Alaskan Ghost Town, Trapped in Canada | Destination Adventure

[Music] this week i'll be tackling the first leg of the only section of my route north that really makes me nervous the casio highway this 1000 section of highway bridges the gap between northwest bc and the yukon territory but leaving kit wanga you're also leaving behind cell phone reception wi-fi amenities and assistance and so far we're off to a bad start about 20 minutes into my trip yesterday the check engine light came on which has only happened once before in the motorhome but this system it's the same as my pickup it's the old obd1 system so you can actually scan your computer codes by jumping the a and b terminal on the computer and then the check engine light will actually flash your code this was throwing uh code 32 which is egr so i pulled everything off pulled the egr off and it looked totally fine but what i think was happening is this plunger was getting stuck on a piece of carbon and staying open so i came back to service and started phoning around apparently this electronic egr is not really in existence anymore so i spent about four hours phoning all around british columbia hoping somebody would have an old one left on the shelf and sure enough in burns lake they had one on the shelf and looking at the box i think it's probably been there since 95. and i have family and smithers that offered to go and pick this up for me because it's a long ways from where i am now and i met them in smithers so a huge huge thank you to jared for picking that up for me just swapped it out we're ready to go let's whip it left [Music] gonna be honest with you guys i think this egr valve has been malfunctioning for quite some time it has to stay open for more than two minutes before it'll throw the engine code and now the motorhome is running so nice and burning way less gas which is really nice the first leg of this trip we're actually actually going to be doing a out and back detour off of the casio highway and dropping down into stuart for a couple different adventures and this year with the borders being open i can go get hydrized [Music] the casio highway is one of the most beautiful drives in british columbia the 37a is a must do because it runs right past the beautiful bear glacier unfortunately this glacier is receding very fast and it has shrunk noticeably since my visit last year nevertheless any day you can see a glacier right from the highway that is a good day but with today's heavy downpour it's just a quick stop then we're off to stuart [Music] with the motorhome back and running in tip-top shape i can confidently press on north and once again these little towns from last year welcomed me back with open arms this is stuart bc and hyder alaska for the next few days this is home hyder alaska was a boom town a gold town back in the 1920s there were over 10 000 people that lived here and then came the crash which you know 1929 that hurt followed by the great depression and you know we were still holding our own but when world war ii came about men were no longer needed to mine gold and so they closed the mine and by war's end the population of hyder had dropped to 17 people hence welcome to the friendliest ghost town in alaska that we were put on the roster of ghost towns in north america and we like the sound of it so we kept it we have winter here winter means we get 20 to 30 feet of snowfall annually we're in a temperate rainforest so it doesn't take much for things to rot and the weight of the snow and buildings collapse and mother nature she claims it back quickly there weren't stone or cement foundations they were log foundations and when stuff went down it just went down it just decomposed and the hillside behind me was completely full of houses [Music] my mom and my stepdad felt that there was going to be another crash another great depression they wanted to get their family out of the city into the country in a place that they could live off the land so heider is far enough north no one in their right mind is going to want to live here far enough south that you can live off the land and in an area not likely to be adversely affected by social political or economic change so i was 17 when my mother brought me here and you can imagine how happy i was to be here like not and as soon as i turned 18 i shot back down to oregon like my butt was on fire got a bit of education when i came back i was 21. i was hired as a bartender so i was paid for a social life with that pay i bought the last eight-track player in canada and so i didn't have to listen to cbc radio and i didn't have to live with my mother and i've been here ever since oh wow yeah [Music] life in haider these days is a bit sad because when i got here in the 70s and i was in my 20s there were a town full of strong independent aggressive people in their 30s 40s 50s and they built businesses and they did things and then we got old right now the average age in hyder is 59. the average age in the rest of the united states canada i think is 23. so we have a very aged population and if you ask me what's going on in heider i would tell you it's a bunch of old farts on social security drinking beer waiting to die and that is what has happened we don't have young people the potential is here we are the most southerly place in alaska you can drive to we're in a densely populated bear area we're on the pacific northwest migratory flight way so we get birds here you don't get anywhere else we get a lot of bird watchers here we are 23 miles from the fifth largest glacier in north america the largest glacier in north america you can drive to amazing sledding i mean there's just like all these reasons to come here but we don't have people we don't have the entrepreneurs so those of us that are left myself included it's getting harder and harder for me to run my store maintain my home uh you can tell by looking behind me i haven't maintained my yard that's not supposed to be a wheat field that's supposed to be lawn uh because i just i there's only so much i can do anymore and we don't have those young people to fill in the gaps but we also have a lot of people that will just do things there's a log underneath one of the floats down at the float plane dock the the dock where our plane comes in and someone is just going to pull it out they're not going to wait for a piece of paper or you know a phone call and a piece of paper and a possible paycheck no it's in the way move it we are kind of that way um we operate on the cornflake rule you don't poop in my cornflakes i don't poop in your cornflakes we all get along just fine we really are a peaceful lot and very respectful of each other i don't have to agree with you but i'm not going to make a stink over as long as you're not doing anything to hurt yourself or hurt others have a nice day and that's hyder my late husband used to say hater's not for everyone and that's what i like most about the place and he's right it is rare unique it's special as i say i wouldn't change it but i'm the strange duck i'm one of the only two businesses left in heider [Music] [Applause] this year heading north i brought a secret weapon being the trials bike and of course it was great to finally get through and see hider but the borders being open means we can get through alaska to bc on the other side and do some exploring it's a bit of a rainy day today but i'd love to get up and try and see the glacier my only concern is fuel because this trials bike has such a small tank i have this auxiliary tank on the front and the theory is that it's all uphill on the way there so if i run out of fuel i should be able to just coast back [Applause] [Music] [Music] wow look at that oh my god oh it's amazing look at it wow i'm not sure if this is the lookout or not we passed the tow quite a while ago and i've just been climbing and climbing and climbing look at this we're like right on top of the glacier unbelievable before i get out the good camera i'm going to push on a little bit further because i can see the the fog is starting to settle down in here i want to get a shot of the whole thing look at this fog moving in so fast let's keep going look at that view it was nice it's just glorious i have a few the fog is not going to burn off for a while so we're going to keep pushing on i knew i had enough gas to get to the glacier and back i brought extra gas because at the end of this road is the old grand duke mine let's go see if we can find it [Applause] the grand duke mine is famous for a tunnel that they board through the mountain going 10 kilometers as far as i know that tunnel has been cemented shut but there's the secondary tunnel i think that i'm in right now that was for the power this one i can see the end way way down there it's definitely not 10 kilometers though it's unbelievable the amount of water coming into this tunnel right now what's crazy about all this water is that i don't know where it's going it's coming into the mine shaft and it's not flowing out this end it doesn't look like it's running out that end all that water is probably going into some sort of underground aquifer and this is the beginning of a massive sinkhole look at that view you can see the glacier over there that's kind of funny that level of fog is just hanging right there i kind of have a feeling it's not going to clear up today but let's keep pushing on the mine's got to be close now wow this is what's left from an avalanche slide in the winter the bike just died randomly it and it died so abruptly it seemed like lost of i lost spark put it on reserve fired right up so run whole run reserve till it's empty but we're gonna have to there it is frank there we go full tank between the fog the rain and the mud this was a wet ride but with a view like this it's hard to complain i wish i could have filmed more for you guys but it's a big climb to the top and nestled in a valley surrounded by glaciers we've officially arrived at the abandoned grand duke mine [Music] check that baby out i wonder if that's part of the old tunnel and i'm guessing this would have been a processing plant here nothing left but the cement there is a company that's opened up another mine down here that's who's in the camp here so i can't can't look around too too much let's go to the point there left right here dang it this whole flat spot i've been putting around on here for sure this was an old camp setup i thought there'd be some more stuff left behind but they cleaned it up pretty well i didn't realize this river was here i was hoping i could drop down the bank and then climb up there so man pretty remote spot for a breakdown but at least it's nice out here i think i figured it out i had this problem once before where the coil was not connecting properly up in here and i kicked it over a few times i've got spark now so i'm going to put the tank back on and give it a try [Music] things aren't looking so good for me here unfortunately as you can tell i had a pretty bad day yesterday unfortunately the trials bike had ingested something that was not fuel or air resulting in the need of a full top end rebuild not really a big deal just not something i can source parts for while i'm on the road and as far as breakdowns go this was a pretty bad situation 47 kilometers way up into the mountains from the motorhome but lucky for me seven kilometers up the mountain from where i broke down there was a mine camp so i pushed the bike there they were kind enough to offer me a ride to the other side of the summit leaving me about 30 kilometers pushing back and that took many hours in turf bike boots and then the final six kilometers i did catch a ride with a family so big thanks to everyone that helped me get off the mountain and just to ease your guys's mind i always carry this spot emergency gps tracker this goes straight to search and rescue but it is for life-threatening situations only 47 kilometers is a long ways but it's not life-threatening so i couldn't justify going to search and rescue for it now two breakdowns in one episode that's a real bummer and i'm sorry about that but it's not something that i want to hide from you guys as the channel gets bigger so do the adventures and so does the risk a lot of people do these adventures after the videos go out and i don't want to hide the risk of and the danger of these situations so i'm leaving these ones in there but the adventure continues even without the bike i have tons of things planned so we are still alaska bound thanks for watching everybody as always take nothing but pictures leave nothing but footprints and i'll catch you on the next one [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Destination Adventure

Views: 597,976

Keywords: Alaska, Abandoned, abandoned town, ghost town, gost town in alaska, isolated, isolated ghost town, abandoned city, URBEX, urban exploring, history, historic, historical, Documentary, VLOG, Travel Vlog, Motorhome, motorhome travel, North, Destination Adventure, Hyder, Hyder Alaska, Stewart, British Columbia

Id: bbt1Q3kx6xg

Length: 21min 6sec (1266 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 16 2022