Enjoying Spring on the beach at Dyea, Alaska
The vast, almost always empty beach at Dyea is one of my favourite places to go as Spring approaches. The real Spring, not the one of the calendar that bears no resemblance to the Northern one 🙂 On Wednesday, the dogs and I went down for the day, and it was wonderful.
I had some errands to run, so it was after 11:00 by the time we reach Windy Arm. I was surprise to see that there’s already a fair bit of open water – even the large lakes may be ice-free much earlier than usual.
Monty and Bella had a good romp at our usual stop on Tutshi Lake. Bella was trying to break some of the ice by stomping on it with both feet but didn’t have much luck. She does that on the puddles at home every morning – it’s a pretty funny game to watch.
The White Pass crews have gotten the tracks and part of the bus parking lot at Fraser cleared now.
The clearing doesn’t progress down the tracks towards Skagway very far yet. This year, you can ride the train to and from Fraser between May 5th and September 24th.
These pilings are from an incredibly long wharf that was built at the start of the Klondike Gold Rush. They’re the main sign now that a town once existed here.
This is what that wharf looked like in 1898.This sign is at a pulloff on the new section of the Dyea Road right across the Taiya River from the townsite.
We reached the water just as an extremely low tide had started to turn. With the very shallow gradient of the beach, it comes in very quickly. During the Gold Rush, before the wharf was built, many people lost everything when their goods were dropped on the beach and they couldn’t move it fast enough.
Bella is pretty fast, but she can’t keep up with Monty, even at 12 years old 🙂
A strong, cold wind out of the north forced me to keep my jacket on except in this little sheltered area along the western cliffs.
There are some really nice waterfalls along those cliffs – none very large, but some very pretty.
The little trickle coming out of a crack in the granite is only about a foot high.
I love these cliffs – they have great characer, and lots of variety.
Bella is getting more and more adventurous, and yet is showing good judgment, a trait that’s really important in the places I take my dogs. She carefully checked out the route back down from this spot rather than diving off the side as I’ve seen some dogs do.
In a still photo it looks like Monty is in for the kill, but they’re just playing (he’s still got some moves in him!).
This was shot just seconds after the one above – haha!
On the way out, I drove through the very nice campground at the new Dyea Flats Recreation Site. There are only 6 sites and they’re small (our 31-foot rig might just barely fit), but they’re free so far.
Back to winter, overlooking the Thompson River just south of Fraser.
From the highway, the ice at the beach where I always let the dogs run looks like it’s going to break up any day now.
I love pressure ridges, but the route down to this one on Tutshi Lake looked too difficult, so I just enjoyed it from afar 🙂
Windy Arm is looking quite Spring-y right at the BC/Yukon border.
I stopped for a minute at the historic Venus silver mill, mostly to remind myself that I need to get through it again this year.
When I saw these 3 swans on the Nares River at Carcross, I made a little detour. Somehow I missed the migration this year – I won’t let that happen again.
It’s Friday afternoon as I post this, and I’m 1,000 miles away from the Yukon, in Kelowna, BC. More about that in a day or two 🙂
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