Western Canadian Rockies (WCR) – Day 16 – Skagway

We arrived in Skagway on Tuesday June 25, sometime around 6:30am.  We have an 8:20am excursion planned that is a train ride to the top of White Pass and back.  As we make our way to the train, we see old (I think) street cars ready to tour Skagway.

As we begin our train ride, we pass an old steam engine in the woods.  Don’t know if it was put there on purpose for the ride or if it was originally abandoned years ago.  In either case, the train locomotive looks good and is an unexpected treat.

The scenery along the trip is great.  Tall mountain peaks, rivers and mountain passes one of which we travel up now.

A couple of more old trains that were standing in the rail yard which I assume is part of the White Pass – Yukon Route train museum. 

We journeyed on the historic White Pass Scenic Railroad climbing 2,865 feet to the summit of White Pass.  This narrow-gauged railroad is an international Historic Civil Engineering Landmark sharing this honor with the Panama Canal, Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty.  Here is our train, or part of it pulled by three locomotives and has at least 15 cars. 

The river we are following this morning has a fog running along it and nowhere else.  The river water is much colder than the air and causes the localized ground fog.  The sun is shining and I hope the clear weather remains for the trip.

As we get higher into the mountains, we have a view down the mountains to the sea.  We can see the cruise ships at the dock and the glacier covered mountains in the background.  It is such a beautiful view from up here.

Near a place called Rocky Point, we can look back along out path, down the valley and river; you can see one of the bridges we crossed. 

We pass a number of waterfalls that seem to be typical of the train ride and the small streams from snow melt, like this one.

And also regular, larger, waterfalls that are part of the river, such as this one.

As we approach a large switchback, we can see the train that left the cruise docks just before we did.  It is several miles ahead of us, but from across the ravine it is not that far only about a mile.

The train against the backdrop of the snow covered mountains.

Once again, we are high up in the mountain pass and can see way down the valley from where we came up.  You can clearly see the train tracks cut into the side of the mountain on the left side.  The river you see coming down the mountain on the far side has one of the waterfalls shown in a previous picture.  This is the Slippery Rock view point.

On our way to White Pass, we pass many more waterfalls, go through a few tunnels, and cross a few more bridges, but we did not cross this bridge at the “gulch”; can’t imagine why. 

As we near the summit of White Pass, we enter the American Shed.  You can see the remnants of a trail on the left side of the snow.  That is the Trail of 1898 for the gold rush.  Potential miners would travel this trail to get to their grub stake.

Before reaching the pass summit, we finally saw an animal.  In this case we viewed a marmot in the rocks near its lair. 

We finally make it to White Pass, at 2888 feet and a mere 20.4 miles from Skagway and are now at the USA and Canadian border (the obelisk between the flags). 

At the top and our turn-around location, we are on one track and have moved aside for the other train that was ahead of us.  Shortly after this train passed by, our engines decoupled and moved to the other end of the train where we then went back down the mountain (we flipped our seats for the return trip).

On the way back much of the views were as the trip up the pass, but I still had to take this one since this was entirely new and I thought it was such a nice picture. 

We sat with Mable and Rita on the train ride and caught them and Carmen as we descended the mountain pass.

We have yet another waterfall view before we finish our trip to the bottom and return to the ship.

Here is Carmen out between the cars with me taking pictures of the scenery.  What a great trip with fantastic views.

Back at the ship, we make a quick stop for something to eat before running into town.  On the way along the dock, we saw an Otter in the water. 

In town, there was an engine that had a snow blower in the front.  Pretty neat, since the size of the blower is almost twice as tall as Carmen .  I could have used this on my driveway when I lived in Maine.

 

After walking around town, we made a quick stop at the Red Onion Saloon, a brothel turned restaurant and museum.  We did not eat lunch nor did we make it up to the museum as time was not on our side.  We make it back on the ship in time for the ship to leave and relaxed a little before heading out to dinner.

Tomorrow we will sail to Glacier Bay and expect to get there around 6:00am.  So I’ll be up early.  Bob and Carmen.