White Pass and Yukon RR to Skagway

The night is cold.  We gather at 7:45 AM in jackets for a bus ride to Fraser BC, where we catch the White Pass and Yukon RR for a trip to Skagway, Alaska.

Carcross Dunes, the remains of an ancient lake.

The railroad is narrow gauge and diesel-powered today.  When it was built in the late 1890s to service the miners and haul out gold it was an incredible and costly feat of engineering and construction.   Too bad gold went bust just as it was finished.  Having no other purpose it struggled and died until tourism resurrected this short stretch from Fraser to Skagway.

The ride has some of the most captivating scenery per mile that you can imagine.  Tall mountains, glacier-carved slopes and lakes, waterfalls, and pure wilderness.  We see few signs of man-made activity, probably because the groundcover is so lush.  Later we learn from our bus driver that a simple hike will lead quickly to abandoned mining equipment, long deserted cabins, old rusted steam engines, and other paraphernalia of an era that left no livelihood or buyer for what had been created.

Yukon (Canada) and Alaska (US) border.

Miners' trail from the 1898 gold rush.

Trestle, fortunately no longer in use.

Skagway AL is an historic town that now mainly serves the cruise industry, which is how we first came to know it over 10 years ago.  Our bus driver says 70% of the buildings date from the gold rush, but the town seems larger now, and full of typical cruise-town diamond and gem shops.  We enjoy a fine lunch at the Skagway Fish Company, near the cruise ship docks, and I spend some good time browsing the various museums as Marcia shops unsuccessfully.  We are back in Whitehorse by 6:40 PM, entertained by a bus driver’s stories of modern Skagway residents paying to have Big Macs and pizza brought in from Whitehorse.