BC: Whistler Stinks of White Privilege

Route 99, more affectionately known as The Sea To Sky Highway, runs from Lillooet through valleys and over mountains to Vancouver. Make no mistake, it is remarkably pretty, especially the section of climb and descent between Lilloet and Pemberton.

Of course, during this section of the drive, rather than giving the scenery its due, Greta and I were both shitting bricks over a developing fuel problem. For the last thirty minutes of our journey - thankfully mostly downhill - we sat on E, needle with nowhere left to go. Crawling into a service station on the other side of the pass, we fuel up, relieved but still a little nerve wracked. Whistler, a further forty minutes away from Pemberton, is reached after dinner and we find accommodation in the old Olympic village, a pretty flash hostel that falls to pieces as far as its air conditioning is concerned. Oh well.

Whistler occupies a strange sort of place in my mind. A sort of ski Mecca, this is where a lot of friends have come to bust a knee before sitting in a hot tub for a winter drinking bloody marys. It wasn't so much a destination for me, but rather a place to go through (with some awesome roads on either side of).

Taking us in for the following two nights were Mel, Jonny, Janet and James. I'd worked with Mel at Inpex years ago and she became a pretty good point of contact for things to do and see, as well as simply putting a roof over our heads for the weekend. In traipsing through the village, the shops as well as just seeing the activities on offer and the people taking them on, one thing is tremendously clear...

... Whistler stinks of white privilege.

Here there are multiple lifestyles on offer but they can all be reduced to one commonality; affluence. Between the hippies, the barefoot yoga girls in notpants, the extreme sports junkies and the girls that deify them, they all seem to have the financial means to excuse themselves from life for regular people. It's utterly bizarre. There's a yoga camp, presumably in the mountains to better facilitate... something nature related. The extreme sport during summer is mountain biking. People ride down the mountain in search of adrenaline. In winter it'd be snowboarding, for much the same result. There are hippies too, pushing alternate lifestyles and green choices, they provide a preposterous and sidesplittingly funny juxtaposition to the consumer dens that their stalls are in front of. There is no cross section of society here. This is high society - in at least three ways - and it forms an exclusive, bizarre group of clubs that seem happy to co-exist, but if you're not one of them, there is no place for you in Whistler.

So much of this place sells itself as outdoors but it's almost impossible to take seriously. It's an outdoor theme park, certainly... but it's so divergent from appreciating nature for what it is, nevermind experiencing any outright wilderness. It's something altogether different... this is simulated nature there to be conquered.

Bet you've never seen this in Whistler before, Browning!

Yukon: Dawson City - Diamond Tooth Gertie's

"Oh, Gertie's will still be serving food. It's just over the road. Can't miss it."

The barmaid at Triple J is helpful but conveniently neglects to offer any sort of description of what Gertie's actually is. Perhaps this is deliberate. Dawson has a very, very strange feel to it. A few people had recommended it to me in my travels, "oh you'll like it..." or, "it's the gold mining town, you just have to go" but beyond that, everyone has been pretty scant on details. In our ten minutes driving around looking for something that looked like it would serve food we pass blocks of houses straight out of the 1800s. Two tone pastel paint - often times horrendously matched - sit eerily by hardpacked gravel streets. There's no signs in the modern sense, everything is painted on. Greta sums it up perfectly with an astounded, "it's like the set of a movie."

The town is a timewarp. The only sign of modernity are cars... and even then a lot of them are pretty long in the tooth.

We meander over to Gertie's and are met by a female bouncer who is dressed oddly and wears that universal gruff expression that security loves. There's a ten dollar cover charge but from the foyer we both note that there is something going on inside. Curiosity overpowers my baulking at paying to have the privilege of then buying some food to eat. Upon getting in we are assaulted by too much to take in. There is a burlesque show, indeed, under the proscenium arch is a plump red head in a corset, strangling a cat to "The Saints Go Marching In" in front of four gorgeous girls. It's somewhere between the opening scene of Temple of Doom and the burlesque show in Blazing Saddles.

There are waitresses in period inspired uniform ferrying drinks to tables. Croupiers are similarly attired. Around us are slot machines, antlers and frontier memorabilia. Finger still on the pulse, a murmured, "no one is going to believe us" escapes Greta.

I'm too busy looking at legs to really respond.

This place is just astounding.

Dinner runs us to not much as slices of pizza (which are quarters of pizza) are a dollar fifty. Over the course of four or so hours we both wind up a little ahead on the slots and blackjack so it matters little. The final show for the evening - commencing at midnight - is predominantly rock and roll covers, the only time the illusion of 1898 or whichever year it is meant to be is really broken.

... not that it really bothered me.

Alaska: Valdez - "I have lens envy"

Captain Fred and the Lulu Belle didn't come higher billed or even necessarily that much cheaper than the competition. They left earlier. Not by much either, a half hour or so. This is decision making with Greta, they had what we wanted and chances are that once aboard things can't vary much, after all, we're looking for animals and glaciers, not chasing five star dining and palatial cabins with bellboys.

Things got off to a slow start and Greta - the corrosive influence that she is - had redirected my sense of humour from drier than the Sahara to something altogether a little more absurd. After an encounter with a flotilla of sea otters (swoon) Captain Fred took us to see the salmon fishing boats further up the fjord. He narrates this straight faced while Greta and I borrow heavily from Attenborough as we describe how exciting it is to see the fishing boats thriving in their natural habitats after years of being threatened by invasive animal rights activists and the nuisance of an oil spill.

Fishing boats in their natural habitat voraciously chasing salmon up and down the fjord!
... and a yacht that I was actually trying to get a shot of.

Like I said, absurdity was settling in.

While on the bow narrating farcically to no one in particular beside ourselves, a camera toting girl politely interjects with, "I have lens envy". This paved the way for an afternoon of camera talk, much banter, unsubtle flirting and further narrative absurdity that probably peaked with the threat of giving a detailed and entirely erroneous geological history of the surrounding area for my own perverse amusement because, "tourists are idiots and it's not like anyone remembers anything that's said anyway". Karcy seems amused, but also wary of any further talk of geology. It was probably for the best.

These mountains, made by raining mud at the flick of that gull's wings. Maybe.

Fred's narration is brilliant. Cheeky and wily in an older-uncle sort of way, he knows his office of twenty seven years intimately. At Columbia Glacier - a tidal glacier - we park up to observe it calving. An already less than great day, the icefields of the glacier positively dominate the local weather to the point where it becomes downright miserable and cold.

Impressive.

This is my impressed face. Serious.

Undeterred, it's just the two of us on the bow watching the glacier, waiting for something to happen over the course of a little over an hour. Meanwhile, everyone else has elected to instead endorse freshly baked brownies and coffee, like regular sensible people and Greta. Fred indicates that he believes a section of glacier is about to collapse just off of our bow and not five seconds later a significant portion of the wall shears off into the water.

Fred did this. Somehow. He's the cause of global warming and the glaciers disappearing.

I am now convinced that Fred is some sort of soothsayer or telekinetic wizard. He looks like a friendlier more naval version of the Emperor. Maybe he is force sensitive. Who knows. He sees shit in the future and he makes stuff happen with his mind. It's pretty cool.

There were of course animals, otters were plentiful as were the sea lions and a particularly obliging humpback whale.

"Oh hi!"
This is the most adorable thing in the world.

Whereas the whale just flipped us off a couple of times.

... and the sea lion just barked at all his women in his harem.

Just get on boats in Alaska. Even if you don't see any animals it's still pretty impressive.

Alaska: Chicken and the Top of the World Highway

Leaving Tok there are two ways to the Canadian border. One is to follow the Alcan - the most traveled route - while the other takes a turn to the north on the "Top of the World Highway". It's a gravel road that goes for eighty or so miles, most of them on the US side and broadly speaking, it is a lot like the pointy end of this video:

With Greta's attitude toward things being a mixture of "if I'm bad enough at it the first time, I won't be asked to do it twice" and "well, you didn't die, did you?" it was with some relief (and I won't lie, a great deal of excitement) that I was behind the wheel for the section of road that was most likely to be outrageous fun and/or kill both of us. The road traverses ridgelines and spurs to skirt around ravines of the sort of depth that you don't consider walking away from, should you wind up visiting one.

The last place of note on the American side of the border is a small gold mining town of 39 called Chicken. The site of a minor gold rush contemporary to the Klondike find at the turn of the nineteenth century, the town owes its name to the ptarmigan bird. The locals - at least initially - wanted to call the town Ptarmigan as the bird was plentiful in the region and reasonably delicious. However, the problem that prevented this was that no one could spell it, so instead they settled on Chicken, as it kind of tasted like that. It's clear to me that by extension none of these gents counted the pterodactyl among their favourite dinosaurs.

Upon leaving Chicken we were - stupidly - racing the clock. The border shut at 8pm and we were pushing our luck as far as making it was concerned. Making matters more interesting, the road got a little more hairy as hairpins and sheerer drops were introduced as we passed through 5000 feet above.

Arriving at the border with mere minutes to spare, the Canadian official takes umbridge to the fact that I do not have a work visa while Greta does. I misread this as mock offense but over the course of a few questions become quite aware of his sincere disappointment that I am - at present - not prepared to work in his otherwise fine nation. After a few more questions we have to surrender our BB gun as it exceeds the firepower for such weapons allowed in Canada without a license. I joke that he just wanted to play with it over the campfire that night with his mates after work.

The joke sinks. He hands me a certificate outlining the weapon that I've surrendered and we depart, bound for Dawson. Safe in the knowledge that not much will be coming the other way for the remaining distance - knowing that the border is now closed - I open up a little more on the road and am suitably disgusted and terrified when we meet an RV upon exit of a particularly enjoyable switchback. Fun truly scuppered, we eventually roll down the hill, cross the Yukon River on a ferry that struggles against the current and get into Dawson City; site of the Klondike Gold Rush. The Klondike find spawned possibly the largest gold rush in history and almost certainly the most ridiculous in terms of conditions and remote nature. At any rate, it's now a little after ten which is just in time for most of the town's kitchens to be shut...

Alaska: Seward

Yes, it does look delicious.

Seward contrasts Homer nicely. Where the bulk of Homer sprawls lazily on low lands in an open bay, Seward sits confined by the steep walls of a fjord and its water. Both are comfortable enough, but Seward leaves you feeling ever so slightly claustrophobic. Katy - my couchsurfing host - echoes these feelings at some point during two nights of enthusiastic brewery sampling and ceaseless conversation. It's fantastic. Seward, like much of this part of the world, was largely rebuilt after being ravaged by tsunamis, tremors and soil liquefaction from the earthquake in 1964 but it retains a frontier and simple feel.

Quite accidentally four days pass. A day evaporated just recovering from Homer. Exit Glacier is a short drive and an easy walk away.

Exit Glacier, casually retreating its finger back up the valley it came down from.

The pick of these four days though was spent on a boat, cruising through the Kenai Fjords National Park. The blurb bills it as a day trip with the opportunity to see otters, bald eagles, sea lions, puffins, porpoises, whales, orcas, glaciers and fjords. They had me at otters.

So naturally, I was already pretty happy ten minutes into the trip when we came across a couple of sea otters just lazing about on their backs in the harbour. That we would then see everything else as billed over the course of seven hours was simply fantastic. A colony of puffins provided ample entertainment as they flew/crashed into the surf beneath their nests. What they lack in grace through the air they apparently make up for getting through the water like a guided missile. The sea lions smell terrible and bark aggressively, presumably at the smell. Dall porpoises - they "wear" a similar get up to orcas - race our bow for ten or so minutes, breaching to the delight of the masses up front. Reputedly the second fastest mammal in the sea, they tire of us and race off somewhere else. Not long after that we encounter a humpback whale and her calf. For the most part they don't get up to much... but then suddenly this:

Oh hi!

... and bye now.

However as with many of these sorts of things, it's hard not to feel that broadly speaking the attraction is simply the animals. We race from spot to spot, following radio reports of particular animals in different locations. Save for time spent at a glacier in one of the fjords, appreciating the landscape - thoroughly impressive in and of itself - is mostly incidental. It seems to be the general attitude of the people on these boats or buses that seeing all the animals is a requisite for a good day and that everything else be damned. I guess operators pander to that.

It's a shame.

Yes, why stop to look at this?

... or this?

Ok, so I have animal photos as well.

Dall Porpoises, just playing.

Hard to believe these were endangered not so long ago, they're all over Alaska.

Even at a distance, these guys stink.

Wait, don't go, I haven't shown you my barrel rolls yet!

And lastly, the jerks of the sea...

Alaska: It's only $700

This isn't a phrase I'm comfortable uttering. In Homer, $700 gets you a flight across to Katmai National Park. You land on a beach in Hallo Bay and there are bears. The bears are not afraid of you. They're not really curious about you. In fact, they nothing you.

Back in Homer - before any of this happens - we get a lengthy briefing about how to behave. Most of it is reasonably straightforward and appears to be common sense to me. Then we get to, "if they come toward you, don't run away". This one seems a little counter-intuitive to begin with but then is explained away by saying that running away invites a chase instinct and that's how you die.

It seems fair enough.

We have a large group - it fills four planes - and our subgroup of six is a mum and daughter from the US, a couple from Israel, myself and our pilot, Martin. Martin is the older of the four pilots and a comes off as a little brisk and lonesome - especially compared to the two kids flying other groups - but he basically discards the flight plan and takes us out over a chain of island volcanoes.

Chalk that up as a win.

We land on the beach, pulling up with the sort of J-turn that I absolutely never did in Wembley Downs as a seventeen year old. It leaves me grinning, most others seem altogether a bit more concerned. We're in a bay full of bears that we'll be walking amongst and they're all of a sudden concerned about their mortality?

The first bear we see bisects our group and another. It is maybe forty metres from either. Ambles down from the dunes and wanders across the beach. Casts cursory glances at both groups and carries on. It gives precisely no fucks.

I don't care. You're not near the salmon.

The pattern would be repeated for four or so hours. One sow and her cub come to within twenty metres of us. They stare for a bit, catching the eye of people in the group. After the first encounter everyone seems a little more relaxed about the prospect of being torn limb from limb and eaten alive but that doesn't stop me from positioning myself with a person that I could outrun in two steps between myself and the bears.

No need for a long lens when the bears come to you!

Over the day we see a dozen or so bears in slightly different settings. Cubs play fighting. Grizzlies fishing. Sows taking strolls on the beach. A sow protecting its cub from potential attack from another bear. Bears just chilling. It's like some sort of beach side resort for bears. It's tempting to wax lyrical about this being all kinds of fantastic but I'm just going to defer to photos instead. There's more. Lots and lots more. Go to my flickr page for ten or so, facebook for thirty (just for George) or bail me up somewhere in the world and you can look at all five hundred. They're great.