Latest Update: August 4, 2001 by Ben Marcus

22:35 PT FRIDAY AUGUST 3, 2001 DEASE LAKE CAMPGROUND, CASSIAR

ODOMETER
TRIP METER

MONEY
MONEY REMAINING FROM LAST TIME ????
Sandwich at Tatogga Lake resort: $ 4.82
Oatmeal and toast at Bell Lodge II $ 9.33
MONEY TAKEN OUT IN DEASE LAKE $100
Campground fee: $ 12
Video at tourist place in Dease Lake: $ 25

CREDIT
Gas at Kluachwon Center Store: $30.00
Gas at Bell II Lodge: $21.13
Oil a Bell II Lodge $ 3.50
Millk, steak, malt vinegar, soy sauce X 2
at Dease Lake Super Valu $ 19.37
Gas and oil at Dease Lake Super Valu $ 34.43

I hate to sound like a beer commercial. So I won't. I'm camped on the edge of Dease Lake, which was awfully nice until the rain started, and then it was less nice but it's still nice. The sun has sent which means it's about 1:00 in the morning or something. No, it's 10:48, but that's still pretty weird. I'm going to be well north of the Arctic Circle within a week or so, and I wonder if it's stll 24 hours of daylight up there. That must be pretty strange.

I stopped in Dease Lake Campground because it just looked too good from the road. I pulled in and got a fire roaring and managed to cook a pretty good steak with some corn boiled on the camp stove. The fire took me awhile but once it got going, it was roaring. I think the rain has put it out, but I can hear it still popping a little. There are more than a few mosquitoes around. Could be time for another sphritz.

So I had a nice steak and some corn and shared some of the steak with Gus the Camo German Shepherd. He took all that Ike would have had, but Ike was afraid to come out of the van. Gus is a big dog. Friendly, but Ike just doesn't like dogs.

So now it's 11:00 and I'm hacking away. A little while ago I was futzing around with my new Russian/English electronic dictionary. I picked it up at the Northway Inn in the town of Dease Lake earlier today, which is part of the reason I stopped here around 8:00 and didn't keep going, I wanted to try the thing out. My first warning should have been that all the type on the box was in Cyrillic. Most of the directions were in Cyrillic, too, although there were some abbreviated directions in English. I got the thing going and put it in "Phrase" mode and "Word" mode and found out a little problem. When it translates a word from English into Russian, it translates into Cyrillic. And Cyrillic could not be more confusing.

To wit:

A backwards R = Q
P = R
Y = U
C = S
3 = Z
B = V
H = N

So seven of the letters are confusing, and six are the same as ours:

A = A
E = E
X = X
T = T
O = O
M = M

And the rest of the Cyrillic characters are even crazier than that.

The Cyrillic H looks like an inverted, upside-down lower-case h.

The Cyrillic K looks like Picasso designed it.

And on and on. So half the alphabet kind of looks the ours, and the other half doesn't.

Great . What I think I just did is pay CAN$80 for a present I'm going to give to some schoolkid in Russia, because this is designed for Russian users, not American.

Oh well. This will force me to learn Cyrillic and pronounce it, I guess. It ain't gonna be easy. It occurred to me too late that there must be tons of software for PC's that will do what I want it to do: I type in a word or a phrase and it gives me the Russian word and pronunciation.. I guess I'll have too look that up online.

It will be a good present, anyway.

I made it to Dease Lake after stressing in Tatogga Lake a little bit. There were a few e-mails that made me make that noise that Lurch makes, but I really can't show them if I'm going to keep to my vow of silence.

One of the e-mails suggested that loyal Sacklunch readers have been making deposits into my PayPal account. That is a very nice thing for people to do, and to encourage more, I'm going to make a special offer. Anyone who deposits money into the PayPal account, which is basically going to go toward presents for the Russia trip, will receive the PREMIUM GOLD STAR EDITION of Travels With Ike. This is the non-censored, anything goes, all-the-dirt version, with the best e-mails and the inside scoop on everything.

Sound like a tempting deal??? IT IS!!! All you have to do to qualify for the PREMIUM GOLD STAR EDITION of Travels With Ike is deposit any small amount of money into my PayPal account, and you will get it hard and dirty: my discounts on Patagonia stuff, nasty responses to Steve Hawk e-mails, funny, biting back and forths with Evan Slater, and angry, frustrated e-mails to all the dingalings who are supposed to be getting it together to go to Russia.

Anyway, I made a phone call to Evan from Tatogga Lake and asked if there was indeed some sort of dingaling (rhymes with right wing) conspiracy to scuttle this trip and drive me nuts. Evan said he didn't believe there was. I believe Evan. I trust him. Maybe it will happen, but the deadline for the airfares to Magadan is tomorrow, so we missed that. We may have to push it up a week. That may allow some people to jump on and it may push other off, we shall see.

It was a beautiful day heading out of Tatogga Lake and toward Dease Lake, and it was impossible to stay bummed. The Cassiar is just a beautiful, beautiful place. It's like the Valley of the Lost. The road is a thin strip of occasionally paved civilization, passing through a surprisingly wild area. The Cassiar is logged and there are ore trucks on the road so there must be mines and scars, but from the road it looks absolutely pristine.

At Dease Lake I found the Northway Inn, where I now remember I had dinner when I was coming back down from Alaska in October, when I was carrying that dinner back from the hotel that I saw the Space Shuttle chasing the International Space Station. Neither Ken nor Bob were at the desm, but the package was. It had arrived today. I thanked the lady at the desk, then went across the street to get some money and supplies at the Dease Lake Super Valu. I am thinking ahead to this trip to Kamchatka that I may or may not take, and one of the things I would like to do is have the supplies on hand to prepare Salmon a la Brooke Johnson.

Alex Johnson's wife makes salmon so good you want to run home and slap whoever is home. Her secret is to marinate VFS (Very Fresh Salmon) in lite soy sauce, garlic, ginger and orange juice. If the fish is fresh, it is so, so good. I'm looking forward to giving that treatment to some fresh floppers we pull out of any river we happen to be surfing by. In Kamchatka. If we go.

From my last trip I remembered there was an Internet place connected to a school in Dease Lake. I went looking for it and ended up giving a ride to another unintelligible Indian gentleman. Although I found out later why I couldn't understand this guy, on the four mile trip up the road I managed to understand that this guy's name was Howard. He was speaking English but English as if spoken with no teeth. I just couldn't make feathers nor arrows of what he was saying, but I did manage to get him home. I got a couple of good photos of him and you can draw your own conclusions.

Back in Dease Lake, the Internet place was closed, but I managed to pull an Ike on the nice lady who ran the information booth. She opened up for me and let me plug into her phone line, but there wasn't much happening. Two e-mails.

This woman just loved Ike, of course. I was so grateful for using her phone line, she talked me into paying $25 for a video about the hairball mountain goats of the Grand Canyon of the Stikine. The Stikine is a river I passed over between Tatogga Lake and Dease Lake. I remember it from last year; some burly-looking Canadian mountain men who I'd seen in the CafÚ were unloading a big, heavy duty jet boat with a smaller boat on top. They were going motoring up the Stikine and then up a smaller river, then walking way back into the back country to go hunting. This is serious, wild country. I got that impression from the Stikine last year, and I got it again this year. There is no one around here. No rangers patrolling every inch. If you get in trouble on the Stikine, you are well and truly screwed. This is just wild country, beautiful country, and the theme song they use for Marlboro ads was going through my head all day. This is the Wild, Wild West, and it's nice to see.

Anyway, apparently well downriver from the Stikine there is a canyon area where these wild goats walk and leap and jump on very thin ledges, hundreds of feet above the water. They never seem to fall, and that is what this video is all about.

Come to think of it, it might not have been a waste of $25 after all.

The lady also told me that Howard couldn't talk because he'd been poisoned and permanently damaged many years ago by inept doctors at the Dease Lake clinic. That sounded like a true story, and an unfortunate story. Up until a few years ago, Indians were at the bad end of some nasty treatment in Canada. Children were taken away from parents and educated in special schools. Nasty stuff like that. I guess Howard was one of the victims.

I'd watch that Vertical Goat in this campground if they had electricity, but they don't. The camp owner came by a few hours after I got here and thanked me profusely for stopping. Apparently his camp is a bit of a struggle because he doesn't have electricity. It would cost $15,000 for a diesel generator, not to mention paying for all the diesel. There is lots of free hydro power around the Cassiar, but the camp owner explained that getting a permit isn't easy. Doesn't seem fair, but it makes me wonder what it would take to put together a small hydro-electric plant. I don't know the engineering at all, but there must be some reason people can't divert part of the flow of a stream, pass it by a small hydro power plant and produce free, cheap electricity. This guy could definitely use one. Anyone out there know the mathematics of this? Hydro is the way to go, but it must take a lot of water flow to produce electric flow.

Anyway, Tatogga Lake, over the Stikine and driving along, hoping to see some bear as the sun began to drop. I didn't see one, although I did see a red-tail fox running along the road. I wasn't sure how far I was going to drive and when I passed a bridge over Dease Lake, I had to stop. There was a man fly-fishing the river just before it ran into the lake. He cast well, but I didn't see him catch a fish. I walked out on the bridge and took some photos and JPEGS that won't do the scene justice. I got a look at the camp and I could hear that steak and common sense telling me to stop.

Back at the van I responded to the call of nature, hiding up against the van when I heard a car approaching. The car approached and kept approaching and when I looked behind the van I saw what I thought was RCMP patrol 4WD. I thought for a minute that I was going to bet popped for public urination, but then the van backed up over the bridge and the Mountie or Fish and Gamey or whatever he was went down and hassled the people fishing on the river.

(23:15. Oh crap, there's something big rooting around outside. It's making snorting noises, and I can't see anything because this computer screen wrecked my night vision.

It's either Gus the German Shepherd or something I don't want to deal with. Ike is up and listening and his hair is up. What the hell is that? I feel like Blair Wtich Project. Or maybe Which Bear Project. Be right back.)

14:19 PT SATURDAY AUGUST 4, 2001 FANCY, SCHMANCY PUBLIC LIBRARY, WATSON LAKE, YUKON

ODOMETER
TRIP METER

MONEY
CASH AT START OF DAY $40.00
Presents at Jade City (soap, pill box,): $29.70

Cliff hanger, eh? Thought I'd gotten nailed by a bear, maybe? Naaaaah. I got too much charisma for that.

My computer shut down after I went outside to investigate the noise. I really wish I had Mr. Walther in situations like that. I just don't like stepping outside the van at midnight in bear country, especially when my night-vision has been ruined by the computer.

The noise was Gus the Dog. He was just rooting around in the garbage, but the snorting sounded like something worse.

It rained quite a bit last night but Ike and I slept well. Woke up this morning vowing to pull into the first car wash I see and give the van a good vacuum. The floor is a mess of dirt and dust and kitty litter and paper. A clean van is a happy van.

I got rid of a lot of the detritus (dit-trite-us) last night, feeding a lot of it to the fire to cook that steak. Which was very good. Gus thought so, too. Ike didn't get any.

Woke up before everyone else this morning with another dead battery. Something is wrong. Must be the alternator. Better get it fixed before I get really stuck.I'll be doing the Campbell Highway tonight or tomorrow/

Had a bowl of oatmeal and threw everything helter skelter into the van. When I asked for a jump from the camp owner I also asked if there was such a thing as a small hydro-electric generator. He said they did exist, but getting water rights to build little dams and such was tough.

So I got out of there and hit the road north, driving into another lovely Cassiar, blue sky and clouds day. I just passed a lot of very nice scenery: trees, mountains, patches of snow, blue sky and river valleys stretching off to nowhere on either side.

I just drove and drove and stressed a little about the Kamchatka deal and tried to find a radio station. It was a nice morning, but I wondered what the next month is going to be like. We were supposed to have the money to Magadan Airlines today. Crud.

This trip to the Yukon and Alaska is feeling like last year, where I'm driving north and everyone else is driving south and I feel like I'm driving into an exploding volcano or a war or something. There was a steady procession of mega-RV's heading south.

I stopped at one gas station and had a nice chat with a man with a Scottish accent so thick, you could eat it with a fork. But I used a spoon!

Sorry. He was as Scottish as haggis but he'd been living in Calgary for 21 years. We had a nice chat about Ireland and Montana and this and that, and then I headed on down the road.

Along the way I saw an RV pulled over and helping an elderly couple in their passenger car. I kept going, then turned around to see if I could help. The RV pulled away, but the people were still stranded. The man needed a jump, but when he put the car into Drive, it would die. I tried it a couple of times, then move the van from in front of him, and he took off like a Bat out of Hell toward Watson Lake and a good mechanic. These people must have been in their 80s. They were German, I think. Thick accents. Old. Too old to be having car trouble on the Cassiar Highway.

Well Ike jumped out as I was getting the jumper cables, so I had to wait for him. There was an historical sign nearby pointing out that in the creek running below, a 72-ounce gold nugget had been pulled out by miners in the 1800s. I remembered seeing a photo of that nugget, and it was a whopper. Imagine the guy who found that. Yeeha.

Ike was missing so I did some off-roading, taking a bad road over a little creek and down to the valley floor. There was a still-operating mining operation visible, and lots of "snakes" and tailings from fairly recent gold operations. There were two new vehicles stashed in the bushes, but no one around.

I needed a bathe, and I took one. Bloody hell, that glacial melt water is cold!

Ike finally showed up and went down to the water's edge with me.As I was shampooing my hair and getting suds in my eyes, I wondered if anyone had ever blundered into a bear in similar circumstances. I was pretty helpless there for a few moments, but after the rinse off I was clean, clean, clean.

I had to carry Ike up to the car, and I thought I had ripped out the rear axle when I went back through that little creek, punching it to get uphill and make sure I didn't get stuck. Yeah for my Pirelli Scorpions, bought in Boise, Idaho about a hundred years ago.

So I still had my rear axle when I hit pavement so we drove for about another hour out of the Cassiar and hit the Al/Can Highway. I turned right and went toward Watson Lake, where I ended up last year after my sketchy drive along the Campbell Highway last October. I want to do that drive again, not terrified this time. Last year I did it in the snow and didn't see another person all day long. I remember seeing a lot of creeks and rivers I wanted to fish in better weather.

(The library just got hit by a power flux and it rebooted all the computers. I was just plugging my name into www.surfermag.com search to see if I've been getting slandered lately. Frank seems to be taking me off of Aggroville, as he should. Some of the posts having to do with me on www.SurferMag.cm are actually complimentary. Nothing new on there about me. Oh well. No news is good news.)

Using the fancy T1 lines here at the fancy new Community Library in Watson Lake, I sent about a dozen pitches to a variety of print and online fishing magazines, asking if they want an online story about our adventure to Kamchatka. Maybe I'll get a bite, maybe not. It would be nice to be paid, but it doesn't matter. I just hope we go.

I also sent a plea to Berkley Rods asking for a new tip for the bait-caster I bought for fishing the Smith River. If we go to Kamchatka, I'm going to have three and maybe four fly rods and two bait-casters. No word yet from the rod-maker in Sweden, although a few people put me in touch with the company that distributes the fly rod that I broke.

That's about it. Time to get out of here. Ike is wandering around outside and I need to get gas and get on up the Campbell Highway. I'll go as far as I can and try to get to Dawson City tomorrow. Might go stop by and see Czech Frank if he's around, and then I'm going to take the Top of the World Highway to Fairbanks.

Is that all? I guess that's all. David is still debating coming to Alaska with me, and I'm now glad he didn't buy the air tickets,because it looks like the dates may change.

The Cassiar is spectacular and wild. Words just don't do it justice. Now as soon as Ike comes back I'm going to head up the Campbell Highway which is even wilder than the Cassiar, but in a different way. That funky battery worries me, but there will probably be people up there this time.

22:35 PT SATURDAY AUGUST 4, 2001 NEAR THE COMMUNICTY LIBRARY, WAITING FOR IKE, WATSON LAKE, YUKON, CANADA.

ODOMETER
TRIP METER

MONEY
Cash withdrawn at CIBC $100

Buffalo burger and fries and pie: $

Stupid cat. He's hanging me up again and now I'm a little worried. He's been gone all day and I've killed half a day waiting for him again. After my long session in the library on that hyper-fast T1 line, I looked around for Ike, drove around Watson Lake and had a buffalo burger, fries and pie at the Watson Lake hotel. The lady at the front desk is a Kiwi married to a guy from Taihape, where I worked on the sheep station.

The pay phone at the hotel has a data connection but it took me a while to remember to hit # # to get the data connection working. Only two e-mails. No good responses from anywhere yet. Oh well.

So I killed a day and looked silly looking for my silly cat. I must look like an eccentric, ad crumpled guy in a white van traveling with cat. Oh well. Geniuses are allowed their eccentricities, no?

I'm wondering if it will still be 24-hours of light when I get up to ANWR. I read that Nationa Geographic about ANWR and they said the sun doesn't go down until mid-August. I've gotten a little taste of that kind of light here in the Yukon and B.C. but 24 hours of it will be really odd. I like night time. I feel better at night. I get to sleep.

So, fricking Ike. Where is he? I just retyped the last two dispatches and fixed some problems. I guess I'll go over to the Watson Lake Hotel and re-send this, and check e-mail.

Tomorrow it's up the Campbell Highway to Carmacks, where I have o return a hotel key I walked away with last year. Carmacks is the place where the drunk Indian squaw called me a "fuckign white man" last year.

After that, it's up to Dawson.

I don't want to rub it in on Chuck Gallagher, but I have to show his responses to my last dispatches:

Thanks for all the continued info on your experiences. Don't know how you can deal with the problems of getting surfers to fill out forms, let alone on schedule.

Re Nat'l Geo, think you are not thinking clearly. Doubt if the mgmt read your info and said let's fuck Ben and do an article on volcanoes in Kamchatka. Stop the presses, this is important. If your trip was based upon volcanoes, you might have a point. As it is, I believe you are an Agroville casualty. Suggest looking at it as a prelude to your expedition, educating the populace as to the whereabouts of the peninsula, the threat of bears, and what a big Soviet helicopter looks like.

Best wishes in getting paperwork in on time. That I see as the main obstacle to a successful expedition.

Best wishes,
chuckg

There was that one, and then this one:

Thanks again for keeping me on your mail list.

Amazing how you are coping with the stress of getting required paper work from a collection of surfers. Hope you have good luck and good drugs to get you through this.

Re you getting snaked by Nat'l Geo think it is coincidence. If your trip was to explore volcanoes you would be justified. I don't believe that, having read about your trip, Nat'l Geo gang decided to fuck TheBenM and do an article about volcanoes in Kamchatka right now, stop the presses, as in old movies. If anything, their article will be a prelude to yours, showing the illiterati where Kamchata is, info about bears being real, what a big Russian chopper looks like, etc...

The way things are going, I would worry about competition from Mad.

Best wishes,
chuckg

I just looked to see if my Russian/English dictionary could handle the word "facetious." It couldn't.

Oh well.