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Published: October 3rd 2022
Another morning, and we are in
Skagway, the only town on our itinerary that is connected by roads to any other place. Also, the only day with cloud and some rain. We ate breakfast quickly, to get to the bus by 8:30.
On the bus, we settled in for the day. The guide/driver drove around the streets of Skagway pointing out the highlights of the tiny town. The restored main streets were certainly most picturesque, but we also remarked on the small school (classes up to high school) and business centre. The train station and the tour boats are the biggest businesses, limited in time from May to September.
Along the highway, we saw scenery reminiscent of BC and western Alberta. After only about 30 – 40 minutes, we actually crossed the international border into BC. I hadn’t realized that the province was this far north. Although the trip was called a Yukon tour, we traveled through BC more than Alaska or the Yukon. Crossing the border was fun, even in these days of security against terrorism. All passengers were asked to hold their passports or birth certificates and drivers licenses up near their faces. The border agent walked
Tutshi Lake
Deep water and good fishingdown the aisle the peering at us. Finished.
Occasionally, across the valley, we could see the narrow-gauged train we would be taking back in the afternoon. It was surprisingly long. Eventually we cross into the Yukon, where we saw
Tutshi Lake, which means “dark” in
Tlingit , no doubt because of the depth. We saw the world’s smallest desert, created when a volcanic lake slowly leaked away, leaving only sand behind. It was the size of a good city park, and small evergreens were gradually encroaching. Probably one day tourists won’t notice it except for the sign.
Travelling further, we arrive at our lunch spot. On the far side of
Carcross , a couple has developed a lunch location for all the cruise tours. They served us and many others a delicious and hearty lunch of BBQ chicken, baked beans and pie.
Nearby they created a museum full of stuffed animals that were killed by road accidents and other non-intentional events. The taxidermy was well done, including realistic poses. Some of the animals were actually ancient creatures now extinct. One was a
giant bison which had been found frozen in a nearby glacier. While Ruth suspected that the accompanying
sabre-tooth lions were fabricated from modern animal specimens, most of the bison was original. There was also a polar bear, reported to be the largest so preserved. It attracted Ruth’s eye because it was caught near her old haunt,
Cambridge Bay . Outside was a small zoo of local animals, particularly birds. We wandered for quite some time, enjoying the relaxed atmosphere and mild air.
After this interlude, we drove to Carcross, an eccentric village on the shores of
Lake Bennett . (The town had changed its name from Caribou Crossing to save the mail being delivered to the other dozen towns of the same name.) The Lake is the headwaters for the
Yukon River and an important goal for the would-be
gold-rush miners. The miners came up the west coast on ships, then climbed the treacherous route we had just bussed. To bring up the mandatory one ton of goods they hiked up and down many times. Finally, they loaded their belongings onto anything that would float across Lake Bennett to follow the Yukon River to the
Klondike . Pictures show that Carcross for a brief time was a municipal hub, but now it consists of a few dozen homes, a one-room
Lake Bennett
Headwaters of the Yukon River library, and a crazily decorated general store and tourist trap.
So onto the main event – the trip down on the narrow-gauge railway. The
railway was originally conceived to serve the gold rush. It was built in a record 18 months, but the gold rush expired first. We were amazed to learn that, in spite of the speed with which the railway was built at the turn of the twentieth century under the harshest of conditions, only two men were killed in industrial accidents, although over thirty did die of disease. In spite of misfortunes, this was a profitable goods train until its demise in the
Hunt Brothers’ run-up of silver prices in the nineteen-seventies. As a tourist train, it is now the most profitable railway in the world.
We boarded the train at
Fraser , the Canadian Customs control point (our passport pictures held by faces again). We were treated to a bottle of water shaped like one of the train cars! Soon enough we began to experience some of the terror the gold-rush people must have lived through. The drop-off on the side of the train was so sheer that passengers warned each other about congregating too
much on that side! The builders wasted no energy on creating any amount of superfluous leeway. On one side the rock face was close enough to scrape a careless hand; on the other it fell away for hundreds of feet down to the river below. At certain sites, the track wound tightly over and around a tributary, briefly letting us see the front of the train dipping ever-further down. We were on the rock side of the train car, but I stood in the aisle and hung over the other passengers to see into the river valley – complete with that sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach.
Finally, the terrain gentled, and we could catch our breath while passing through the lush green deciduous tress of the lower valley. Skagway emerged from the forest. The train stopped at the old, restored station. We disembarked, slightly befuddled by such an adventurous ride.
This was our opportunity to see Skagway and have our last beer in our last port. We checked out the museum in the station. This showed the
one-ton pile of mandatory goods, required by the Canadian government to prevent starvation and illness of over-enthusiastic gold miners.
Skagway street
How it must have looked, but tidied up In fact, it looked quite meager to us who have such specialized winter gear and rations. Hard to think of dealing with a waxed trench coat or flour and baking powder while struggling over the cliffs and boulders of the mountains. Several of the well-restored buildings along the two main streets were developed as museums, such as the apothecary and the general store, sort of Heritage Park in situ.
We checked out the famous (we were told)
Red Onion bar , but it was exceedingly hectic with tourists. We wandered a bit more and came across a bar that wasn’t particularly interesting but probably was entirely authentic. We gazed out people taking horse and carriage rides or enjoying their own wandering. Gradually, we became aware that across the street was a weaving shop, which we had just glanced at before. The siren call of shopping wooed us there. The prices were reasonable for the artistry displayed in the finished work but again were beyond our budgets. Finally, we agreed that the cushion covers were gorgeous and when split would make excellent framed pieces. We spent considerable time debating which was the best and walked back to the ship satisfied.
This
Cruise ships at Skagway
Full day and relaxing evening walk was quite long, but the way was diverting. We stopped to investigate a congregation of people at a stream in a small public park. The salmon were swimming upstream. Nearer our ship, we examined quite closely the cliff painted with ship’s flags and logos. Earlier, our guide had told us that the higher they climbed to paint the flag, the more the crew respected the ship’s captain. We didn’t find anything for our ship, although we did for an earlier and smaller ship of the same name.
This was our evening to check out the ship’s swimming pool. The pool itself was quite small and full of boys. Even so, we persisted in swimming and having fun ourselves. Swimming in the pool was an odd experience. By this time, we were out in the Gulf of Alaska, with the whole stretch of the Pacific Ocean southwest of us, so the ship was rolling slightly (it was very well stabilized). This made the pool act like a wave pool.
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Isabel Gibson
non-member comment
Another fascinating day of just-enough history and natural science, supported by amazing sights (& sites). I love the border-crossing protocol - maybe we can get it exported to other borders.