An icy Spring day at Dyea, Alaska
We continue to have an extremely warm winter with little snow. To say that it’s been an easy winter so far is an understatement, despite a few days of deep cold that brought with it great photo ops 🙂
When I saw these forecasts yesterday, it looked like a great day to go to Skagway for an early preview of Spring, as well as to pick up a dash cam I’d ordered.
Okay, maybe not a great day to go down! 🙂 It was -2°C (28°F) when I left home, +2C (36F) here at Carcross, then sat at 0C (32F) for most the the drive to Skagway. This photo was shot at 10:03, which was 7 minutes after sunrise.
There was not only slush and black ice, there was glare ice as well. The parking area at Tutshi Lake was so slippery that I couldn’t walk on it. I pulled the car over to the snow so the dogs had something non-slippery to step out onto.
There’s no ice on Tutshi Lake yet, and on Tagish Lake the ice is starting to break up! There’s some pretty interesting shore ice, though.
Bella and Monty stayed off the rocks, which were glazed with ice and very hard to walk on. The snow was only about 3 inches deep, but fun especially for the little one 🙂
Wonderful fog/cloud layers at Skagway, where it was only +2C and stayed there – not nearly as good as forecast, but there was very little moisture falling from the sky so I considered that a good trade. This is the Skagway River, with the airport in the distance.
Skagway is one of those towns that still has some real character if you look down the side streets. This place has been under construction for about 20 years 🙂
A look at the Skagway City Hall from the viewpoint on the Dyea Road. I had stopped for lunch at The Station, and was on my way to Dyea just before 1:00 pm Yukon time.
The colour of the water in Nahku Bay is sometimes stunning in the winter. In other seasons the water isn’t clear enough to show the colour, I think. There’s been no manipulation of any kind to this image – that’s actually what it looked like!
The Dyea Road was a sloppy mess! Getting out for photos didn’t do the carpets in my car any good, and the dogs weren’t allowed out.
I really do love the Taiya River estuary any time of the year. The tide was exceptionally low, so the flats would be dried out enough to walk on.
The ice on the road out to Dyea Flats was terrible! If another vehicle came along so we both had to move off the centre crown of the road, things could have gotten ugly. But, nobody else was crazy enough to be out there 🙂
The wharf pilings from 1897 when Dyea was battling with Skagway to be the gateway to the Klondike gold fields still leave me shaking my head at what was accomplished back then in the middle of nowhere.
This shot gives you a glimpse at what makes this one of my favourite places in Alaska.
Bella resting after a hard play on the beach.
We made it back to the main road without meeting anyone on the ice road – phew! LOL! This is looking down the Taiya River from the bridge.
Monty waiting patiently while I took a few shots from the bridge.
Before leaving the bridge, I decided to hook up the dash cam to see how it works. I love it! This 16 minutes is, in real time, the drive from the Taiya River bridge to the South Klondike Highway just north of Skagway.
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