Southbound at Km 155 on Highway, the Stewart-Cassiar, you come to the junction of Highways 37 and 37A, known as Meziadin Junction. Highway 37A, known as "the Glacier Highway", is an exceptionally dramatic, 65-km-long paved road that leads west and south to Stewart, and Hyder, Alaska.

Click on each photo to greatly enlarge it.

These photographs are all © 2017 by Murray Lundberg, and are not to be copied without express permission.

Southbound on Highway 37, this is the approach to Meziadin Junction in late January. Highway 37A is straight ahead (which is actually west at this point), while you turn left to continue south on Highway 37.

BC Highway 37A wanders alongside Meziadin Lake for a few miles before heading into the heart of the Coastal Mountains on its way to Stewart.

The Meziadin Lake highway maintenance camp at about Km 65, in late June. Mileposts are measured from the Canada-US border, which is 5.6 km past the "Welcome to Stewart" sign at the Bear River bridge.

The incredible scenery starts almost immediately - this photo was shot about 6 minutes from Meziadin Junction, at about Km 58, in late June.

At Km 54.8, the Department of Highways has a works yard with two large shelters for storing equipment and sand/gravel for sanding the highway in the winter.

Southbound at the Surprise Creek Bridge, Km 52.8.

The large paved pullout at Km 52 is a chain-up area for trucks in the winter. In the summer it's a great place to stop and savour your surroundings, as this is where the most dramatic section of the highway begins.

Granite and ice in spectacular combinations make this one of the finest short pieces of road in British Columbia.

When you're looking at the incredible scenery along the highway, keep in mind that there is commercial traffic using the highway - most of it very heavy logging and mining trucks. This truck was hauling gold ore from Barrick Gold's Eskay Creek mine (now closed) to the port at Stewart.

A short walk up a gated road at Km 50 brings you to this avalanche mortar station which hasn't been used in many years. Now, it's more efficient to drop avalanche-triggering bombs by helicopter.

Driving slowly when that's reasonable, taking advantage of pullouts, and keeping your head swivelling will reward you with sights like this. This large glacier is only visible for a few seconds between the peaks at about Km 45.

A couple of the many unnamed glaciers along the Glacier Highway.

A closer look at the glacier seen to the right in the photo above.

An unnamed glacier at Km 42.6.

At about Km 42, a very narrow paved road leads to a long-abandoned rest area. It was closed because of avalanche and rockfall danger, and because the Bear Glacier had retreated so far that it could no longer be seen from the rest area. Alders are closing in on the road so it's only 5-6 feet wide now, and there are no facilities at the large turnaround where the rest area used to be.

There are plenty of waterfalls along The Glacier Highway, but 2 particularly fine ones can be seen up close along the road to the abandoned rest area.

The star of the Glacier Highway is the Bear Glacier. This photo shows the first view of the Bear Glacier and Strohn Lake as you're southbound, from Km 41.6.

It's a short summer at the Bear Glacier, and even in the summer, luck counts when looking for great photos of it.

Bear Glacier as seen from the edge of the road on September 15, 2002. The glacier used to fill the whole valley, but in the 1940s it began to retreat rapidly. Strohn Lake formed in the basin left behind, dammed by the remaining ice. The lake would ocassionally break through the glacial dam, causing catastrophic flooding downstream. This is known as a jökulhlaup, the Icelandic term for the event - between 1958 and 1962, there were five jökulhlaups here, and the damage can still be seen right to Stewart. By 1967, the glacier had retreated far enough that the lake was no longer dammed. The cabin in the climax of the 2002 movie Insomnia was built on the shore of Strohn Lake. The toe of the Bear Glacier seen in June 2016. Note how far the glacier has retreated in only 14 years. A series of 5 photos taken between 1975 and 2015 clearly show the Bear Glacier's retreat.

A rare look at the upper part of the Bear Glacier and the unnamed peak behind it, in late April.

Over the years, I've spent many hours around Km 40 looking at not just the Bear Glacier, but the incredible peaks and spires that surround it. This photo was shot in late April.

Southbound at Km 39.5 on a rainy day in mid-September (that is fairly typical Stewart-area weather). The area above the road to the right with much smaller trees shows how far the glacier extended just 60 years ago!

The sign notes that avalanches are a year-round danger at about Km 38. This photo was shot in late April.

This spectacular mass of snow and ice hangs over the highway at the avalanche area at about Km 38.

Another view of the avalanche area in late April.

Heading north out of Stewart, towards Bear Pass, in August 1975, when I was living in Stewart and working underground at the huge Granduc Copper Mine. This was a nasty road in wet weather, but it's all paved now. High on the slope directly ahead is the location of the original road - it had to be way up there to get around the Bear Glacier.

Bear River Canyon is a short but dramatic section of the road between about Km 28 and 29.

Once you get south of the Bear River Canyon, the difference in the weather is often dramatic. For several kilometers, there are waterfalls everywhere in the Spring or in wet weather. This photo of a waterfall at about Km 22 was shot in late April.

These cascades, or series of waterfalls at about Km 20 were also shot in late April.

At Km 17.8 is a set of gates that are used to close the highway to northbound traffic in the event of an avalanche or other problem. This photo was shot in early October.

The Ward's Pass Cemetery, Stewart's current cemetery, is at Km 13.2 - this photo looks north up the highway.

At Km 6, you cross the Bear River - this is the view to the north.

As soon as you cross the Bear River Bridge, there is a "Welcome to Stewart" sign - the one in the photo was new in 2017. For lots of information about Stewart and the area beyond including Hyder and the Granduc Road (and many more photos), see our Stewart pages.