We had the free breakfast in the hotel before leaving at 7:30am – continuing along the Yellowhead Highway 16 until 9am when we turned onto the Stewart- Cassiar Highway 37. The only four-legged wildlife we spotted along the way was a fox.

We stopped at Bear Glacier for our left over pizza at 11:45am and then continued on to Stewart.

We had arrived too early to check-in to Ripley Creek Inn, so we crossed the border to Alaska to visit Salmon Glacier (we did very briefly call into Fish Creek, but no bears had been spotted so we quickly continued on). It was a beautiful sunny day – completely different from the last time Alan visited the glacier when it was foggy and sleeting! We spent a while simply admiring the view.

On the way to check in (2:30pm) we called into Fish Creek again. Fish Creek has gated elevated walkways next to the river so you can safely view bears catching salmon in the shallow creek. The ‘walkway stands’ are managed by volunteers and rangers employed by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, they keep an eye on visitors ensuring they are not doing anything silly to disturb wildlife or endanger themselves. They also put up notes on what bears have been seen when. We knew we were visiting at the end of the salmon run, so weren’t expecting much. Not many bears also means not many visitors so we were able to walk along the walkways unhindered and not needing to pay a fee to access them. The smell of the dead and dying salmon was pretty strong but there were still swimming salmon in the creek which meant there was still a chance of seeing a bear.

We split, with me exploring the walkway near the car park and Alan exploring the section of the walkway you earlier in the season have to pay to access. Alan saw bear number 45 at the end of his section grabbed a quick photo and came back to get me. The bear however had gone. We decided I would stay here while Alan returned to Canada to check-in.

While I waited I chatted with a handful of other people waiting for the bear to return, along with the Ranger. A few of the local photographers moved to a small pond area along with the Ranger, I waited where the first bear was seen. The Ranger excitedly walked towards me and a young German couple saying a bear had been spotted at the pond. Unfortunately, by the time we had got to the pond the bear had come and gone – It was just walking through.

Alan arrived back around 4pm with sandwiches and we ate in the car (no food is allowed on the walkways).

At around 4:15pm I was looking along the walkway when I saw what I thought was a bear making its way towards us along the edge of the creek. The local photographers started to spot it and we spread ourselves along the walkway to get a view of bear number 46. It was kind enough to stick around and we watched it walk along the creek, picking up dying salmon, carrying them to the creek bank or a rock and push on the fish to squeeze out eggs. The bear continued to do this for around 45 minutes.

As the light started to fade more and more of the local photographers left, making arrangements to come back the next day after 8am (no point in arriving earlier as the light would be poor). Around 6pm we decided to leave and arrived at Ripley Creek Inn at 7pm.

Mileage 422km 262miles

We left Ripley Creek Inn at 7am - went to a bakery to grab breakfast to go but they had nothing fresh available – we were offered a frozen bagel, microwaved, yuck – we declined the offer – instead we grabbed a scone & Eccles cake from a different place. 

We refuelled in Stewart and started our journey to Watson Lake at 7:15am. At 8am we saw a chubby black bear near Meziadin Lake crossing the road (bear number 47). 

At 8:50am we saw little black bear with a missing paw at the edge of the road – we slowed down and it looked both ways before crossing the road, this was bear number 48. 

‘A Nice Motel’ turned out to be very nice – hard to spot from the road as it is located at the back of a gas station, but the rooms are really nicely decorated and spotlessly clean.

We were up at 5am and ready to leave at 7am – had to de-ice Spirit Car (it was -9 degrees Celsius) – by the time we got on the road is was 7:30am (having stopped briefly at the signpost forest). 

Along the Alaska Highway at 9:50am we saw a black bear (bear number 49) it sensibly waited until we had gone by before crossing the road.

We took a diversion to drive Atlin Road at 11:30am to look for mountain goats on White Mountain. They were high-up but we did see a few.

Back onto Tagish Road at midday – we were disappointed to not see wildlife along the road for the first time.

Such a beautiful day we had to stop at Emerald Lake, Carcross Desert and Bove Island for photos.

We refuelled in Skagway, arrived at the cabin around 2pm and had a late lunch snack. We walked along the Dyea access road as the sun was setting behind the mountains and returned for our steak & salmon dinner prepared by Kathy – simple but tasty home cooking. We chatted with Kathy & her other guests from Alaska until 9:30pm. 

353 miles 568km