ENJOYING BEAUTIFUL SKAGWAY, ALASKA

Where the heck is Skagway you ask?  It's located on the north end of Taiya Inlet on Lynn Canal.  Oh, that probably doesn't help.  It's 108 miles south of Whitehorse, Yukon or 90 air miles from Juneau.  It has a population of 968 but when you have four cruise ships pull in, like today, you've have about 10,000 people walking the streets, taking the White Pass train, riding on the horse and buggy tour, taking a bus or shuttle tour and eating/drinking at the pub restaurants.

Originally, Skagway was spelling Skaguay, meaning "stiffly wind rippled water" in Tlingit.  It is the oldest incorporated city in Alaska and owes its birth to the Klondike Gold Rush.  If you remember your history, names like the Klondikes, White Pass and Chilkoot trails to the Yukon Goldfields all come to mind.

The Artic Brotherhood Hall's facade with more than 8,833 pieces of driftwood sticks arranged in a mosaic pattern was unique and houses the visitor center.  In 1998, the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park became the nation's only International Historical Park with units in Seattle, Skagway, BC and the Yukon.  We got our passport stamped there and talked with the Ranger who told us about Dyea Road with it's narrow, winding, gravel road where thousands of people were housed during the Gold Rush.

The building to the far right is the visitor's center

We took our car to Dyea Road which is the beginning of the 33-mile trail that the original stampeders took on the Chilkoot Trail, climbing over Chilkoot pass with an elevation of 3,739 feet.  Imagine those gold seekers with their "ton of goods" (a year's worth of supplies and equipment) blazing a trail through the worse kind of weather and conditions.  Today's adventurers take 3-5 days to hike the trail.  No, we did not opt to hike the 33-miles.

Today we did opt for a hiking trail to Upper Dewey Lake.  They tell you it's a half hour to one hour hike to LOWER Dewey Lake and classify it as a steep trail.  Well that sounded too easy so we choose to keep going to UPPER Dewey Lake which is a steep two to four hour hike to above the tree line.  I think this is the longest and most challenging hike we've EVER taken.  It was eight miles round trip with an elevation climb of 3,200, I'm talking straight up.  My legs were screaming going uphill and like rubber on the way down.  But I must say the view from the top was spectacular.  In the bowl between two mountains was Dewey Lake, a glacier lake surrounded by mountains.   We took our shoes off and enjoyed the icy cold water.  Denis was much braver than me and dove in a few times. His first dive in, he lost his sunglasses and kept diving back down to find them, with no luck.  We met up with the guys who told us about this hike.  They rented the cabin at the lake for a couple of nights. What a great place to spend a few nights.  They say the brook trout there are plentiful and grow to 16 inches.  The guys told us about the grizzly bear that they see every day.  How cool is that?!

Upper Dewey Lake

Another angle of Upper Dewey Lake

Nice cold glacier water

Got back to the rig safe and sound but we were extremely hungry and tired.  Denis had to go to the Haines-Skagway Fast Ferry to pick up a package and I had a chance to take a nice hot shower followed by a nice cold beer.  When Denis got back we drove (no more walking for us, thank you very much) to the Skagway Brewery.  Ordered up a couple of beers, pasta for Denis and a cheeseburger with fries for me.  Food tastes so much better when you've put in eight miles of endurance hiking.

That's all folks!  Thanks for stopping in.