t many cars on this road. We are 100 miles from Haines in the USA but we are in Canada. We’re 50 miles from Haines Junction – but there wasn’t much there we had noted on passing through.
After about 20 minutes a camper came passed and we flagged them down. It was a lovely German couple who agreed to try and get us some help. So all we had to do now was wait !
After a couple of hours a pickup pulled up – from Yukon Highways Agency. This was their roving mechanic. We’d lifted the cab by now. He knew what he was doing and spent some time seeing if he could fix us. He managed to diagnose a fuel problem – Hey I was actually right ! But couldn’t get us moving – not even 100 yards to a safer location. He then left and told us another guy would be along soon.
More waiting then another Yukon Highways Agency truck arrives with a chap called Paul onboard. He was our lifeline as he offered us a lift to Haines Junction so that we could arrange a tow. We arrived in Haines to find that the tow truck was out of service. We phoned a towing service in Haines and they need special customs permission to come to Canada. So we were left with arranging a tow from Whitehorse (150 miles) away. Once this was sorted Paul gave us a lift back to the Beast where we settled in to wait.
Around 9pm the tow truck arrived. It was a slick process making a cradle for the front wheels and lifting them free of the ground. The back drive shaft to the rear wheels needed to be removed and air lines attached to brackets at the front (and we thought we would never use them) to make sure we could release the brakes. Then we were off for a 3.5 hour journey to Whitehorse. The real shocker is the CAD$1600 cost of the tow. Ouch !
We arrived at Whitehorse at around 12.30 and were dropped at Inland Kenworth (a Cummins dealer – our engine is Cummins). Shame it’s a Friday night and they won’t be back at work until Monday morning.
Out Of Alaska
Now if you have been following our blog you will know that we haven’t had the greatest weather. Well Alaska is like a girlfriend that you’ve dumped who dresses up to the nines and goes out knowing you’ll see her looking great and make you jealous. As we make our way towards Canada again the sun shines, we see a sunset and even the tops of mountains. If it had been like that all along we would never have wanted to leave !
We drove across the Tok Cutoff to reach the Alaska Highway and then headed South to Haines Junction with the intention of getting to Haines (back into Alaska). But it was not to be.
McCarthy and Kennicott (Wrangell-St Elias National Park)
We had been in two minds whether to take a side trip out to McCarthy. The weather has been so bad that we were thinking that it was time to leave Alaska and find some sub. However talking to a few people persuaded us that we would be foolish to miss out (and suggested that the weather was generally a bit better !).
McCarthy is reached via the McCarthy road which is a 60 miles long gravel road. This wasn’t so bad until the last 25 miles which I think probably rates as the worst road we have driven in Alaska. The 60 miles took us just over 3 hours. The best bit of the road is the crossing of the Kuskulana river which is a one lane bridge over a deep gorge, built as part of the railway in 1910. It is over 600 feet long and is 400 feet over the water below – before 1988 it didn’t even have guard rails !
At the end of the road are a number of parking lots which you have to pay to park in. They are all within the last half a mile of the end but the nearer you are the more you pay. At the end of the road you haven’t reached McCarthy but instead a footbridge which crosses the Kennicott River leads to the town itself.
On arriving we chose the cheapest car park and got on our bikes to ride into McCarthy itself. The town (well hamlet) is pretty small with a couple of hotels, a shop and a bar. After driving the road in we needed a beer so we popped into the bar and a had a bit of food while we were there.
The next morning we got up early and walked over the footbridge to get the shuttle bus to Kennicott. This is a journey of about 5 miles.
Kennicott was a thriving town back in the 1930’s when it was the centre for Copper Mining in the Area. There were a number of mines in the surrounding mountains. The ore was brought down to the Kennicott Mill by a network of Aerial Trams. From Kennicott the processed ore was carried out in the CR & NW (colloquially known as Can’t Run & Never Will) which ran from Kennicott to Cordova. The mine shut down in the late 1930’s and the route across country soon closed.
We decided to do one of the hikes from Kennicott up to one of the mines, Jumbo Mine. This was a pretty tough hike which was over 3300ft up over 5 miles. The last mile or so involved climbing up a really steep scree slope into the Cirque where the mine was situated.
Some of the buildings were still partially standing but most had collapsed. When we got down we were absolutely knackered.
We decided that we would only spend the one day in McCarthy and when we got back to the Beast we started back out down the road. We conquered that nightmare 25 miles and spent the night at the remains of a trestle from the CR & NW Railway.
Kayaking Columbia Glacier
After being blown out by the weather for our kayaking trip in Seward we were determined to kayak to a tidewater glacier. We had booked a full day trip to Columbia Glacier which is the second largest tidewater glacier in the USA.
This meant that we had to meet at the shop, Pangaea, on the harbour at 8am. When we woke it wasn’t raining but as soon as we drove into town a fine drizzle had started again – unfortunately this was to keep up most of the day – but that is what rain gear is for.
We were handed paddles, PFD’s, spray skirts and given a safety briefing on the kayak and then we moved across the street to the harbour where we boarded a small water taxi after being fitted to a double kayak each. The kayaks were loaded on the roof and we sat inside in the warm and dry (much better than our water taxi in Homer).
The Journey to the drop off point took just over 2 hours and the views were pretty limited because of low lying cloud/fog. We did see a couple of sea lions lying on a buoy though. The drop off point was actually just outside the lateral moraine of the glacier near to a passage into the fjord where the glacier itself lies.
The Colombia glacier is retreating incredibly quickly (90ft a day) and we were dropped off around 14 miles away from the face. However because of the fast retreat it is calving a stupendous amount of ice and the water even this far out can be completely clogged depending on tides, winds etc.
Sea kayaks are controlled by the means of a small rudder which is directed using foot pedals. These pedals are controlled by the person in the back. Naturally I elected to be in control – over Sarah’s protests. So we all got in the kayaks and were split into two groups. We were with an instructor called Liz and two other Kayaks of people.
We paddled from the beach where we started through a small passage in the lateral moraine into the main bay which was littered with icebergs. This is what we had come for. We started off following Liz but ended up going off on our own and exploring around some of the icebergs. Unfortunately the rain was still coming down making it a bit difficult to take photographs.
We made our way to a beach in the bay (pretty muddy) and parked up (is that the right expression for kayaks). This gave us the opportunity to jump around a bit to get warm as it was pretty cold on the water (among the ice). Liz surprised us all by cracking open a thermos and offering hot chocolate drinks around which was very welcome. Over lunch we walked up part of the moraine that we were lunching upon and had some great views of the bay and icebergs. Also the rain slackened off and we got a glimpse of the glacier all those 14 miles away.
Back in the Kayaks we travelled back through the icebergs by a different route. As well as the big icebergs, which you had to be careful around as pieces dropped off or more worryingly splintered off the 9/10ths underwater and rocketed to the surface, there were small chunks of ice floating at water level which we had to try to avoid (or ram straight over).
The pick-up point was a couple of miles away from the icy area and we had to paddle along the shoreline and around a couple of islands. However on arriving at the pick-up point there was a black bear with two cubs just next to the beach. The mother bear was a bit worried by our arrival so she sent her two cubs up a tree and prowled around for a few minutes. There was no way that we could land with the bears there. Eventually she decided that it was time to split so called her cubs down the tree – one of them adorably fell off half way down.
We landed, packed everything up and then loaded up the water taxi which arrived shortly after we landed and then travelled back to Valdez.
This trip was really good fun and I achieved an ambition to paddle around Ice. However this trip could easily be done independently with a water taxi arranged to drop you off in the Colombia glacier area and pick you up later. I’d really like to come back in the future and do a multi-day trip in this area.
Valdez Again
On returning to Valdez we had a first port of call as the launderette – we needed to dry our clothes that had got soaked in Cordova and all our towels which were wet as well. Drying things in the camper is really hard.
We went back down to the Dayville road to look for bears and got a brief glimpse of a black bear. We checked out the Salmon Hatchery as well and as the tide was going out the water was really pumping out. The Salmon were fighting hard to get up the river and were getting nowhere.
Cordova
The ferry to Cordova was a modern fast one which reached speeds of up to 70km per hour. The capacity of the ferry was about 200 but only about 50 people were on board. The journey took just over 2 hours and the inside of the ferry was very comfortable with a choice of seating and even work cubicles.
We arrived in Cordova at around 7pm which gave us time for a wander around town. Town was pretty small so this took around 10 minutes but we did spend some time in the harbour where there was a really cute otter floating around on his back looking very chilled out.
We headed out of town to Mile 13 of the Copper River Highway and took an unmarked turnoff leading to the Sheridan Glacier Trailhead where we camped for the night. In the morning we woke up to a lovely sunny day (such a rarity in Alaska) and we walked around the moraine lake of the Glacier and were rewarded with some stunning views of ice in the lake and up the glacier.
As it was such a nice day we really wanted to drive the length of the Copper River Highway and see the Childs Glacier in the sun. So we got in the Beast and drove the road which was pretty stunning in places. The last 10 miles before reaching the Glacier there are a series of bridges all crossing the Copper River which is heavily braided but each braid is seriously pumping water.
As we were driving we turned a corner and there was a big lattice work bridge in front of us and we just carried on over it. About half way across we realised that this was the Million Dollar Bridge – built in 1910 and heavily damaged in the 1964 earthquake. It was repaired in 2005 but now has a weight limit of only 6600 pounds – which we significantly exceed (we’re around 18,000 pounds). We made it across without collapsing the bridge but then we had to go back. We seriously crossed our fingers and drove back across – again no collapse but we weren’t going to try that again!
We parked up in the Childs Glacier viewing area and sat down to watch the glacier for a bit. This glacier is 300 feet high and 3 miles wide. The face is across the Copper River from the viewing area and is 1200ft away but feels much closer. There are signs up in the viewing area to be aware that waves up to 60ft high can sweep across the river from large pieces of ice carving. The instructions in our guidebook are if this happens to run.
After this we walked down to the Million Dollar Bridge and walked across from where you can see the Miles glacier which is huge around 14 miles away.
The campground at the Childs Glacier is $25 for no facilities other than picnic tables and pit toilets so we parked just outside the entrance in a turnout for free.
The next day we started slowly driving back along the Copper River Highway and we stopped off at the Saddlebag Glacier Trail. This was a 6 mile hike through woods to an alpine lake at the head of a glacier. The hike was a bit disappointing though and the glacier has obviously been retreating so the final views weren’t really worth the effort of getting there.
We spent the night by a river on a beach which was a really nice campsite. Although around dinner time a couple of locals turned up, caught a salmon and departed.
On our last day in Cordova we went back to the Sheridan Glacier trailhead and walked the Sherdian Mountain Trail. This was a pretty taxing hike which was about 4 miles each way but with a climb of 700m along the way. What made it hard work was that the upper section of the trail before reaching the alpine zone was very rocky and covered in foliage. In the rain (it was raining all day) this was very slippery and consequently slow going.
Near the top we lost the trail and accidentally climbed a near vertical scree slope – Sarah was not impressed with my navigation. What we hadn’t realised was that the trail went through a gully filled with snow (around 50m wide). From our elevation we spotted the correct route though and climbed up to a knife-edge ridge with a great view of the glacier and the moraine lake where we had walked a couple of days before.
Soon after reaching the ridge the drizzle which we had had all day turned into rain (little did we know this would last over 36 hours without let up – the capacity for rain in Alaska is amazing). By the time we got back to the Beast we were soaked through.
That evening we drove back to Cordova itself and camped by the sea on the Orca Road ready for our early morning ferry.
FromAtoB 