The end of Winter, the start of Spring
This has felt like The Winter With No End – pretty well everyone’s been complaining about the weather the past couple of weeks in particular. Finally, though, Spring has arrived (and it looks like Summer is only days away).
Last Tuesday, Cathy and I had to go to Carcross to finish the cleanup of our cabin in preparation to hand the keys over to the new owners. We’d barely started down the South Klondike Highway when 5 caribou walked calmly across the road in front of us.
We weren’t at all prepared for the heavy dump of snow that Carcross had gotten in the past couple of days! That made walking to the cabin difficult and some of the cleanup (the outside) impossible, and we have to be able to get the pickup in to finish it off.
It had been so cold overnight that a layer of of ice had formed on the open water in front of the cabin where many migrating swans stop to rest and feed. One of the Trumpeter swans had died during the night – here, a juvenile bald eagle is checking out the yet-untouched body.
A few minutes later, one of the parents arrived as well.
The next day, May 1st, Winter returned in earnest. Conditions at the Whitehorse airport were so bad that this Air North jet had to do a missed approach and circle for about 20 minutes, waiting for the near-zero visibility to improve before making this successful landing.
Yesterday, May 6th, the weather improved, and I was very surprised to discover the first Prairie crocus of the year.
There are always an endless list of things to be done this time of year. The winter wheels on Cathy’s Tracker get more and more weathered and ugly every year – this year I couldn’t stand to put them away looking like that, so decided to restore them. It takes about 45 minutes each to go from the left-hand state to the right. 🙂
The weather forecast today was very good for both Whitehorse and Skagway, so I decided that a little road trip was in order. It was still only 0°C when I shot this photo of Wiundy Arm and the Venus silver mine mill, though.
Nice to get out camping early 🙂
Log Cabin, BC. Under that snow, about 3 feet deep, is the White Pass & Yukon Route rail line.
Does it look liike Monty enjoys road trips? 🙂
Nearing Fraser.
The freshly-plowed rail line at Ptarmigan Point. Clearing the line each Spring is a massive job that’s now done with bulldozers.
Summit Lake.
The cruise ship season has begun, but on many of early-season days there are no ships, and today was one of those. But more tour buses are arriving by barge from Seattle.
The sidewalks are being cleaned.
Some people can remain optimistic through almost anything 🙂
Millions of dollars worth of helicopters await the ships. N970TH is a Eurocopter AS350 B-2 Ecureuil.
I had gotten away from home very early so decided to see how work on the Dyea Road was coming along. There’s an amazing amount of granite being blasted.
The road to the Dyea townsite and beach gets very soft in the Spring, and a great deal of care is needed to avoid getting stuck.
The tide was exceptionally low, so Monty and I walked the width of the lovely wilderness beach, over to Nelson Creek.
Nelson Creek, looking down Taiya Inlet.
I estimate that the road construction, which is removing the worst of the steep, winding and narrow sections, is about half done.
This little waterfall is right beside the main road.
Heading home, the WP&YR bulldozer was back at work. We walked over to a section of the rail line that gets particularly badly drifted, to see how deep the snow still is. Impressive.
And when we got back to Log Cabin, the bulldozer was already north of the highway crossing.
My happy, pooped-out husky 🙂
The grand opening of the “retail village” at Carcross is less than 2 weeks away, and work is going on full-speed. It will house the tourist information office, a coffee shop, a fresh fish store and other shops.
The arrival of Spring signals the arrial of construction crews. The wait to get through this 3-km section of re-paving was substantial – half an hour probably.
So that’s the seasonal progression so far. I won’t see the next stage of it, as I’m flying to Calgary first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll be picking up a new car, visiting with both my kids and grand-daughters, and making a fairly leisurely drive home via the Alaska Highway. I’ll be posting as I go along, as the weather forecast is very good and I plan on making some interesting stops.
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