A jaded community

Sunday, August 12, 2007

ISKUT, B.C. — Our journey today provided me with a new way of describing a place that looks like it was hit by a cyclone. Our trailer looked like it had ridden over the Cassiar Highway — which it had, lumps, washboards, dipsy-doodles, potholes, gravelly bits and all. When we got settled at the Red Goat RV park in this tiny burg and I unlocked the trailer door, I was greeted by a jumble of shoes at the door, the sofa about six inches out from the wall with the cushions tossed to the floor, two platters and a dictionary flung out of the back cupboards above our two easy chairs, and the dining chairs, still tethered by a bungee cord around their legs, all standing crooked. On top of every horizontal surface was a thin film of brown dust. Welcome home!
What the drive lacked in a smooth driving surface, it gained in scenery. Even as we lurched from one dip to the next, we oohed and aahed at the monumental mountains, majestic pine trees, sparkling lakes and sweeping vistas of the Cassiar Mountain range.
There is still active gold mining in the area, and just before lunchtime we arrived at Jade City, little more than a couple of turnouts on either side with jade-selling establishments, one of which had recently closed down. The active one displayed great chunks of raw jade on tables and on the ground, some as big as doghouses, and a whirling circular saw that was slowly eating through a large piece of jade on a worktable. Beside the table, the dust had turned the nearby shrubs and fireweed a ghostly white.
This part of BC is the world’s greatest source of jade, and the establishment boasts on a sign outside "We mine it; We design it." However, the execution of those designs is done overseas in southeast Asia and New Zealand, and then shipped back! We looked at the glass cases inside, full of figures of Inuit trappers, bears, moose, pigs, cats, frogs in various sizes, as well as chess sets, cars and boats. There were also hundreds of earring sets, necklaces, rings and pins for sale. I found a lovely pendant necklace, and Val selected a carved grizzly bear with a salmon in its mouth.
A little further down the road, we pulled over for our lunch, looking over a tributary of the jade-green Dease River flowing past a small island, where a little cabin nestled between tall pine trees. It was lovely.
The Cassiar Highway is paved intermittently. The rest is either seal-coated (tamped gravel with an oil coating) or loose gravel. It is often narrow, with underbrush nibbling at its edges, and it also has a number of steep grades, as much as eight per cent, which put our truck engine through its paces. Once or twice Val stopped to engage the four-wheel drive to provide a better grip on some washboard sections. Every now and then we passed a sign noting "Road Conditions — OPEN, 24 hours". We had heard reports that earlier in the season there had been a washout that closed the highway for a week.
We recognized the spot when we got to it. On our right, the hillside was raw earth with broken trees, and the road itself was newly graded, but the left side dropped off precipitously and we could see rubble and stones down the hillside. There was one very narrow section with bright orange cones where the worst of the washout had occurred. We were glad it was a sunny, dry day with no sign of instability at this spot.
Services were few and far between the length of the road we traveled. Several places may have provided fuel and other amenities in the past, but were closed down and boarded up now. It’s too bad such a lovely route appears to be so neglected.
We couldn’t even reserve a campsite today because our cell phones wouldn’t work here and there were hardly any places to phone from. When I did find a functioning pay phone, no one would answer my call at the camp. So we had to pull in on a wing and a prayer — and luckily, there was space for us at our second choice. We were a bit worried, because the first camp we came to had posted a sign saying "full".
The campground is small and set below the highway beside a beautiful lake, surrounded by mountains and tall pine trees. It was a bit tight driving through with our big rig to pick a spot, which the owner invited us to do. We settled for a pull-through in a less picturesque spot because we couldn’t find a lakeside site. We felt quite lucky later on when we heard another rig pull in, head toward the lake, and crunch ominously against a tree! The poor people had sideswiped the tree, which ripped off the protruding grip handle by the trailer door. It took them quite a while to figure out how to get out of their jam without doing further damage. It could happen to anyone!
An interesting feature of the Red Goat RV Park is not goats, but llamas! There are three of them wandering about the grounds, and one has a cowbell around its neck which clangs gently.