Hyder AK…bears & glaciers

Day 55.

8/13/26 Thursday evening and…

8/14/26 Friday

It’s another last day in Alaska! Hyder AK… the outlier. Two objectives in Hyder today. Bear viewing and driving up the road to the Salmon Glacier. This glacier is actually back in BC. But you must go to Hyder to get there.

Bear viewing. We bought our 3 day pass tickets through Rec.gov to go to the Fish Creek Bear Viewing Observatory. They say early mornings and evenings are the best.. when bears are most active.

The platform is a long wooden boardwalk elevated above Fish Creek. The Chum Salmon come up the Salmon River into Fish Creek to spawn this time of year. It’s popular place to watch brown (coastal grizzly) and black bears come to eat salmon. They’ll come walking from either up or downstream and into the creek past the platform as they look for fish. Eagles also flock to where the bears are fishing…leftovers.

Annual flooding from the glacial lake. Jokuhlaups. (yuck-a-lups) This year the annual flooding on July 16, 2026 caused massive flooding downstream and the Salmon River overflowed its banks and carved into Fish Creek. Not only did it wipe out a huge section of the platform but ripped through the spruce trees and vegetation all the way down the creek. It looks all twisted and cluttered with tree debris. Yet somehow some incredible chum salmon have managed to find their way up the creek to the platform area! The Forest Service with lots of help from other agencies (State of Alaska) created a riprap dike to separate the river and the creek again. They managed to get half the platform reopened within 3 weeks or so. Without the tourist traffic the bear viewing brings to the little town of Stewards business merchants it would be financially difficult. They moved quickly to save their summer! We honestly just heard it opened about 3 days before we arrived. Lucky timing.

Evening bear viewing. So we went out yesterday evening about 6pm PST. We showed our tickets at the rangers entry building and joined a reasonable crowd on the end of the platform. Just as we had checked in volunteer announced to the front gate ranger that a brown bear was moving upstream into view. We quickly walked out the boardwalk and easily slipped to the edge where we could see the bear coming closer. It was fishing along its way up the creek. It was fun to watch. Three or more eagles came and perched nearby to watch the bear fish. We were told the bears are usually only seeking the females to eat the roe (eggs) and skin. That is why they sometimes just bite the fish realize it’s a male and they drop it back in the water.

At some point the bear moved behind a big tree root ball and out of view. Probably 15 minutes. People quickly lost interest. But we hung out and he eventually reappeared and proceeded to come right below our boardwalk and walk upstream past us and on his way. So cool! We were entertained by the eagles, ducks and fish. I have several good videos of the bear so if you’d like to see them go to http://www.cinnicrew.com/alaska if you receive this blog on your email account.

The rangers says the flood (jokuhlaups) disturbed the creek immensely and although there are some fish that have made it, it’s not the volume it has been in the past. Time (a decade) will tell the results of this natural disaster to the salmon population.

Morning bears. We woke up early this morning to see if we could see bears feeding early. We got to the viewing station by 6:30am and were informed we missed two earlier. We waited about a half hour but nothing. We had a conversation with the ranger about the flood. She was there early that morning at 5:30am and had to drive through water on the highway. At the entry the parking lot was beginning to flood. She didn’t stay long… smart. She drove back to town and arranged to close the highway. Then the mining company gave her a helicopter flight over the area. By then the boardwalk was washed out and it was flooded everywhere!

Salmon Glacier. We left the bears and started the big drive up to the glacier. It was something like 25 dusty gravel miles. You share the road with the Cambrian Gold Mine trucks.

Salmon Glacier is the 4th largest glacier in Canada. It took awhile to get to the top trying not to kick up too must dust and sometimes it had washboard but overall the road was in good shape. Because it was early 7:30am or so there was very very light traffic going up… almost nothing going down.

On top of the glacier overlook the mosquitos were horrendous and black flies too. It was completely calm air and not really cold. One lone cyclist up there that spent the night under clear skies with meteor showers to watch. He was a pretty hardy guy. Admirable. It’s a steep climb for miles… not to mention all the car dust he ate for 25 miles. (Not 20% grade though).

The glacier was beautiful this morning. Some photos and video to share.

Cleaning Day. We spent the afternoon washing the very, very dirty car from all the recent dirt roads. Even after washing it twice it’s still not perfectly clean but definitely better.

After you wash the outside you have to focus on cleaning the inside groom two weeks of use. The van is looking much better now!

A little afternoon time to relax but the biting flies drove me inside. It’s a warm sunny day but feels nice in the shade and comfortable with the van in the shade too.

Bear viewing trip #3!! After dinner we took another trip across the border to the viewing platform. This time we brought a nice young man named Quinn. He’s been cycling from Prudhoe Bay to Washington. He’s from California.. just graduated UCLA. He was going to ride to the viewing but we offered him a ride. We thought we were skunked on brown bears tonight after waiting about an hour. We did enjoy watching eagles and the salmon spawning. We saw a small black bear come near the walkway. We left disappointed about zero brown bears but driving back about 1/2 mile away we saw a big brown bear in the creek just off the road in a spot with no bushes to block our view! Lucky us and we were happy for Quinn. He really enjoyed that! He’s also looking forward to pancakes and beer garden tomorrow at Community Day🤣

Officially we just had our last day in Alaska!

Where tomorrow? Good question. We think Smithers… maybe farther. We might be running into road closures as we head south toward Vancouver so we may have to reroute in a couple of days.