Storm & rainbow chasing along the Alaska Highway and Atlin Road

Posted On June 21, 2012

On Tuesday evening I decided that despite the nasty weather we’ve been having, it was time to get the motorcycle out for a long ride. I’d seen a fellow dragging a huge wooden cross down the Alaska Highway that afternoon so figured I’d see if I could find him for a chat. And if I didn’t find him, that was a good direction to be going anyway.

I got to Jake’s Corner at 7:10 pm and hadn’t found the cross guy, but the dramatic skies gave me a new idea. This view is along the highway to the west.

The skies to the east were jet black and didn’t look like much fun to be under, so I headed south on the Atlin Road. The Little Atlin Lake boat launch at the bottom of the hill in this photo was a busy place. Another local blogger saw 7 bears in this area a few days ago, but I had no such luck. Not that I want to see any bears up close while I’m on the bike! 🙂

There’s been a lot of construction along the Atlin Road, widening and rerouting the twisty gravel road – it’s in great shape now.

I stopped here at about Km 15 with the idea of turning around…

…but those mountains in the distance lured me on 🙂

There’s a new section being readied for a rebuild, and I expect that the Snafu Creek bridge will be history in the near future. Snafu is an acronym from the days when the Canadian Army Engineers built the Atlin Road, meaning “Situation Normal, All Fouled Up”.

I reached the turnoff to Snafu Lake Campground just after 8:00 pm and decided that had to be the turnaround point. This is the view towards Atlin at that point.

The most impressive part of the last rebuild was this long, steep hill. The orange colour of the cut isn’t the dirt, it’s been hydro-seeded.

This great storm over Marsh Lake stopped me for a few minutes!

Dramatic light-and-dark patterns on the Yukon River near the bridge stopped me again.

As I was looking for new shots a rainbow began to appear so I hung around.

It took about 10 minutes for it to get this bright – worth waiting for. While I was shooting as the rainbow got brighter and brighter a fellow driving by noticed what I was doing and pulled over to shoot it too 🙂

One final, brilliant rainbow over Shaddow Lake. I caught this sight over my shoulder and did a U-turn to get a few shots.

I got home just after 9:30 – 3 hours of storm and rainbow chasing on the bike was a great way to get me energized. Yes, I did get caught in a few rainstorms (one very heavy), but I was dressed so it didn’t matter.