Steviestravels: 9 July White Pass to Skagway and Dyea

9 July

White Pass to Skagway and Dyea

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Went to find a tire this morning and followed two blokes into a bike shop. They were two brothers from Iceland on a round the world trip on Yamaha XT660s and they wanted 4 tires. No joy there so we were sent off to the local Honda shop who had something for the boys and a tire that would do me. It's more street oriented than I would like (Avon Distanzia), but I have only about 70 more km of dirt programmed for this trip, and in this part of the world, you take what you can get if you don't want to wait a week. I arranged to get the job done tomorrow and took off for Skagway before the day got completely swallowed up.
The road out of Whitehorse is nice enough, and I'm enjoying the zip and nimbleness of an unloaded bike. Shortly I stopped at the first point of interest, Emerald Lake, a wee lake of the most dramatic green.

Emerald Lake

While I was there I got talking to an expat Kiwi who came to BC 50 years ago to go mountain climbing and never went home. I can understand, there are a lot of mountains

Me, a bike and mountains - yep, it's going to rain again!

I stopped in Carcross to check out the Yukon's oldest working General Store (since 1911).

Watsons, built after a fire in 1909 on the property in Carcross

The area has a lot of nice lakes and scenery...

Bove Island in Tagish Lake

...and I enjoyed the scenery and swervery for a while before starting the climb to White Pass and cooler wetter weather. Some of the landscape is getting almost lunar in appearance.

Another lake further on, landscape looking quite different.

I passed the Canadian Customs post (they maintain a gap of about 10-15km between the US and Canadian posts and you only stop at the one) in cool drizzle and climbed into the cloud cover on White Pass. By this time it's quite cold, lots of snow about and the summit is completely shrouded in cloud, with viz about 10 feet, fogging to outside and inside of the visor. I made my way through this to the US post, cleared that and was immediately grateful to start descending out of the cloud and to warmer temperatures.
There were some spectacular ravines with views of the road as it winds around the mountains, and I made good time to Sakgway under brooding cloud and light drizzle. The town is at the neck of a steep fjord and feels quite closed in under low cloud.

Standing at the end of Skagway looking into the fjord the cruise ships come up

Skagway itself does not hold too much of the gold rush history, and it's really just a kitsch town for the cruise ships - there were 5 of them in at the time. I had a quick look around some of the shops, but it was all too expensive or too tacky, so I gave it a miss and headed back out.

There is a turnoff to Dyea, which was another major staging point for the gold rush. Stampeders arrived at Dyea and had to pack 1 ton of supplies over the Chilkoot Pass, some people taking up to 30 trips over the pass, including the infamous Golden Stairway. The road to Dyea is dirt and narrow, but absolutely beautiful. I continued right to the point where Dyea was - it grew from a tiny Tlingit settlement, to a town of over 20,000 people, but nothing remains of the town today. It sure is a beautiful place though.