Whitehorse, YT to Skagway, AK – 115 miles
It was strange to sleep in a real bed after 37 nights in the Tiger – the longest we’ve ever gone so far without a break somewhere. But we slept well. Thank you, Jock and Karen.
We all went to breakfast at Ricky’s in Whitehorse. I splurged and had a huge traditional breakfast of two eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast. Jeanette had a smaller version with only one egg. Both were a virtual pig-out compared to our usual road breakfast of oatmeal or cereal and a muffin or toast, with maybe pancakes or an egg once a week for variety. Oh well, we skipped lunch to make up for it.
As we parted after breakfast, we made Jock and Karen promise to visit us in Denver when they’re back down stateside (their daughter works in Nevada). On our way out of Whitehorse we stopped for 11:30 Mass at the Sacred Heart Cathedral downtown. From there it was back on the road again – I’m beginning to feel like Willy Nelson.
We drove up the northern half of the Klondike Highway when we went up to Dawson City in what seems like a month ago. The southern half goes south from Whitehorse to Skagway, Alaska, a distance of just over a hundred miles. Along the way it passes through a small offshoot of British Columbia. It’s a smooth, well-maintained road all the way. About 30 miles south of Skagway there is a strange geological phenomenon called the Carcross Desert, just north of the small town of Carcross. This is an area, several acres in size, of sand dunes in the middle of the boreal arctic forest. It’s the result of some deposits of glacial sand and natural wind currents in this particular location, much like the Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado, although on a much smaller scale. Like the Colorado dunes, though, there are no palm trees or camels.
From Carcross south, the scenery along the highway vivals with that along the Richardson Highway leading into Valdez. It first hugs the shorelines of a couple of large alpine lakes, Nares Lake and Tutshi Lake. The surrounding peaks are not as jagged as the Chugach Mountains by Valdez, but are nevertheless as memorable. As the highway nears the Alaskan border, it goes through a strange tundra landscape of rock mounds, dotted with small lakes. This is true alpine tundra, right at or slightly above timberline. The only trees are small, stunted alpine fir, twisted by the ever-present winds. The ground is carpeted with pale yellow, moss-like lichens which contrast with the greens of the other ground-hugging tundra vegetation. Strangely enough, when we stopped to take some pictures, I noticed a small fern growing among the rocks, looking like a typical tropical river fern. This area is nick-named the moonscape, and except for the occasional stunted fir tree and the mosses and other tundra vegetation, that’s exactly what it looks like.
The Alaska border is right at the summit divide, at an elevation of approximately 3200 feet. On this day we were right in the clouds, creating a dense fog that made it hard to see more than a hundred feet of so. Fortunately, wise minds prevailed and the customs stations for both countries are several miles downhill on their respective sides of the border, where the terrain and weather exposure is more reasonable.
The road descends quite steeply from the summit into Skagway, dropping the 3200 feet in only about 12 miles. Like the road into Valdez, it descends in a steep canyon with numerous waterfalls on both sides. It parallels the famous Chilcoot trail, which was the bane of the Klondike miners who had to haul all their gear and supplies in several trips up a steep trail to the pass, then down the other side to the head of Bennett Lake where they loaded everything onto rafts and began the treacherous water journey down the headwaters of the Yukon River all the way to Dawson City, a distance of several hundred miles. Across the canyon are the tracks of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, a narrow-gage line built in the heyday of the mining boom and now re-opened and running as a tourist line, loaded with cruise ship tourists.
The town of Skagway is a quaint, turn-of-the-century village of tourist shops, saloons, and eateries. It’s definitely a cruise ship town as most of the shops are high-end in nature. It seems like nearly all are jewelry shops, and most are hawking diamonds. I’m not sure why this is, but if I find out I’ll post it in a later blog.
Tomorrow we take our day trip by catamaran to Juneau, so I’ll have lots to report in the next post.
Jeanette: The scenery truly gets more beautiful each day! This trip has been way more than I could ever have expected it to be.
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