“I Can, Yukon, We Alcan”

Christine Allegretto alerted Fort Nelson News to a group of cyclists who were travelling from Anchorage to Dawson Creek.

“They are a family of troopers,” she wrote. “Two grandmothers, mothers, sisters, brothers and their children, ages four to 13 years.”
Christine met them when they were staying in Watson Lake.  She said they would be passing through Fort Nelson, and we could probably interview them. She gave us their blog wealcan.blogspot.com.
From the blog we learned that they built a huge fire pit to enjoy the summer solstice in the Yukon. Every morning begins with a meal of seven-grain cereal with brown sugar and whey powder, which the children love.
They do their laundry by rivers, in showers, and infrequently at laundromats. At Burwash Landing four truckers stopped to warn that there were grizzlies up ahead. “We sang loudly and never saw them,” the bloggers wrote.
They are accompanied by a support van and do about 33 miles a day through the Yukon.
“This morning the wonderful White River RV folks let us use their kitchen “tent” to make breakfast. We made pancakes and Tang sitting at a table with real plates, it was a feast!”
Usually they make burritos, hummus and flasks of soup. Bicycling gave them all a chance to enjoy the spectacular scenery, which they claim is, “so much more enjoyable than flying by in a car.”
They describe some of the hardships they encountered: flat tires and lots of insect bites accompanied by fatigue from biking 70 km a day. They also encountered friendly residents along the way, a policeman who patrolled the highway from Burwash Landing dropped by every time he passed to make sure they had everything they needed.
“Three First Nation women talked to us about our trip etc. One then handed us $50 to buy treats for the children. We bought a gallon of chocolate ice cream and cones and ate it all last night. We use the rest of the money to pay for part of the campsite.”
A reporter from Whitehorse interviewed them, took photographs, and gave them fresh vegetables.
“The road will provide,” the children said and indeed it did. They found several beach towels, a big clean pillow, bungee cords, rope, a Rubbermaid tub, a grocery store hand basket, and much more.
After problems with the bikes and a repair guy who told them that they wouldn’t get their bikes fixed before Dawson Creek, they returned to Whitehorse where Dean Eyre, of Cadence Cycling made the the repairs.
“The weather has finally warmed up. We are staying in someone’s backyard with a marvellous bus turned into a camper on the property. It has a wood burning stove in it and it saved our lives as the temperature went down to 5°C during the night.
“We are in Watson Lake! We have passed the 1,000 km marker… We’ve travelled 1000 km. People in town recognize us from the  newspaper so we went and found a paper and there we were. Lots of fun.”
We had intended to stay at the government campsite but the road was too long so we looked around for another site and drove to a building supply area. Turned out there was no place to stay – no hotel rooms, no campsites. We went to the Visitors’ Bureau and the woman there said we could stay in her yard! Next to the lumber supply company. We’re using the toilet and her husband’s office building.”
Two members of the party slept in the school bus that night. Further down the road they came upon a herd of wood bison.
“The herd wandered towards the road and closer and closer to the bikers. More and more approached as the bikers moved on and soon the bikers they were enveloped in the third group. We just stopped there, let them stampede. And they turned away from us to there were cars stopping on the other side. A truck driver was inching his way along, and the bikers asked to be escorted through the herd. All the bikers lined up behind the truck and began crawling through the heard behind it.  However, when the trucker reached the edge of the herd he took off leaving the bikers in the dust.  The bikers were neck and neck with the excited buffalo herd once again, which was right behind them, literally feet away. The heard consisted of babies and Mothers.
“Our tired, mosquito popped, muscle drained, scraped and scarred bikers pulled up the last vestiges of adrenaline in their terror, and with weeping children they peddled as fast as they could; sheer terror!”
The little band rode out of danger and collapsed weeping, and wailing in joy singing for their Lives.  They had been completely silent in order not to frighten the buffalo. The group held services on Sunday.
“They are always very spiritual. Everyone is learning SO much about themselves and God.”
They visited the Liard Hot Springs, and then there were a couple of crashes coming down into Muncho Lake and broken bikes and riders.
“We rode last night to Muncho Lake. The guy in charge was happy to meet us and he encouraged his resident mechanic to fix our bikes. Had to dissemble the lower register and fix things. He checked MAs brakes which she had replaced herself, he tweaked it a bit and checked the other bikes.”
The plan was to make it to Fort Nelson by the weekend, crossing the high point on the Alaska Highway Summit Lake (elevation 4,250 feet) and enter the Northern Rockets Provincial Park.
Here they were tested by a curious bear. “This bear was moving around the tents and a passerby honked, took a picture and scared it away. Later, however, Cindy came out of the tent only to turn around and discover that there he was again 5-feet away.  For good reason they took down the tents and moved about half a mile away.” They suffered no ill effects from their close encounter.
They came upon bears eating strawberries. The bears looked up, then went back to eating as the bikers quickly rode by, a daily occurrence. They complained of the ridiculous hills in the park, and looking back were amazed that they had managed to ride them.
They arrived in Fort Nelson at 4:30 having completed 80 km, all downhill, from Steamboat. They stayed at the campground, swam in the public pool and rested their aching bodies.
We next hear from the crew when they arrived at Wonowon. “We continued on to the pull out, rains come in, pray for protection from bears and from drunk drivers,” the blog states.
“We are in the middle of a torrential lightning storm!  It’s incredible, can’t hear from the other tents and we’re right next to each other.”
They had set up camp, made and ate soup, and watched the storm coming towards them. “ We jumped into our tents. The rain is splashing in puddles up under the rain fly and under my head. It is going to get wet, hope storm passes quickly before we are drenched. Either way we are safely in bed. Lots of prayers. Thunder SO loud and SO close. Rumbling across the whole sky! Our tent is being blown around, but it is holding its own. There are no dumpsters in this pullout, just gravel. Tons of truck traffic on the road. We haven’t seen a bear in days. Now we have taken care of flooding. Some of us were sitting in 3 inches of water.”
They moved the tents and had to fill the bags with rocks because they couldn’t put stakes into the gravel.
Cindy wrote, “Christine Allegretto, from Edmonton, sent us a care package by her friends who were coming up to Liard. She’s the neighbor of the people whose yard we stayed in. She’s keeping in touch through texts and reads the blog; so nice! We will be lifelong friends.
Contents of the package: the Whitehorse newspaper, 12 Sticks in fun flavors. Class and Francine instant rice, Reese’s PB cups, three boxes of Quaker oats, variety packs, bags of lifesavers, lots of granola bars, friends bags baked rice crackers, and Velcro. (We had stopped at their garage sale and I was looking for Velcro). Christine remembered. So nice! A big fat thank you to Christine Allegretto and delivery friends.”
We thank Christine for letting us know about these intrepid cyclers ‘where the women are strong and all the children are above average’.
The journey is continuing read about it on their blog wealcan.blogspot.com

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