Summit area west of Fraser
Enid and I have now walked on the Chilkoot Trail, at least the first few hundred metres. This morning we drove to Skagway (or Skaguay, as it has and continues to be spelled both ways) which is just a bit more than an hour from Carcross.
However we first stopped in the town of Carcross, where we got our water container refilled at the visitor’s center, and then Enid went shopping in the general store across the street. I didn’t make it there in time to pull her from the store, so by the time I got there after filling the water container, she’d already decided she needed a new pair of mitts. She said “I am not taking them to Australia!”
I do have to admit that they are nice mitts though. Then on the way out she spied some caribou tufting, though nothing really caught her eye. However, the clerk at the till said “we have lots more on the other side” and proceeded to point them out as well. We did find a very nice work that made its way into our travel purchases.
Along the way we stopped at Log Cabin, the historical site which was the Canadian customs post on the White Pass trail during the Klondike gold rush. There is nothing there now but a number of information signs. It is where the White Pass and Yukon railway crosses the highway, and by coincidence a train came by, so I got some pictures. The train was only half full. Two hikers also showed up there, as you can hike out eight miles from the end of the Chilkoot trail to here, instead of taking the train back to Carcross or Skagway. They were quite excited to have finished the trip, which they had done in three days.
Around the border is very interesting topography. It is a high alpine area with may pothole lakes, and rugged stone, called the “moonscape” area. At one spot there are hundreds of inukshuk that tourists have built all over the rocks.
At Skagway we walked around the old town, which is very definitely a tourist trap. Almost every other store sold jewellery. You could get everything from very high end carvings and sculptures for up over ten thousand dollars to very cheap costume jewellery for just ten dollars. We did find a very nice teapot in the Russia Store, and it too is now on its way home with us. We hope it will survive as the clerk packed it really well, and we’ve got it stowed away in a safe part of one of our packing tubs.
After shopping and a brief stop in the museum, we went the short distance to the old site of Dyea. Now there is nothing there but the decayed remains of a few buildings, though once over five thousand people lived here during the Klondike gold rush. There is also a cemetery where a large number of the gold seekers are buried who died in an avalanche on April 3, 1898. This is also where the Chilkoot Trail starts, and it does so very steeply. It definitely would have been a challenge for the Klondikers to have had to haul a ton of supplies across this trail. And this isn’t even the steep part!
Tonight we are camped at Squanga Lake campground on the Alaska Highway. We did look at the Tagish Campground on the way, but decided that it wasn’t really very good. This is a very nice site beside a lake.