More WP&YR railway exploring – by e-bike this time

Posted On August 10, 2022

I finally got out on an adventure worth sharing yesterday, exploring 7.8 km of the long-abandoned White Pass & Yukon Route rail line from the Lewes Lake Road to Bear Creek. Much of the line is in terrible condition, difficult to walk, much less ride a bike, but this fills in the blank spot between two other exploratory rail-line walks in this area, in the early Fall of 2020.

There are 35 photos in this post.

With summer fast coming to an end (the temperature was 2°C/36°F yesterday morning), the need to get out was getting urgent. On Monday I went up Mt. McIntyre but it was too windy and cold up top to ride – even walking wasn’t pleasant.

I’m going to start this post with a bit of background on getting the bike out to distant trails. the first step was getting a class III receiver hitch on the Tracker so I don’t have to borrow Cathy’s Jeep. That hitch is what’s required for our Hollywood bike rack (which gets 10/10 from me). My favourite U-Haul dealer nearby was able to get the hitch I found (made by Curt), and after a few issues installing it, here’s what it looks like.

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With a nice day forecast, I headed up Mt. McIntyre (“Mount Mac”) 2 days ago. In the first photo, I was nearing the uppermost of the 1960s copper mine “glory holes.”

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The view back down the road towards Whitehorse.

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This used to be the spot where most vehicles had to quit, but runoff from 2 years of extremely heavy snows have created a few sections far below this that stops them now.

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Just after noon, I parked just past the air navigation system at the summit, intending to ride the bike from there on countless miles of old road. However, there was a screaming south wind and it was very cold. It was unpleasant even to go for a short walk. I had a nap…

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When I woke up, I decided that there was no option but to quit – I simply didn’t have the clothes or the will to ride in conditions like that. Oh well, it’s a great drive anyway – this view over Fish Lake is unbroken for a few km going up and down.

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This outing on a very rough road made it clear that a weak spot in the system needed to be fixed right away. That weak spot is the hitch receiver, which has far too much play with a heavy bike rack on it. Watching the rack sway dramatically was quite unnerving.

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Luckily, the solution is simple – an anti-rattle hitch clamp, $52 at Canadian Tire.

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Two bolts and it was done – as solid as if there was no joint, with no movement at all.

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Okay, that finally gets us to yesterday’s adventure. At noon I was ready to start the 35-km drive south to the railway crossing on the Lewes lake Road.

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1:10 pm – almost ready to go. The e-bike is a 2021 Giant Fathom E+ Pro. I turned my bike computer on at 1:15 as I departed, so all times from here on are based on that – the computer is a Garmin Edge 830.

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Five minutes north along Lewis Lake (almost always called Lewes Lake now even though it’s not correct). The ATV trail to the left runs the length of the lake and then fades out.

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1:26, with wonderful views of Lewis Lake with its mountain background beginning.

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This 2-photo panorama shows the best view of the day, at 1:36.

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Five minutes later, I reached MP 85. This photo looks back to the south. I had been riding the bike a fair bit at this point, only walking it through some section where the ties were too far above the fill to be comfortable.

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This was the information the primary screen of the computer gave me at that point.

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At 1:44 I came to this little pothole lake, perhaps a post-glacial feature.

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Very deep fill (ca. 70 feet) was required to cross this ancient river channel at 1:47. It was here that I noticed that my bear spray was gone, obviously bounced out of its holder on a bump. Beyond the safety issue, those things are expensive. I walked back for a bit but no luck.

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High on the bank of the cut seen ahead in the photo above, about 40 feet above the rail line, is this post and rail. I have no idea what its purpose may have been.

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Right at 2:00 the rail line meets the meandering Watson River, which empties into Lake Bennett just north of Carcross, and whose silt was a major component of the huge beach there, and the famous Carcross Desert.

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It’s quite a lovely stream at this point, but I don’t think anyone canoes it.

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This is what that spot looks like on Google Earth, with the Watson River to the left, the rail line in the centre, and the South Klondike Highway to the right. I don’t know what the black line to the right of the railway is – it’s not a physical feature.

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A hundred meters or so past the river meeting, I reached MP 86. By this point I wasn’t riding much anymore because of the trees and brush growing on the railway grade 🙁

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By 2:07 beaver were making going wet and ugly by making the railway grade part of their dam system. I was now 5.08 km from the start of this ride/hike.

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The railway was soon underwater – a rail can be seen just to the right of the bike in the next photo. Just ahead of this point was the furthest south I went on my exploratory hike of the rail line on October 1st, 2020 – see “Exploring along the WP&YR railway at Rat Lake, Yukon“. My comment as I turned back that time was “This is as far south as I walked. That view makes me want to walk the entire 112 miles of the line.” 🙂

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Well shit! I knew that this couldn’t go on for long, but it was a very difficult 200 meters or so. The water level of the beaver-enhanced lake here was about 10 inches above the railway grade. This is a good example of why I pretty much alway explore alone – I’d feel really bad about getting anyone else into this 🙂

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At 2:25 I had to navigate across a little creek that used to be crossed by a bridge.

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Two minutes later, I reached MP 87. The end of my planned – no, hoped-for – route wasn’t far ahead now.

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One of the “sidings” that was used to move motorcars onto when trains were coming.

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Along the climb up from Rat Lake, at 2:41.

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At 2:50 I left the railway grade and climbed a bank to the highway. The next photo was my view looking north to some bridge work at Bear Creek. The highway/road route back to my starting point was much longer but obviously much easier. I didn’t take any photos along the highway. I hadn’t noticed any wind on the rail line, but it was sure screaming on the highway – a head wind of course (isn’t it always? 🙂 ).

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Arriving back at the Tracker, I decided to keep going to Lewis Lake for a look around. That look didn’t last long – I quickly realized how tired I was.

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The End! At 4:04, with 22.57 km on the computer. A pretty fine day. You can see a map of my route on my Strava page. My summary of the route there is “This was an exploration of that 7.8-km section of the rail line, never to be repeated. Much of the line is in terrible condition, not even fit for walking, much less riding.” 🙂

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Since it’s now been exactly 2 months since my last post about an Adventure, I’m going to finish with some comments about the health issues that have turned my once rather prolific posting (this is post #1,483) into a sporadic and uncommon thing. Most of you will leave now – I hope you’ve enjoyed that trip up the railway.

I hope to be up Mount Mac again tomorrow on a warm no-wind day, so perhaps I’ll be able to tell you about that.

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My lack of posting is largely because I’m trying to follow Thumper’s advice: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” I’m simply not having much fun. My dementia continues to progress. Even my most cherished memories – of life with my kids, my dogs and cats, my friends, even my wife – are gone. Many people are gone from my memory as well – I regularly get messages from people who seem to know me but I have no idea who they are. Sometimes I recognize a name but can’t put them into context. While I retain some general concepts, details are limited to what I have photos of – I can barely imagine what life is like for people suffering through this with no photos to show them what their life was like.

Everything I wrote about this outing came from the 69 photos I shot – I can tell you nothing about what happened between the photos.

Social interaction gets more and more difficult. While I used to really enjoy going out for a nice meal, that’s all but impossible now. Regular conversation puts me to bed to recover after an hour, perhaps two – any background noise can cut that to an hour at the most but usually much less.

With two naps and a few breaks, I’ve been writing this post for almost 9 hours now. Writing a post like this is only possible because I write once or two sentences about a photo – writing or reading any more than 10-12 sentences isn’t possible. I’m unable to read the post now to catch any typos or errors. I’m very tired and have a headache, and Tucker says it’s time to quit and go back to bed with him.

I hope you’re all doing well. Take care of yourself, and be kind.