Skagway & White Pass – Day 265

by The Philosophical Fish

Day three on the ship and we docked in Skagway around 7am.

We’d not originally had anything booked for today, but then we realized we were in Skagway for about 12 hours, and it’s a very small place. The cruise company had really been flogging the train but I’m typically skeptical of anything being recommended because I assume it’s a money grab with low return on investment. But none of the other excursions really appealed.

We were scheduled for kayaking in Ketchikan, an eagle safari wasn’t something we’d spend money on given how many eagles there are around home…I mean…when I hear a bunch of crows it usually means they are in a tizzy because a bald eagle is sitting in one of our cedars again.

Bear watching….meh….mostly black bears at this time and it’s not like I didn’t grow up seeing those at the dump.

Whale watching…..whale harassment? I think whales have slightly fewer protections outside of BC, so….nah.

And then there was that train…in several iterations. There was a to-the-pass-and-back at 7:45am or 11:45am. There was a to-Whitehorse-and-back, and there was a circle tour in either direction that was Skagway-to-Whitehorse-and-back but was the train one way and a bus the other. Well a bus seemed meh….but my uncle lives in Whitehorse. I asked what the time allowance in Whitehorse was, only an hour and a half. Seemed too short of notice to try and coordinate with an Uncle I haven’t seen in years and who is a bit of a recluse. I was also less than interested in the other attractions at that end.

So up to the pass and back it was, and the early train so that we’d have the afternoon to poke around the town before leaving in the evening.

We grabbed an early breakfast, along with pretty much everyone else on board, and headed to the dock and got in line to board a very old train, circa the Gold Rush. The company has seriously catered to the cruise industry. The trains have a single track through town, that splits into three spurs, each of which ends directly in front of one of the three cruise ship docks.

I am conflicted again. The ship looms over this small place, and I don’t like that. It feels…I can’t find the exact words. But it bothers me on a. fundamental level.

Anyway, on the train and off we wait. There is some confusion as they call over the PA system and search for two passengers who are supposed to be in the luxury package. Eventually they come through the train on their search, car by car. There are two elderly women behind us and I have this weird feeling that they are the missing pair. The conductor stops at their seat and asks them if they are supposed to be in the luxury package and they say that they were, but they their friend had booked it for them but and then couldn’t make it so they called to cancel her booking and were told that no booking existed and that the luxury car was already fully booked. They were comp’d the regular car. The conductor said that may be the case, but they are still on the register and there is space, and invited them up. Win for them 🙂

Some history (excerpted from https://www.railsnorth.com/wpyr-route_narration.html): In 1897, when ships filled with eager gold seekers arrived in Skagway, they arrived at a wide, open beach, a rare thing in this region of tall mountains and deep fjords. Skagway was a unique spot that made a perfect port for those seeking fortune; along with those seeking gold came those seeking opportunities to capitalize on Skagway’s location at the end of a maritime highway and the beginning of a natural, ice-free, corridor through the mountains to the Interior of Canada. When gold seekers began arriving in Skagway, there was only one dock. Most ships anchored offshore, and people, animals and their goods were tendered ashore in smaller boats that landed on a the gently sloped shore. Within months, four docks were built on Skagway’s waterfront. Today, the only dock remaining from that era is the Railroad Dock which sits next to the cliffs that line the eastern side of the harbour…and that one is subject to slides on a somewhat regular basis. Today, four old diesel train engines sit as a barrier to falling rock.

This is one thing that I very much dislike about cruise ships and small ports…..(photo from https://www.railsnorth.com/wpyr-route_narration.html)

We were finally off. We roll past a Gold Rush Cemetery, a spot where some colourful characters are buried. In particularly, some fellow named “Soapy” Smith who was an infamous con-man who ran the town for some time. He was eventually shot and buried near town.

A ways on and we pass a red caboose at the side of the tracks. Fun fact! The caboose is parked at Denver Station and can be booked through the forest service as a place to sleep while hiking.

We roll along through an area called Rocky Point and the name is well earned. I hang out the side of the train from the platform between cars and take some photos (way too many phots) and looking through the lens is a bit of a disorienting and unnerving experience as the rocks pass by little more thane than a foot or two from my head.

Further along and we can see the Klondike Highway on the other side of the canyon and we can see the International Port of Entry with the slogan “On To Alaska With Buchanan.” painted onto rock below. Apparently it commemorates Alaskan trips for kids from 1922 until the late 1930s sponsored by George Buchanan, a wealthy Canadian who made his fortune selling coal in Detroit. He wanted to instill values of hard work and thriftiness, so the children were required to raise 1/3 of the cost of the trip themselves by doing odd jobs. This was a trip of a lifetime for these youngsters, and sometime in the late 1920s they rewarded Buchanan by managing to get across the canyon to that steep rock face and painting that sign. Basically…it’s celebrated and maintained graffiti.

And on we roll.

Next up is a spot called Black Cross Rock, so named for a black cross positioned atop a massive boulder that fell from above and instantly crushed two men and their mules. The cross was erected as a memorial not just to the, but to all of the men who died building the railway.

11 miles into our trip we can see Bridal Veil Falls through the trees of Tongass National Forest. The falls drop over 5,000 feet from Carmack glacier to the Skagway River down in the bottom of the canyon. Crappy photo, but it was beautiful.

The train snakes along the winding railway and we can see where it leads across the canyon…..it seems crazy that this railway was built given the terrain!

And now we start to really climb up a grade that isn’t steep for a road, but a 3.9% grade is apparently about as steep as most trains can handle. 206 feet up for every mile travelled until we reach the top. I didn’t understand the narrow gauge track but I’ve now learned that this allowed the builders to only need to blast out a ten foot wide ledge for the railed as the track is only three feet wide.

We cross a trestle bridge that we could see from low on the other side of the canyon, and head into a tunnel and are plunged into darkness for 250 metres.

We travel along an area named “Dead Horse Gulch” where more than 3,000 horses died while working on the White Pass Trail during the gold rush days. From the Rails North website “The White Pass Trail had an infamous reputation as not being fit for man or beast. Commercial packers working on the White Pass Trail charged twelve to thirteen cents a pound to haul these goods on the backs of mules, horses, and oxen. The conditions along the White Pass Trail were horrendous – it was steep, rocky, and slippery. The horses were sick, overloaded, and underfed. They broke their legs on the rocks, got stuck in the bogs, and fell off the cliffs. It was so bad that people began calling it the “Dead Horse Trail.” Jack London wrote about this trail. He said, “The horses died like mosquitoes in the first frost and from Skagway to Bennett they rotted in heaps. …Men shot them, worked them to death and when they were gone, went back to the beach and bought more. …Their hearts turned to stone …and they became beasts, the men on the Dead Horse Trail.”

Next up was a crazy looking cantilever bridge that spans a wide chasm that is hundreds of feet deep. “this marvel of engineering was the highest bridge of its kind in North America when it was built. Used from 1901 until it was given a well-deserved retirement in 1969, it is one of the reasons that the White Pass Railroad was named an International Civil Engineering Historic Landmark in 1994, and is one of the most photographed scenes on our route. As we pass by, you can see that we wouldn’t want to be traveling across it today! In 1969, new tracks were laid in part of the old switchback grade, and a very long tunnel was blasted out of solid rock.”

We round a corner over a much sturdier bridge and head into another long tunnel before emerging onto the last stretch of our trip. Off the side of the train we can see a narrow path in the rocky landscape. It is the “Trail of ’98”. It’s one of the “few remnants of the infamous Dead Horse Trail, where long lines of exhausted men and horses made their weary way to the summit. The trail and the many artifacts from the Gold Rush that still line the pathway are all part of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. Imagine that you are one of these stampeders, tired, dirty and worn out. It has taken you at least two days to make your way from Skagway to the summit, and along the way you have witnessed so many horrors that you are numb. No wonder when the railroad was completed to the summit in February 1899, now just a comfortable two-hour ride from Skagway, that the old horse trail was quickly abandoned.”

The last bit of rail that we rode took us above the treelike and to White Pass Summit. A rather inhospitable spot 3,000 feet above our starting point. The trees are amazing. They are small, but old. Probably most of them have been here since the gold rush.

And then we are briefly in Canada!

And it’s snowing!

Summit Lake, BC (how many Summit Lake are there?!?) forms the headwaters of the Yukon River and eventually pour into the Bering Sea. I imagine the lake is typically frozen over, and the snow falling outside portends the same fairly soon. We are told that the lake supports grayling and trout. Tough fish to live up here!!

As short distance on and our train takes a side track and loops around to head back down the way we came. If we’d continued on we would have traveled through Fraser, Bennett, and on into the Yukon. There’s a little part of me that regrets not taking the full trip as I think it would’ve continued to be fascinating and beautiful. But we didn’t, and the trip back down was equally fun and interesting.

We had to stop twice and pull onto side tracks to let other trains pass us. One of those provided a look at the old steam engine that the company still runs today.

The train creeps to a stop at the train station, one stop before the port and our ship, and we opt to hop off there and walk back along the waterfront. As we head to the ship to drop off our gear and grab some lunch, we pass a circular snowplow on a spur.

The ingenuity of those plying the railway is impressive and I found an image online of the thing in action.

Also along the walk back to the ship, we pass a rather lovely public washroom. There are a surprising number of people outside on their phones and then we remember a guide on the ship telling us that the public washroom has the only free wifi in town….

After dropping some things off and getting a snack for lunch we head back into town to explore this funky little place….AFTER we pass all the tourist traps (jewelry store – jewelry store – jewelry store – jewelry store – t-shirt shop – tacky tourist crap – jewelry store – jewelry store….). Across the street is a shop called the Sweet Tooth Cafe…..which used to be a cafe until a few years ago and now hots…surprise!!! A jewelry store. I would have preferred a cafe to explore and would’ve been more likely to spend money. The name of the cafe makes me wonder if there is any connection to the show Sweet Tooth….which had an Alaska component, but it doesn’t seem to.

There are a few buildings that house small museums that tell some pretty interesting stories of the town and the gold rush days. Quite the time and place to be.

Looking back we can see our ship, a hulking thing despite being the smallest of the fleet, looming over the view. Again…conflicted.

We are on a mission though. We are looking for a glass of spruce tip beer at the Skagway Brewing Company. The story goes that the miners suffered scurvy in the north, but some smarty pants noticed that the indigenous people didn’t have the same issue. They discovered that they brewed a tea with the tips of spruce trees. Turns out they are high in vitamin C. Well, tea was not exactly a miners drink, so some savvy person figured out how to use it in beer. And the Skagway Brewing Company has a tribute to this ingenuity in the form of a beer that they brew with hand harvested spruce tree tips.

At the door, a sign that made us smile. “No Wi-Fi. Talk to each other

We grabbed a pint and took a seat and enjoyed the surroundings. Others came in and we heard, a few times, patrons (clearly form the ships at dock) if there was wifi available. The bartender, and we think the owner given the response, said no, and made some comments about 12, 000 people using wifi and not buying drinks. We also overheard him talking to someone about how he was looking forward to closing the door and taking a vacation from the vacationers. I feel for him. The number of people these ships dump onto these places is really obscene, and the passengers are blissfully unaware of the impact they have, they are just focused on their own pleasure.

More internal conflict.

We wander the outer edges of town, visit a few art galleries, marvel at the images of one photographer and have a conversation with him. The patience he must have for his shots is overwhelming. I am in awe. We find another gallery filled with locally created artwork. I end up purchasing three prints of varying sizes. One a fabulously coloured raven that reminds me a bit of the work of Roy-Henry Vickers, another a card sized print of a painting of fireweed by the same artist. The third is a painting on a marine navigational chart in the region, and it catches me. I feel good about these purchases. They are supporting local artists, not some conglomerate jewelry or t-shirt company with shops strategically placed on cruise ship routes. These are prints that I will frame and hang to remember the places for their spirit rather than than the commercial aspects of the cruise industry.

Still conflicted, but feeling better about contributing something more supportive to the larger community, no matter how small it was in the grand scheme of things.

And then, the weirdest building in town. The Arctic Brotherhood Hall. The most photographed building in Alaska. For good reason. It’s weird.

“In times past, it was a fraternal hall; the local chapter of the Brotherhood first met here in August 1899. (Step across the street, and you’ll notice the letters “A.B.” and the “1899” above the door, and “Camp Skagway No. 1” on the overhang. The organization’s symbol, a gold pan and nuggets, is up near the roof line. The facade, which dates from 1900, has been called a prime example of Victorian Rustic Architecture. Charley Walker and his fellow lodge members collected over 8,800 driftwood sticks on the shores of Skagway Bay and nailed them to the front wall. The Brotherhood, which remained active into the 1920s, once entertained President Warren G. Harding. The building is currently the home of the Visitor Information Center operated by the Skagway Convention & Visitors Bureau. The outside facade of the Arctic Brotherhood Hall underwent a restoration during the winter of 2004-2005. All of the 8,883 pieces of driftwood on the front of the building were removed. Forty percent (3,533) had rotted and were replaced, while sixty percent (5,300) were still able to be preserved over one hundred years later.” (https://www.alaska.org/detail/arctic-brotherhood-hall)

We poked around in a bookstore, wandered the edges of town, and eventually found ourselves out of terrain to cover so we returned to the ship for dinner and sat in the Crow’s Nest bar to enjoy the departure and a cocktail as the sun went down and darkness took over.

Not a bad day.

But still conflicted.

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