The ALCAN diary, Episode 2, The Wait
See episode 1, the beginning, posted yesterday.
Not knowing if AAA would send a tow truck or when, I started to prepare for a long cold night on the ALCAN. I arranged the front half of the rear compartment so I could sleep in it and Donner in his passenger seat bed. I tried sleeping in the front seat twice before with zero success, once on a deserted peninsula in Newfoundland in 2002 when the electrical system faulted late one rainy cold night and then again three years before this 100 miles down the ALCAN when tent camping was not permitted within 50 miles of Destruction Bay because of bears. In the rear, I would be able to lie down, but in about seven square feet of space. I then decided to make Donner's his dinner before it got really dark.
Before I had time to make Donner's dinner, an old truck pulled up from the south and the driver rolled down his window, prompting all three of his small dogs to leap on him and bark and yap away at the intruder, Donner. As it turns out, one of the passersby had alerted someone in Destruction Bay about me, and that person called the truck driver, Ron Eddington, who runs the local towing service, but is also a mechanic. Ron, a grizzled 64-year old who has lived and worked in the area for 30 years, jumped out and listened to my story of what happened. " It's you fuel filter," he said, and quickly got under the Defender to verify it. He called an associate, Charly Ekland, who had one and would stop by in the morning to deal with it as it was too dark to work on it now. Ron then said he had lo leave to help a woman 10 miles north whose wheel was broken.
Not too long after that, a RCMP vehicle rolled in from the north. Kim, the supervisor of the Beaver Creek unit, got out with his wife Fran. He had been off duty but then was called to check on the woman 10 miles up the highway whose wheel was broken. Someone must have alerted him to my situation. We discussed the situation and, while Fran kindly took Donner for a walk, he assured me that Ron would return to deal with my situation, including towing me to his tow yard a few miles down the road in the abandoned resort and garage. I then told Kim I was going to make Donner's dinner and he and his wife left. But not for long.
I noticed the lights of Kim's patrol car standing still for a few minutes on the crest of the hill I had come down hours before. Then I saw his vehicle turn around and come my way again. He and Fran got out of the vehicle and approached me. "You probably should not make your dog any food, he said, and get back in you car. There's a huge grizzly coming down the Hiway this direction a few hundred feet up the road." When an RCMP officer in the Yukon calls a grizzly huge, you can bet it's huge, so after the three of us talked quickly about my preparations, Kim headed back in the direction of the grizzly, telling me he was going to try to scare it away. It was now dark.
I loaded everything including Donner in the Defender, got ready my bear spray and whistle, put on my safety glasses, and placed my "brief case" over my window and sat there quiet and motionless for a long time. After 30 minutes or so, I assumed the grizzly passed or Ron succeeded in scaring him away.
Not wanting to waste car battery, I turned off all the light in the Defender but turned on the warning flasher when I heard a vehicke coming. It was only then that I realized that both of my brand new LED headlights had two or more of their seven lights out. Nice, huh? As before, all of the few cars and trucks that came by stopped to see if everything was okay.
At about 10:30, a tow truck pulled up from the south. AAA had come through. But since they tow to the nearest garage only, and I had no idea where that was and what I would do when I got there after midnight, and since Ron was sure he knew what the problem was and had a solution, and would tow me to his place for the night, I took a chance and sent the tow truck on its way, thereby exhausting all my free tows for the year with AAA.
About 30 minutes later, Ron's tow truck with his trailer attached with the car of the woman whose wheel had broken on it whizzed by me so I guessed he would be back for me soon. I pulled my sleeping bag over me in the front seat against the cold and tried to get some sleep. By this time, traffic was non-existent on the ALCAN.
Shortly after midnight, I heard a truck pull up from the south and woke up. It was Ron coming to tow me. But he was in his old truck again and not his tow truck and there was no trailer attached to it. Apparently, the belt on his tow truck had broken and he was going to pull me by his tow rope to his tow yard, several miles down the steep hill. i would have to stay in the Defender and steer and apply the brakes, he said.He moved quickly with minimum instruction to me. .He attached his tow rope, told me to get in my vehicke, and started to pull. I had forgotten to turn the ignition on and so could not steer, and started to flash my lights for him to stop as the Defender came within a few feet of going over the steep drop off on the edge of the narrow shoulders. We corrected that and got on our way again down the cold, dark, empty ALCAN.
Not much farther down the road, I noticed thst Ron's truck was getting ahead of the 10 feet that his tow rope was. Then I saw the end of his tow rope slipping away from me. He had attached it to my winch cable and the cable severed his rope. Fortunately, I had my own tow rope in my off-road recovery bag, so we attached that and got on our way to Ron's tow yard, just a few miles down the ALCAN, the only thing on the ALCAN between Beaver Creek, 82 miles to the north, and Destruction Bay, 36 miles to the south. I guess it was my lucky day.
We arrived at Ron's yard after 12:30 and Ron unhitched the Defender feet off the ALCAN. Little was exchanged between us. Ron was exhausted and I was too. He told me that he and Charly would be by in the morning to replace my fuel filter and get me on my way. His last words to me were, "get ready because it's going to be cold tonight."
I rapidly closed up the Defender, put Donner in his front bed, covered him with my summer sleeping bag, clumsily climbed from the front seat to Donner's 7-square foot bed in the rear, got into my winter sleeping bag fully dressed, braced for a very uncomfortable night, and tried to get some sleep.
To be continued.
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