The Cassiar Highway to Alaska, 1973

In the summer of 1973 I was bored out of my mind in Moclips, WA. The guys were very busy building the ferro-cement boat, but they all (except the girls’ dad) frowned on “chicks” working on it. The other girlfriends were older and into the flower-child hippie, long skirts and macrame thing. Not my scene. (I was a jeans, flannel shirt, Buck knife, and work boots gal, myself). I was doing shifts as a housekeeper in the local motel, saving some cash for some vague future travel. In the casual way of the times, a number of hippie hangers-on had landed in Moclips after hearing about the “commune” building a cool boat. One of them was a guy named T.

T. was a musician: guitar player, pianist, songwriter, from California. He was working at the lumber mill in Copalis Crossing saving money to go to Alaska to work at the pipeline. Every second person you met at that time was trying to get to Alaska to find work on the pipeline. I started playing music with T and we played well together. He was exceptionally talented, and loved Roger Williams songs (of all things!), which he reworked with rockin’ riffs and vocals ala Eric Clapton and Roy Orbison. I sang harmony, played rhythm guitar and a little piano.

T asked me if I wanted to join him on his trip to Alaska. Sure! Anything was better than hanging around feeling useless. He had a well-outfitted VW bus (who didn’t?) with 2 spare tires, extra gas cans, a full tool set and a case of whiskey. (I wasn’t drinking in those days; it was all for T.) We made up a playlist and planned to get gigs where we could to help pay for the trip.

We took off, traveling first north through Vancouver Island where we caught the ferry to Prince Rupert, BC. We camped there for a few days, played to good tips at a bar. It was my first introduction to the horde of rather shiftless, barefoot hippies who were ending up in small towns with no money and no plans. Even Haight-Ashbury hadn’t been that bad. There was an epidemic of crabs in P.R. All these kids were trying to get to Alaska. T. and I felt quite smug with our set-up and refused to give a ride to the 20 or so who begged.

As we filled up with gas in Prince Rupert before heading east toward Terrace and the ALCAN, the attendant mentioned a new road that was opening the very next day that would be a scenic shortcut to Whitehorse, Yukon. He called it the Cassiar-Stikine Road, a nearly 500-mile network of dirt logging and mining roads, connecting the huge logging operations and copper mines of the coastal BC region. It had always been closed to public traffic, but with the building of one major bridge, was set to open. Sounded good to us, so we set off to look for it.

After some searching, we found the road inside a massive Weyerhaeuser lumber mill near Terrace. We drove through the gates, and were guided onto a truck scale. That was literally the start of the “road”, through the scale. The crew at the mill checked out the VW, making sure we had adequate tires and gas. They examined T’s rifle (illegally brought into BC), warning us of grizzlies. They gave us sketchy directions and explained the over 50 river/creek crossings we would have to do. They described the only place to stop along the entire drive. They took our picture, we got their blessing and were officially the FIRST private vehicle to travel the new Cassiar Highway.

The road took us over 5 days to cover and was astounding, living up to all the warnings, beauty, and horrors we had been told about. There were black bears and grizzlies, but they never approached us. There were at least 50 water crossings, but we never got stuck. We saw caribou and moose, fox, sheep, beaver, and wolves. There were incredible views, the Aurora Borealis, remnants of a huge wildfire, hurtling logging trucks we barely avoided, and many, many fishing spots with endless 14″ native Dolly Varden and Rainbow trout. We ate trout breakfast, lunch, and dinner. T. was a fly-fisherman and was in heaven.

BUT…..there were mosquitos. Huge mosquitos. So thick it was sometimes hard to see through the windshield. So many that peeing outside was hell. I’m one of those people whom mosquitos seem to dislike, but they LOVED T. By the end of the first day he had hundreds of bites, and by the time we reached Whitehorse it was thousands. No exaggeration. He went to the medical clinic with a fever and terrible rash and got a shot of cortisone, antibiotics and benadryl. All his whiskey was gone.

Halfway, we stopped at the only outpost. One older Yukon bush man lived in a handbuilt log cabin and sold illegal moonshine, dried jerky and gas (for $10/gallon!) from a raised tank and a hand pump. We bought an unneeded gallon, and T shared some moonshine. The grizzled old fellow seemed all too happy to see a woman in his place, and so we moved right along.

I don’t remember much of Whitehorse, other than the small medical clinic and the wonderful old hotel, the Whitehorse Inn, right downtown. They gave us free room and board for 2 nights of gigs. I remember it being painted white, not dark like the photo. The funny thing about it was that the liquor laws were such that you couldn’t sit down to drink anywhere in town. You could sit to eat in the huge, drafty dining room, but if you wanted alcohol you had to stand at the bar or a tall table with no stools. The point was that if you were too drunk to stand up, you had to stop drinking. It pissed T. off no end. and he proved it by drinking all night and never sitting down. We played guitar a couple nights to a rowdy group of locals who tipped us well. They even danced and asked for an encore when I sang Patsy Cline’s Crazy.

Our next stop was Dawson City, Yukon, north and close to the Alaska border. There we met an old coot named Chester Henderson, who let us camp in his yard for a few days while he and T. fished in the nearby river. The town was really derelict, and the river was miles of mine tailings. It wasn’t very pleasant, but the fishing was good, Chester was friendly, and the berries were humungous.

The nutty coincidence is that Alan’s dad knew Chester, and he took Alan and Glenn to meet him in 1968. Also of interest, the records say that Chester died in 1971 of suicide following a broken leg, but T. and I met him in 1973. Was it his son? a ghost? An imposter? I have no idea. The shed had a museum quality collection of axe heads and Chester’s family history of the gold rush. Now, it’s a real museum and there’s a mountain named after him nearby.

From Dawson City, T. and I crossed the border, where the US custom agents found his rifle, but didn’t say anything. The road was paved. We headed into Chicken, AK, for another night of music and heavy drinking.

Next stops were Fairbanks and then Anchorage. I won’t go into details about our time in Alaska. I got a job cleaning tour buses and we played nights at Chilkoot Charlies. It didn’t last long. T.’s drinking quickly got out of control and I decided to return to Moclips, which had been the original plan anyway. Anchorage was a pretty wild and chaotic town in those days, full of scammers and money-grabbers. Everyone after a piece of the pipeline pie. Time to get back to a small town.