Pastor Mike's Corner: Day 28

Tuesday – We woke up to a light rain again this morning and again it rained off and on all day. We spent about 4 hours in Hyder hoping to see the bear snag fish out of the river. They have been seeing a Grizzly and her three cubs but we missed them. They were there at 6:00 am, before we got there and at 11:30am , when we were up on the mountain. That is still another adventure! We got to the bear viewing area about 9:30 and the rangers said it will more than likely be early afternoon before they would be back because the salmon run is light right now. So we decided to take a “beautiful 2 hour round trip” to the top of the mountain to view the glacier. They also told us that the road was only opened to the summit 4 days ago. They had a record amount of snowfall this year with about 40 feet at the bear viewing area. About 20 miles east of Hyder we had seen an area where an avalanche had come off the north slopes and broke the 12”-16” trees down 50’ up the south slope. My guess would be that there was at least ¼ mile between the bases of these mountain ranges. Well we proceeded through the valley to the top of the summit. First it was potholes that at best you could drive 5mh. Then it was mud slides, both coming down on the road and the road sliding off to make it a one lane path. On the upside you couldn’t see the top and on the down side would drop a couple hundred feet without guard rails. If that wasn’t enough when we were almost to the top the clouds came in and you could hardly find the road. The Lord provided us a place to turn around so we decided we had enough and went back down. We measured and timed our decent and it toke 11/4 hours to go 17 miles. When we got to the bottom they told us if we drove 17 miles we were basically at the top. They also told us we missed the bears by a half hour. We went into town and Debra checked out a gift shop, ate lunch, filled up with gas and set our sights on Houston, BC, a 250 mile trip. By now it was 3:00. We did see two more black bears and drove through rain. It cleared off in time for the sunset. Tomorrow we will try to get to Jasper, BC a 425 mile drive.