Sunday, June 21, Father's Day! Cold morning with south wind, so we stayed in the sleeping bags and left late. It seems only fitting that we should end this portion of the journey with another nasty, cold headwind. Also, we have a 1000 ft elevation gain before the drop down the other side of White Pass.
By afternoon Cal's failing gears had gotten the best of him and he was exhausted -- only about half of his gears were usable on the hills. About that time we encountered 5 black bears. The first one ran away, but the sow with cubs didn't know what to think of us and didn't let us pass. When we moved over to the far side of the road she also moved her little family over there. We had a 45 minute stare down with her before a pickup finally came along and shielded us so we could ride past her.
We knew there was a log cabin ahead so we decided to bunk there for the night. But the "log cabin" turned out to be a long-gone boom town with just an outhouse to mark the spot. We knew we couldn't make it to Skagway in the wind and cold with Cal's gears not functioning, so, yes, we put our tarp down on the floor of the outhouse and rolled out the sleeping bags and locked ourselves in the smelly outhouse. We tried the trick of putting the bag of food in the back of the trash bin, but some little critter got in and nibbled on our peanut butter and honey -- at least the bears didn't get it. Total miles today 39 hard ones. GPS N59-45.552 W134-57.316, elev 2619.