Nick And Tyler Bike South

We saw a lot more people heading south by bicycle on this trip than we can remember on past trips to and from Alaska.  I talked to a solo biker at the bakery at Haines Junction Monday.  A key question that seems to come up for bikers is whether to take the Cassiar Highway.  The big negative for the guy in Haines was bears.

Tyler

Tuesday morning when I talked Nick (from Michigan) and Tyler (from Minnesota) at the Deadman Lake campground, I thought I ought to get a photo for a post on biking from Alaska.  They too were weighing whether to go Cassiar and they were also interested in how many bears we'd seen. (Three - two black and a grizzly.)

Nick

Tyler and Nick started out from Anchorage about a week ago and were within easy reach of the Canadian border at their 50 mile a day average.  They're headed for California, but sounded like they'd really like to continue down to Panama. 





We talked to the campground hosts a bit later and they'd heard about some travelers who came across a grizzly eating roadkill shortly after passing a cyclist so the turned around and escorted the biker with the car between the bear and the bike, past the spot.

I mentioned that we'd seen lots of people biking south, but not many north.  Tyler and Nick said that was their experience too.  They've got a couple of months ahead of them and I hope they had better weather heading east from there than we had heading west. 

I said I'd put these pictures on my blog and they told me they had a blog too.  You can get to it here.