11 August 2010 - Skagway AK

Day 50

Our turn to lead again - it was the shortest drive of the trip (from Whitehorse YT thru BC to Skagway AK); but, it went down the longest hill (11.5 miles) with a slope of 11%. Stories from other campers about this road had us wondering; but, it was wide and very easy to do (mind you we have not driven out yet, see comments in 2 days for that). We did a much tougher road thru the canyon into Sedona AZ 4 years ago.

The scenery on today's drive was the most spectacular of the trip, and we have driven thru some great spots prior to today; the picture at Emerald Lake does not show the colours like we saw in person; too many of the mountains we did not get pictures of because of all the bugs on the windshields and no place to stop. The shot I picked is of Skagway harbour (with 2 or the 4 cruise ships of the day), our campsite is just to the left of this picture.

We stopped at the Yukon Suspension Bridge (it is in BC - go figure); the views from the bridge of the Tutshi River made me wonder how any stampeder survived in a raft or boat (I guess some didn't).

In Skagway we went to the visitor center, found the national parks walking tour (saw William Moore's orginal log cabin and his house), and museum; then, we drove over to DYEA (pronounced die-ee) to see the start of the Chilkoot trail. There is nothing left to Dyea today, but it was a bigger community before the White Pass & Yukon Railway was built and Skagway took over as the gateway to the Yukon gold rush. Sharon and I had been to Skagway before but on that cruise we had no way to get to Dyea; today we did. Then we started a hike up the Chilkoot Pass - to imagine that many of those prospectors did that route 20 times with 100 lbs packs (in order to carry 2000 lbs of supplies up) - we had enough trouble just getting ourselves up....