The floodwaters remain
We went on a bit of a flood tour yesterday. We don’t have to go far, as the water level at Carcross has flooded several historic cabins and done a great deal of damage to the beach and the White Pass & Yukon Route rail line, but we drove south to the ghost town of Conrad to see what it looked like.
There’s an informal camping area there, and it’s normally busy every summer weekend – this year is different, though. The photo below shows me standing at the best campsite at Conrad – the normal sandy beach is about 40 feet past me!! Going back 101 years to the day, the exact spot I’m standing on was at the foot of the town’s dock, with a line of shops on either side.
For me, the biggest impact is that canoeing sucks because there are no beaches to picnic on. For other residents of the Southern Lakes, it’s been devastating – in particular, some very nice homes on Marsh Lake have been damaged. The president of the Realtors Association made a statement to the media a couple of weeks ago that the floods won’t affect real estate prices – what an idiot. Yeah, I’ll be buying a lot or home on what is now known as a potential flood zone. He says it won’t affect prices because it’s never happened before and may never happen again – my money is betting that it will.
A huge complication with this flood that doesn’t happen elsewhere that I’m aware of is that these extremely high water levels may stay fairly stable for a very long time – weeks if not months. By the time it subsides to any degree winter may have arrived, so cleanup may not happen until next summer.
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