Hiking the Chilkoot Trail

Elevation profile of the trail. Yup. Crazy

As the tourism season winds down here in Skagway the opportunity for hours at work took a nosedive so I opted out of the rat-race and decided to take well-earned mini vacation for a week or so before I head back to the east coast. Last Saturday I gave my final tour of the season, and on Sunday I started out to hike the Chilkoot Trail, a 33-mile route from Dyea into Canada that was used as an entryway to the Yukon by Stampeders during the Gold Rush. The trail is technically closed for the season, which means we didn't have to pay the $50 permit fee to hike it, there were no rangers posted at the camps, and we had the whole thing to ourselves! We didn't see any other people until we arrived at the end of the trail and ran into a German and a Japanese hiker who were also enjoying the solitude of the off season. It took us three days to hike the trail and a fourth day to poach the railroad tracks out to the road to be picked up.

First section of trail

Day 1: Dyea Trailhead to Sheep Camp, 12.7 miles, 1000feet elevation gain

  We started out around 8am with cloudy skies but mild temperatures, and had decent weather for the whole day. We spent the first 5 miles getting used to the weight of our packs and settling into a rhythm and took our first break at Finnegan's point to bust out some snacks and assess our pace. We saw a ton of bear scat and quite a few tracks, but the only bear we spotted on our whole hike came 3 miles later at Canyon City camp when we stopped to read a historical marker. I heard a crashing in the bushes and looked over in time to see a little black bear barreling through the brush in our direction. It made to climb a tree about 20feet away, got about two hops up before it realized we were there and then jumped down and bolted in the opposite direction. Exciting, but not quite the encounter I was hoping for.

Shortly after Canyon City campsite there was an opportunity to take a detour to Canyon City Ruins, the remainder of what used to be a more permanent settlement along the trail, but the promise of "historic trash" including an old boiler, bits of broken glass and an old stove wasn't alluring enough to add any more distance to our almost 13 mile day. We continued on along the trail next to the river and paused to enjoy occasional views of mountains and low-hanging glaciers instead. We made another stop three miles later at Pleasant Camp for another snack break, and somewhere in between we crossed out of the US and into Canada with just a tiny sign to mark the event. Four miles after Pleasant camp we arrived at Sheep Camp and set up our tent for the night. There was just enough daylight left for a quick dinner of cous cous, veggies and hotdogs before we turned in for the night. I woke up sometime in the early hours of the morning to the forbidding sound of raindrops on the tent roof and spent a little bit of time worrying about our big elevation gain the next morning before falling back asleep.

Working our way up the Golden Stairs in low-visibility. Don't let the
angle fool you, Steve is only 12 feet or so below me...it was that steep!

Day 2: Over the Golden Stairs to Happy Camp, 7.8 miles, 2500 feet elevation gain

We got a late start in the morning due to rain, and didn't make it out of camp until about 9am. Fortunately we hiked the trail in the small part of the year where avalanches really aren't a risk so our only concern was beating the sunset to our next camp. The half mile section of trail after Scales promised to be the hardest of the day, where the 45 degree climb known as the "Golden Stairs" would take us the last 1000ft up over Chilkoot Pass.

Historic Trash!

What started off as a well-defined trail became nothing more than a jumble of large boulders with a few sporadic cairns to mark the way, and as visibility deteriorated to about 10 feet in the clouds we became a bit nervous about missing the route and ending up at the top of the wrong boulder field. Fortunately we followed our instincts and some conveniently placed "historic trash" and despite the wind doing its best to blow us off the mountain we managed to make it the 4 miles from camp to the summit shortly after lunch. A quick stop at the summit shelter to re-fuel and we started the steep decent down the snowfields to Stone Crib.

Clouds clearing over the lake at Stone Crib

The 45 degree descent on the snow and ice was even more nerve-wracking to me than the climb, because it seemed to be just a straight drop off into nothing, but as we slowly worked our way down the snow the clouds began to clear and I realized what I thought was a plummet into the abyss was actually a lake at the end of the descent, and that I was more than 2/3 of the way down already.

Cairn marking the way to Happy Camp

Over the next few minutes the skies continued to clear until we could make out several lakes and mountains in the distance, and a big flock of ducks relaxing on the lake. Over the next hour the weather continued to clear, and the final 3.5 miles from Stone Crib to Happy Camp were relatively flat, and well marked with cairns and orange surveyors flags. There were a few more snow fields to cross, and a myriad of small streams and rivers to be negotiated, and we stopped often to take pictures and just enjoy the views. We arrived at Happy Camp around 8pm cold and wet but excited about the days accomplishments. Since we were the only ones in camp yet again and our tent was soaking wet from packing it up in the rain we decided to bend the rules a bit and sleep in the warming shelter while we attempted to dry out some of our gear. We strung up our wet clothes, made a dinner of ramen noodles, hot dogs and eggs, and promptly passed out using the benches as beds.

Trail from Happy Camp to Deep Lake

  
Day 3: Happy Camp to Lake Bennett, 12.5 miles, 1000feet elevation loss

 We woke up the next morning to beautiful weather for our final day on the trail, blue skies and clouds without any threat of rain. Unfortunately the cold weather didn't do much for our damp gear, and my boots that had been soaked on multiple river crossings the previous day were now not just wet but also freezing cold. It took us a while to pack everything up and we got on the trail around the same time as the previous day to start making our way toward Lake Bennett.

Blueberries = blue tongues!

We planned to rest at three camps along the way, all about three miles apart, and we came upon Deep Lake in just about two hours after many detours to pick blueberries along the trail. Without a doubt the best part of the day was the plethora of blueberries available to us, although they also created quite a delay since every time we moved on from one bush we would find another with even bigger and more tempting fruit. We rolled into Lindeman City around lunch time, and decided that a hot-lunch was the way to go, so I pulled out my stove and made us a pot of ramen while Steve filtered some more water.We both agreed that Lindeman would have been an excellent place to camp, and regretted that our scheduled ride back from Canada meant that we couldn't take an extra day to just relax and enjoy the area. If I did the trail again I would definitely spend an extra night at Lindeman city to recover and explore the area.

Lakes and Mountains and Streams, Oh My!

The seven miles from Lindeman City to Lake Bennett were a bit more challenging than expected, and the wear and tear of the previous two days really started to take its toll. The three miles to Bare Loon Lake seemed to take a bit longer than we thought it should and involved a lot more uphill than the map led us to believe, so we opted not to stop for a snack and push on in order to make it to camp before dark.
Steve kept me going by dangling food in front of me like a donkey with a carrot and distracting me from my knee and hip pain with "snacktivities." Our final mile to Bennett was a sandy track that gave me flashbacks to oh so many death marches in Senegal, and I was relieved to arrive at the lake just as the sun slipped behind the mountains. We shared the warming shelter that night with two other hikers, one from Japan and one from Germany, who spent the previous night at Lindeman city and were impressed that we had come all the way from Happy Camp that same day. We were too tired to socialize much, but I did find out that a bear bell I had found on the trail before the Golden Stairs belonged to the Japanese hiker and was given to him by the German guy. I was happy to return it and we all had a good laugh about the odds of it finding its way back to Hajime after he had lost it. We feasted on the rest of our cous cous, hot dogs, veggies and hot chocolate and promptly passed out next the the wood stove for our first warm night of sleep on the trail.

White Pass Train Station at Lake Bennett, closed for the season

Day 4: Railroad Tracks to Log Cabin, 8 miles, 0 feet elevation gain

Since we were hiking the trail after the train stopped running for the season our only option was to trespass on the railroad and hike the 8 miles of track back to the road and wait for our friend Casey to come pick us up. We knew he wouldn't be there until sometime after 6pm so we weren't in any rush, and after eating the rest of our oatmeal we went back to sleep and didn't wake up again until 11am! I made a second breakfast of scrambled eggs with cheese and onions and we slowly packed up our things and filtered a few more liters of water before we said goodbye to the shelter.

We took a moment to explore the "town" of Bennett, which consisted of a private cabin, the train station and a historic church, before we started our walk down the tracks. We had mostly blue skies above us, flat ground underfoot, and beautiful mountains and lakes everywhere we looked, so the walk out was every bit as pleasant as the trail itself. We even had mile-markers to help us gauge our progress, although we weren't sure at the time if they were in miles or kilometers so we didn't get our hopes up too high. We took a brief rest stop about half way for some sausage and cheese and made it to the road just before 6pm. As we sat and devoured the rest of our snacks that we had so carefully rationed we watched the clouds overhead drift by and change colors with the setting of the sun.

The view we enjoyed on the side of the road

Our ride arrived around 9pm, and apparently not a moment too soon since we had an unexpected visitor just a few minutes later. I went off to go to the bathroom before our drive back, and when I returned it was to find out that a big black wolf had emerged from the woods behind where we were sitting and had come within 15 feet of Steve and Casey before running off into the brush. Crazy to think that it may have been watching the two of us for quite a while, especially since it could have easily outweighed either one of us. I'm kind of bummed I missed seeing it, but I'm grateful it wasn't a closer encounter than that. It was definitely an awesome trip and a great way to end my season here in Skagway. I'll spend the next few days packing up and saying my goodbyes then its off to new adventures!

Eagles and Seals and Whales, oh my!

A few weeks ago I finally got the opportunity to go on tour with Ocean Raft Alaska, something I've been wanting to do all season. Most of the tour companies here will exchange free tours with each other on the understanding that you always leave a generous tip for your guides, but although I've taken out tons of locals and seasonal workers on the zipline I haven't had the opportunity to check out any of the other excursions in town. To be perfectly honest, sitting on a street-car or riding a train with a bunch of tourists was not on the top of my list of things to do on my rare days off, so the jet-boat was really the only thing in town I was interested in checking out.

We met at the dock first thing in the morning and got all dressed up in bright orange survival suits before we headed out onto the Lynn Canal in the zodiac boat to go crashing through the waves. We alternated between speeding along the shoreline; jumping over waves and doing donuts in inlets, and stopping in coves and along the shoreline to search for wildlife and check out some beautiful waterfalls. We spotted quite a few bald eagles up in the trees, saw a lot of harbor seals lazing about on the rocks like a bunch of fat sausages, and best of all almost got blown out of the water by a humpback whale!

We first spotted the whale when we were making our way back towards Skagway. It was about 40 yards away and had just finished breaching, so Captain Ashley decided to kill the engines and wait around for a few minutes to see if it would resurface. After about 6 minutes we figured it had moved on, so he took us to a small inlet to talk a bit about the Tongas National Rainforest and give the tourists an opportunity to have their "rainforest moment." Just as we were inching into a small corner of the shoreline about 30 feet deep and maybe 20 feet wide, the whale breached again no more than 6 feet away in between our boat and the rock wall. It scared the crap out of Ashley and pretty much everyone else in the boat...and it continued to spout and swim just 10 feet from our little 30ft raft for a few more minutes before disappearing again to find a better hiding spot. I couldn't have asked for a more exciting trip.