After a quick breakfast of cereal and orange juice
(fantastic for a change), we said goodbye to Sgt Preston staff and their 2 dogs
and walked the four blocks to the White Pass and Yukon train station. We had
all of our luggage and we had a few stops on the way for Neil to stand in the
middle of the road and take photos.
It was okay because the cruise ships from
yesterday were gone and the first 2 ships for today had not released their
passengers so it was pretty hard to find anyone around at 6.30 in the morning.
I sat with the gear beside the carriages of the historic train and noted that
the carriages were named after rivers and lakes in the area it travelled. It is
a narrow gauge railroad with ironwork at the end of each carriage. At 7am the
conductor went through and unlocked all the carriage doors and put the steps
down for the passengers. The office staff arrived on their push bikes and
things were starting to roll. Neil came back from taking photos and went to
confirm our reservations and then we were amazed. Because we were going on to
Whitehorse and not doing a loop run, we had to catch the same kind of train but
it was about a mile away at the rail yards where they stored all the rolling
stock. I was all set to get on the train I had been sitting next to but we had
to catch a bus (provided by the railroad) to the other train. On the bus we
went right passed Sgt Preston’s hotel (maybe we should have waited there)
No problems!! The train was exactly the same as the other
one. It must get cold on these trains at the end of the season (May- Sept),
because there was a pot belly heater in each carriage. The railroad from
Skagway to Carcross was built over 100 years ago and stretches for 67.5 miles.
There is an engineer, a brakeman and a conductor to drive the train and we had
a fantastic tour guide called Halley who told us about every aspect of the
track/history/scenery. She went through
the general housekeeping rules and made an interesting comment: All children
and husbands must be accompanied by a responsible adult at all times because
men are like children around trains!! She warned that if anyone smoked, the
staff would assume they were on fire and would act appropriately to douse the
flames. It was going to be fun.
We saw the Klondike goldrush cemetery. People mainly died
due to gun fights rather than illness. However over 3000 horses died due to
overwork and poor care routines by their owners. The scenery all day was
fantastic. The skies were blue, the
Rivers had icy blue water and often flowed over rapids. Looking back we
could see a panoramic view of Denver Valley, Skagway, the harbour and the ice
capped mountains, On many occasions, we had sheer drops of hundreds of metres
on the left side of the track and huge, rocky or spruce covered green mountains on the right
so the track was built on a narrow ledge around the mountains. 2000 men worked
on the line to build it and 35 workers died. Two of them are remembered with
crosses where they were crushed to death by a huge falling rock.
Fireweed was abundant along the banks of the rivers and
lakes. It has a pretty purple flower but it blooms from the bottom up so the
last blooms are at the top and when they die off they form a white cotton like
mass. It is said that once that happens it will snow in 6 weeks time. It is
called fireweed because it is the first to return after a fire. After Slippery
Rock we crossed a famous wooden bridge on the side of a mountain as we climbed
the 3.9 per cent grade. Then we entered a tunnel in the side of the mountain.
Mountain goats were grazing on the side of the steep mountains.
We saw the retired steel cantilever bridge which has been
listed as an Historic Engineering Landmark in the same way that the Eiffel
Tower and the Panama Canal are and entered a 600 metre long tunnel called “opportunity
tunnel”……The White Pass elevation is 2888ft and there are many snow capped peaks
in the area. The land there is rising by 2-3 inches per year. Alaska has more
glaciers than any other country in the world except Iceland and many of them
are not named but they are spectacular.
White Pass is where the border between Canada and the USA is
so we stopped at the next settlement, Fraser British Columbia to go through
Customs. The officers just entered each carriage and checked our passports.
They stopped all cars and did the same but they never looked in caravans or the
backs of RVs. Strange, don’t you think? The vegetation changed to aspen trees
and blueberry bushes near Lake Bernard. There were fantastic reflections in the
water of the rock formations closest to the lake and the huge mountains in the
background.
At Lake Bennett we stopped for a lovely lunch of meat
casserole, coleslaw and apple and pear pie. There was coffee or water to drink
but no tea but the water was very refreshing as it was quite a warm day and,
yes, the skies were blue!!1. Apparently, the area in which we had lunch is
covered by 30-40 ft of snow in winter and the huge lake freezes. One fellow
took advantage of the cold and started selling hot food to the stampeders
(those going to the gold rush). Then he opened a hotel and gradually his
fortune grew. His name was Frederick Trump: Donald Trumps Grandfather.
After a delightful day looking at beautiful scenery and
experiencing the historic railroad, we arrived in the small town of Carcross and after a 2 hour break in which Neil
explained our tourist attractions in Australia to an American couple who were
very interested and then he found out that the man behind the counter at the
railroad office was from Tasmania. He talks to everyone!!! We took a highway
bus to Whitehorse. On the way we passed the world’s smallest desert and Emerald
Lake which certainly lived up to its name.
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