Stewart, BC and Hyder, Alaska harbor

The harbor of Stewart, BC and Hyder, Alaska, is a huge inlet from the Pacific Ocean and was once a major shipping and traffic center. There is only one road into Stewart and that road follows the coast to Hyder, Alaska where it dead ends. The two towns are about a mile apart along the cliffs and an avalanche cuts Hyder off. Our fishing guide, Ron, was very informed about the mining and history of the area. Photo 1 shows the harbor where it comes to Stewart and there's not much there anymore. Notice the mountains come right down to the shore. There were 40,000 people living in those mountains during the gold rush. The second photo shows the entrance to an old mine. He pointed out numerous mines along the harbor, but most were way up the sides of mountains and barely visible now. How they got up there to mine I will never understand. It was an overcast day, but in the 3rd photo along the ridge is a glacier coming down maybe 1/4 of the way; the grey center strip left to right, just above the bits of snow. The glacier filled the area down to the "smiley face", as Ken called it, just above the trees, when Ron came to the area in 1974. It has shrunk that much. In photo 4 the mist makes it a bit difficult, but on the right side, in a tree, you can see the white heads of a pair of bald eagles. There is a nest behind some of the trees in that area. We saw 5 different bald eagles that day. They were magnificent. Finally, on our trip in, we saw the black bear in photo 5. Ron said it was quite typical to see them along the shoreline each day he went fishing and he occasionally would see the white bear. It isn't unusual to see seals and whales also, but it wasn't our luck on that day.