The day before we’d started the drive northbound up the Cassiar Highway (Hwy 37) but stopped to camp at Meziadin Lake (prior blog post here).
Meziadin Lake Provincial Park, Lake and Campground lie east and just slightly north of Stewart. Between the two is Bear Glacier, a massive expanse of slow-moving blue ice that flows into what is now known as Strohn Lake.
It’s ice once filled all of Bear River Pass. It wasn’t until the 1940s that the glacier began its retreat and Strohn Lake was formed.
Although today’s the day we would continue northbound on the Cassiar Highway, we thought the short trip west of the lake / an out and back to see the glacier was worth doing.
We saw a black bear walking down the road and enjoyed watching the clouds swirl around the heads of slate grey peaks with skirts of bright green trees. Winter had not quite taken its vacation from the area and snow patches filled the deeper crevices, but spring run-off in the form of long trickling waterfalls was starting. Once we started to see that characteristic turquoise green water we knew the glacier was near!
On the drive back to Meziadin we saw a cinnamon-colored bear that we think was the first grizzly we’d seen, but we weren’t close enough to confirm.
Back on the Cassiar Highway, the drive was filled with on and off rain showers, thickly-wooded trees on either side, and massive jagged and bare, black-blue mountain ranges, draped in webs of snow. Every now and again, a break in the trees or a hill provided a glimpse of the whole mountain with trees from the ground sprinting towards the top, but never reaching it. Rivers and lakes revealed themselves randomly and were either deep grey or icy baby blue.
We stopped briefly at Kanaskan Lake’s Campground but decided to keep driving to Dease Lake’s Campground instead. Our third bear of the day padded along the road. He was a huge black bear with massive paws and a face that showed his age.
