It’s not Spring in Skagway yet, either
This is always a busy time of year, and this year is no exception. With Father Winter hanging around Whitehorse long after he’s worn out his welcome, I’ve been to Skagway twice in the past 10 days, searching in vain for Spring on the coast.
For the past few days, though, much of my time has been taken up by shopping for a new(er) car online. It’s virtually all done online, as the dealers here have nothing in stock that interests me. Here’s a comparison sheet I set up at Consumer Reports to crunch some numbers of possibilities.
It’s very tough to shop for a new car when the car I want is sooo different from the car I need. What I want is that yellow Camaro, the very-short list as of right now, though, is one of two Cadillac CTS all-wheel-drive models, a sedan and a wagon.
Anyway, our first drive to Skagway was 10 days ago, in my niece’s new RAV4. The intention was to go out to Dyea, but the Dyea Road was closed for blasting. With the temperature just below freezing with a strong north wind, it was too cold and windy to go walking on the beach anyway, so we stayed in Skagway.
We hiked up to Lower Reid Falls, which is quite lovely when it’s frozen.
We looked around the Pioneer Cemetery for a few minutes, and I got a photo of the headstone for James Mark Rowan, a Deputy United States Marshal who was shot in a Skagway theatre while attempting to resolve a dispute in 1898. I added it to my Alaska Peace Officer Honor Roll, which I unfortunately had to update on March 30th when two Troopers were killed in a helicopter crash while performing a rescue near Talkeetna.
That was a very quick trip, but 2 days later Monty and I went down on our own, and spent a lot more time exploring and shooting. Before I could get out of the driveway, though, I had to get the mud I picked up on the Kusawa Lake Road out of the wheelwells. With it now frozen harder than concrete, that took a while.
Our first stop was at our Carcross cabin, to see if there were any migrating swans there. I was very pleased to find that there were 26 of them right in front of the cabin.
There’s no sign of Spring along Windy Arm…
…except for the rocks melting out of the slopes and rolling down onto the highway. Last year we saw a fellow in a small car hit one, puncture his oil pan and then keep driving until the engine apparently seized. At the same spot, someone else has recently punctured their oil pan, but at least stopped quickly so the towing and repair bill will “only” be a few hundred dollars.
We stopped at Tutshi Lake, and had planned to go for a long walk, as the temperature had been fluctuating between 0 and +2°C (32-36°F) ever since we left home.
The walk got substantially shortened, though, because the drifted snow was deep and “punchy” in places, making walking very difficult (even Monty was punching through in places, so taking snowshoes wouldn’t have helped).
There are some nice frozen waterfalls along the highway, this large one just south of the Tutshi Lake stop, at Km 61.4.
As my regular readers know, I love “moody mountain” images, and the peaks above Goat Lake provided a good photo op.
A quiet day on Broadway – it was hard to believe that the first cruise ship would arrive in only 25 days!
The salmon enhancement area on Pullen Creek is one of the places where the arrival Spring is the most dramatic.
This lovely 75-foot, wooden, ketch-rigged motor sailer arrived in Skagway last summer as “Lindy”, but the name has now been removed, and I can’t find out anything about her current status. Built in Great Britain as a fishing boat in 1944, she was brought to Alaska in 2003.
Work continues on the Small Boat Harbor – they’re dredging now, and I watched a barge full of sand and gravel being hauled out into the inlet to be dumped. I assume that they dump it into the sea, but that seems very environmentally unfriendly given how rich Taiya Inlet is.
As usual, I went over to the mouth of the Skagway River and watched the harbor seals fishing for a few minutes.
I take photos of old houses in a rather haphazard fashion. Some day I’ll make the time to be more systematic about it – Skagway has many.
After lunch I went over to the WP&YR railway yard to see what’s new. Shops seems to have been busy all winter doing locomotive and passenger car work.
I met this set just returning from the White Pass, getting the line clearing out.
From Shops I went down to the main passenger car storage yard.
The “Lake Atlin” car is one of the railway’s oldest, having been built in 1889!
Near the other end of the age spectrum, the “Lake Takhini” was built in 2004.
I hadn’t been up the road along the Skagway River for quite a while, so went up and took a few shots there.
If you want a free bus, just come to Skagway and get it 🙂 “Leo’s Shuttle” isn’t a name that visitors to Skagway see anymore, but the company is still in operation – they’ve had the SMART shuttle bus contract since its inception in May 2000.
When you go for months without seeing rain, the first of of the year is quite special!
There’s getting to be a fair bit of damage on the road – some like this one are flagged, but most are not, despite stories to the contrary that you may see online.
This time of the year, with just a bit of snow left, is the esaiest time to see the slash along the Yukon – British Columbia border. You can see it at the bottom of this photo, taken just north of the “Welcome to Yukon” sign, on the far side of Windy Arm.
And just a few hundred yards beyond that, it’s hard to believe that this tiny avalanche chute is the most consistent producer of large avalanches anywhere along the South Klondike. The highway was actually closed by an avalanche the next day for a few hours.
Still in exploring mood, we stopped at Carcross again on the way home. Monty, always ahead, got a few yards onto the railway bridge before realizing that he HATES open-deck bridges! I was almost ready to carry him back to “safety” when he turned around and made it back. Poor puppy 🙁
More historic homes that I need to get more photos of, because these ones along the Nares River won’t be standing much longer.
I saw some more swans on the Nares River, and decided that the upper deck of the SS Tutshi memorial-thing might be a good viewing spot.
It was 🙂
The further along this “retail village” in downtown Carcross comes, the more I dislike it. “If you build it, they will come” – wanna bet?
Spring melt is coming along nicely in mid-afternoon, even though everything still freezes very solidly again every night. A pile of money was spent on the building seen here, which is now hidden by the retail village and the coffee shop has moved out for the upcoming summer.
Well, that’s the catchup. We have another 1-2 inches of snow forecast for tonight and tomorrow, then it’s supposed to warm up. Yesterday, though, I was back at the piles of snow around the deck – I know Spring is down there somewhere!
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