Back into Winter mode with a drive to Skagway
It’s hard to believe that it’s only 12 days ago that we were on Waikiki Beach. My head has been having a hard time adjusting, and I needed to do something to get myself into winter mode, so I drove to Skagway with the fur-kids yesterday. It’s been almost 5 weeks since they had a road-trip, too, so I knew that they’d enjoy it.
Winter has made brief visits over the past 3 weeks, and back on the 8th or so, a heavy dump of snow did a lot of damage to trees on our property – some terminally bent like these 2, some much larger ones snapped right off. Most of the snow has melted, but the weather forecast for yesterday called for snow flurries in Whitehorse and afternoon showers in Skagway – not great, but not bad either.
We didn’t get away until after 09:00, with the temperature sitting at -5°C (23°F). The light was generally flat, but had enough variety to be quite pretty down the South Klondike Highway.
Looking south along Windy Arm. The highway had started to get quite slippery by this point, with frozen rain covering everything. It’s rather funny that I sometimes don’t notice how slippery a road is until I step out onto it – although my car grips nicely at times like this, my shoes don’t.
When I stopped to take the photo above, at Pooley Creek, I was very pleased to see a lot of mountain goats above me – at least 15 of them. Poachers were taking a toll on this population a few years ago, but they seem to be doing very well now. Hopefully the poachers ended up in jail (though I know that they didn’t get arrested for poaching), or better yet, dead.
Morning mist at the south end of the dead-calm lake (Windy Arm).
Looking back at Dail Peak. To me, this is one of the most scenic spots on the entire highway – I love that mountain, and the curve of the highway. You’d never guess it from this side, but it’s actually quite easy to get almost to the top of Dail.
I initially stopped at Log Cabin to get another photo of the peak in the centre of this photo – a peak whose name (if it has one) I’ve never been able to figure out. But it was so nice there that I decided to take the kids for a long walk down the tracks.
The start of the very long Log Cabin siding north of the highway crossing.
That’s the sort of view that makes me want to walk and walk and walk… but I had neither the gear nor the time to continue further this day.
I did have time, though, to slow down. Bella and I both enjoyed frozen puddles – me to take photos of them, and Bella to jump on them, probably just to hear the noise 🙂
The humidity must be quite high to get such good frosting on everything.
A brief stop to get a shot of the Canada Customs (sorry, CBSA) post at Fraser.
Beautiful moody light at Summit Lake.
The road condition remained quite poor all the way to Skagway, and I didn’t meet a single vehicle on the 90-minute drive between Carcross and Skagway.
I picked up my mail in Skagway, then went for a wander. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a freighter sitting at the Railroad Dock before. I thought at first that it might be a tanker.
But then saw the hatch cover being lowered, so knew it was cargo. Googling when I got home, I see that the Nordana Madeleine is a new ship (built in China in 2009), and heavy-lift cargo is one of her specialties. She’s based in Denmark.
“Come on, guys, back in the car!” 🙂
Driving around to the Railroad Dock, I saw a crew measuring the height of cables over the road, and when I got to the dock, I saw why. I assume that these are fuel tanks for the White Pass shops – it will be an interesting move to get them through town!
Ahhh – Skagway is quiet for a few months again.
Heading back up the hill, I stopped at a few waterfalls. This is the time of year to savour that sound, because it’ll be getting silent very soon now as Father Winter locks everything up in his icy vault.
The vacation was wonderful, but it is so great to be home again!
I made another quick stop at Log Cabin to get a photo of these new winter-friendly outhouses in better light than I had during our long morning stop. Recreation Sites and Trails BC has recently installed these – impressive when many people don’t even know that this is part of BC.
That was a great day. The dogs are pooped out, and I’m more focussed. While I have a lot of physical work to do around the property yet, I’m also spending a lot of time in my large collection of historic documents (by “large”, I mean thousands of items). A few days ago, I posted 3 articles of local interest from The Journal of the Canadian Mining Institute, 1909, and I’m currently working on getting these 3 documents entirely online.
And in my spare time, there’s planning to do for future Adventures!
About The Author
