Salmon River Valley

Dear Blog!

On Friday, May 20, 2016, we decided to take a drive to see the famous Salmon Glacier. It is the world's largest road accessible glacier. While the glacier is located in Canada, the only access road starts in Hyder, Alaska. The road to the first viewpoint is over 17 miles. Only the first six miles are paved. After that, it's all gravel. Great White doesn't like gravel. After several RVers told us how awesome it is to be that close to such a huge glacier, we decided to rent a car and take the drive up the Salmon River Valley to see it for ourselves.

It was a glorious day for a scenic drive. Here we are at the start of our adventure. 

After leaving Hyder behind, we entered the Tongass National Forest. The Tongass covers 16.7 million acres (about the size of Maryland, New Hampshire and Vermont - combined). There are a number of warnings about wildlife. Forget the bears and moose, its the hoary marmots that are out to get you!

The Salmon Glacier, one of hundreds in the Boundary Range, is notable for its major potential as a natural hazard. Summit Lake is located at the northern end of the glacier and every year around mid-July the lake breaks an ice-dam and then flows under the Salmon Glacier into the Salmon River. This causes the river to rise approximately 4–5 ft for several days. Lucky for us, it is still early in the year.

As we left the forest behind, the valley began to open up and we could see the mountains on the other side. Here is Nine Mile Mountain which sits opposite Nine Mile Mine. "I guess we must be nine miles up the road by now."

At the junction with Texas Creek, we started to climb higher up the Salmon River Canyon. The canyon became much more narrow and we soon saw waterfalls coming down beside the road.

As we climbed higher, we crossed back into Canada. We soon reached the Premier Mines at mile 15, just two miles before the first glacier viewpoint. There we met a safety officer who advised us that the road to Salmon Glacier was closed for repairs. We were a little disappointed, but not surprised. We knew of the construction, but had called the highway department and were advised that the work would be completed by the day of our drive. C'est la vie! No Salmon Glacier today, but there were still views to be had.

We decided to have our lunch right at the junction where the Texas Creek joins the Salmon River. Again, things in this part of the country are larger than they appear. A walk out the gravel riverbank turned into a boulder hopping exercise.

Kathy was tempted to take this beautiful scarlet rock home with her, but it didn't fit in her backpack.  Anyway, David said it would have broken the "Long, Long Trailer" rule, if not the RV itself.

As we settled in for our picnic lunch, we looked up the Texas Creek drainage toward the Texas Glacier. At one point, a covered bridge spanned Texas Creek, as there were a number of mineral claims in upper Texas Creek. This whole area was once covered with mines. Looking at all this natural beauty, it is hard to image the valley covered with industrial mining complexes.

After lunch, we made a stop at the Fish Creek Wildlife Viewing Area. From July to September, the salmon run provides an extensive food supply for bears, sea gulls, bald eagles and wolves. In May, it is just a beautiful stroll along a clear babbling brook.  Although there were no bears in evidence, we did spot one of that rare species of U.S. Forest Ranger who was sprucing the place up for this season's tourist influx.  He happened to have some binders with beautiful photos of bears on the creek, and he let us browse through them until we felt like we had, indeed, seen the bears.

Since we had been unable to see bears at the bear viewing boardwalk, we decided to stop at Moose Pond in hopes of seeing some moose. Unfortunately, Moose Pond was named for the Loyal Order of Moose. There are no moose here.

We did see evidence of a beaver lodge under this fir tree, but since it was late afternoon, the beaver was probably napping in the lodge.

Before long, it was back to terra firma - or, in this case, asphalta firma.

We've learned over the years that we can't do it all. When we get to a place and can't see everything, it just gives us an excuse to come back. We'll catch you later, Salmon Glacier, Fish Creek bears and mythical moose!