On to the Yukon, Canada

The Yukon, Canada

Leaving Fairbanks was rather uninspiring, a dark rainy day on a busy highway. The going didn’t get much better than this as I headed out on the Richardson highway and to top it all off my knee was not great either. As I struggled on my mood getting darker as the knee pain grew, I opted for shorter days and apart from taking the odd painkiller and some vigorous massage, I immerse myself in the Hun yuan chi gung set each evening. Hun yuan chi gung really helps me to unwind the body after a hard day on the bike, and in this case, at the time of writing this post my knee is now fine.
As I cycled down the Alaska highway passing through Delta junction and onto Tok, I meet a few cyclists going north, they all inform me of how bad the road is further on past the Canadian border. In Tok I bump into Jack the first american cyclist I’ve seen with a Roholf hub. I ask him about the hub and he says how he didn’t like all the slipping of standard gears and that they have the potential to be dangerous. The reason for this his story goes is that a few years ago he was cycling in B.C., when he saw a black shape on the road. He couldn’t figure out what it was until he got up to it, when it unfurled and started to cry, it was a bear cub, he couldn’t understand why it was crying at him as he hadn’t gone anywhere near it, when it suddenly dawned on him that it wasn’t crying at him but for its mother. He said he didn’t see the bear but he heard a growl behind him, he tried to get the bike into gear to get away and it kept slipping, so he jumped off the bike and hoisted it on his shoulder and ran down the road.He still doesn’t know why he didn’t just leave the bike. So now he’s a happy roholf owner.
I stocked up with food in Tok as the next place would be Haines junction, and headed for the Canadian border, the road was not as bad as I was lead to believe, which was a blessing, obviously these guys haven’t been up the Dalton highway yet. The scenery changed dramatically on the Canadian side. It was just so stunningly beautiful. After having to get in a couple of pilot cars around road works, the journey took me around kluane lake which was quite captivating, not long after this I caught up with two cyclists from Germany Nils and Bettina who I cycled with for the rest off the day and pitched up with and spent the evening sharing plans for our future adventures.
Am now in Whitehorse where I’ll have a couple of days off and prepare for the next leg of the trip.

Moose....the first one I saw

The Alaska highway

Afternoon nap

lots of interesting cloud formations

Pickaxe handle lake

Fireweed...you see alot of this around

looking back

Great camping

Haines junction

Kluane lake

checking out forest tracks for potential camping sites

First nation land

the Alaska highway on a beautiful day

Juan and his friend....I meet these two on the way into Whitehorse, they were heading to Prudhoe bay after taking 16 months coming from Tierra del fuego