Another winter drive to Skagway, Alaska
The weather forecast for Tuesday was only fair for a mountain road trip, but I had a few things sitting at the Skagway post office that I had to get, so it would have to do.
Stopping for the first photo of the day, I discovered that I had forgotten to put the battery back into my big Canon camera after charging it!! Luckily, I had brought my little Fujifilm point-and-shoot (a Finepix S1800) as well, so all these photos were shot with it. Especially on a cloudy day, the world is pretty much black and white this time of year. Patterns, though, still attract me.
There are many spots along the South Klondike Highway that make me think “I’d sure like to get up there for a close look!” This is one of them, a glacial hanging valley at the south end of Windy Arm.
It was a welcome surprise to see the sun breaking through the clouds just south of Log Cabin.
This was taken from the same pull-off as the photo above.
Nearing Fraser.
Fraser, the Canadian border crossing and Highways camp.
Xplor-ing in the snow 🙂
I was soooo tempted to just find a snowbank and lay in the sun for a while. The temperature had been -10°C (+14°F) most of the way from Whitehorse, but it was -7 (+19) here in the White Pass.
Blasted by wind, snow and ice crystals that strip their leaves for much of the year, the little trees near the White Pass summit have a very tough life.
Looking south across Summit Lake. The pass has gotten well over 2 feet of snow in the past few days. With the warm, sunny weather forecast for this coming weekend, it will no doubt be packed with skiers and snowmobilers enjoying the best conditions of the winter.
There were a few snowmobile tracks heading off into the high country right at the summit.
I didn’t stay in Skagway very long – although the temperature was +2°C (36°F), the wind was bitterly cold. I did spend a few minutes watching this barge come in, though.
Heading north again.
I love the personality of some of the mountains, in this case enhanced by the heavy load of fresh snow.
There are frozen waterfalls by the hundreds alongside the highway.
Back into the dramatic light at the summit.
One last series of photos, and then the sushine disappeared just north of Fraser.
Heavy traffic on the South Klondike. This is very unusual in the winter (and not very common even in the summer), but the highway was closed by avalanches in the past few days, so some Whitehorse-Skagway errands got backed up.
Normally this drive calms me down, but I’m so busy in the office that there was no calming effect at all. But, a day in the mountains was at least a change of scenery for 5 hours 🙂
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