Chilkoot Trail
Saturday, August 19th, 2006August 15th – 19th 2006
The Chilkoot Trail is perhaps Alaska’s and the Yukon’s most infamous trail. It also happens to be one of its most historic. The route follows an old Indian route (Tlingit tribe) that goldseekers struggled over to get from Dyea, Alaska to Bennett, British Columbia. If you have not heard of the trail, you most likely have at least seen a picture depicting part of it – a line of men walking a steep, snow covered hill with backpacks on their backs. It is a very famous photograph taken during the goldrush of 1898. See the following link Click Here for Chilkoot Trail Information.
The trail is a popular one – they limit the numbers of people that go over “the pass” (the difficult section of the trail which includes the border crossing from US to Canada) on a daily basis. However, we were soon to find out that they don’t limit it enough…..
We purchased our permits at the National Park Office from a pair of very nice rangers. We gave our itinerary of the camps we would stay at along the way, and the rangers went over bear safety and trail etiquette with us. The trail is one way – and we had to find a way back to our car when we were finished it. We decided to splurge and take the White Pass/Yukon Route train back to Skagway. This train only picks up backpackers on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays, with the steam engine train only running Saturdays. We decided, “go big or go home” and opted for the steam train on Saturday. Click Here for White Pass/Yukon Route train information. This meant that we had to be finished the trail and at the train station at 1pm Saturday. We started the trail on a Tuesday, it should be no problem getting there on time. So, in total, it cost us a whopping $310.00 for our Chilkoot experience ($10 each for transport from our car at the train station to the trailhead, $55 each to hike, $90 each to ride the train) – but well worth it in the end.
We packed our backpacks, parked our car at the train station and waited for “Dyea Dave” to pick us up to transport us to the trailhead. Dave runs a “tourist” van around Skagway and Dyea, and picks up hikers as part of his business. As he loaded our packs onto the van both Jim and I noticed the enormous hands and feet on him….he has size 18 shoes! Really nice guy, who knows a lot about the area, so we were entertained on our way to the trailhead.
We were on the trail by 10am. The skies didn’t look good, but they managed to hold out this day. The first day we did about 7.5miles, only the first 1/2 mile and last 2 miles were up and down, so it was an easy day. We stayed at a camp called Canyon City, and were really upset when we came upon the camp – there were already lots of tents there, and we knew a group of 14 were on their way…..at the end of the day there were 40+ people there, and one outhouse. It was ridiculous how many people were using such a small space – we had been warned by the rangers about how “odiferous” the outhouse was, and they were not kidding.
Next AM we waited til most people were on their way before we packed out. It would be a short hike to Sheep camp, only 4.3 miles, but rugged. Again, the rain held off for the hike, but we got poured on shortly after we arrived, and it didn’t let up all night. Sheep Camp is the “base camp” for the famous scales and golden stairs hike which takes you over the Chilkoot Pass into Canada. This camp is set up better for the amount of people that were there – 2 cooking shelters and 4 outhouses, but it was still packed. 43 wet, stinky people trying to pack into 2 shelters is not a pretty sight. At 7pm Jeremy, a US ranger, gave us a “de-briefing” about bear safety and our hike the next day. The hike up the pass is known to be quite difficult and strenuous. Some people apparently take over 12 hours to do it. Our weather forcast he told us was not good – we would have little to no visibility, rain and cold. Unfortunate, but such is life sometimes. He told us we should all be on the trail by 6am, so everyone was in their tents by 10:30pm.
Jim and I were pretty anxious about the hike – disappointed that we wouldn’t be able to see any artifacts along the way (much less the trail in some parts), but scared/excited all wrapped into one. How hard would it be?
Our anxiousness led to a poor sleep. We had a quick breakfast in the AM, and were on the trail by 7am (an hour late, but so were most people). It was raining off and on, and our backpacks seemed twice as heavy since a lot of stuff was wet. The first few miles were up and down through rocky trails and we had to cross quite a few streams. At first we tried to keep our boots dry, but after a while we couldn’t help but getting our feet soaked. By the time we reached “the scales” (where they used to weigh the stampeders gear) it was raining constantly. From the scales, through the “golden stairs” to the pass, it is basically boulder climbing with the last portion being a very steep ascent. It was a really fun climb, and despite the weather conditions it was not as hard as we anticipated, but tiring. At the top of the pass is a Canadian warden station where we were served hot lemonade and took a 15 minute break. Then we set out again, through snow, rocks, tundra, creeks to get to the next camp: Happy Camp. We were soaked when we arrived at the camp, and our packs seemed to weigh triple what they did initially. We unfortunately did not own a waterproof backpack cover so our packs acted like cisterns collecting the rain water. Instead, we looked like “red neck” backpackers….had garbage bags around all our stuff inside and outside our packs, which sort of kept stuff semi-dry. See, we are used to just “sitting tight” if the weather gets rough…waiting it out for a couple of days before moving on. However, here we didn’t have a choice. Note to self: buy waterproof backpack covers for next trip!! We were just too darn cheap to do it before.
Anyways, we got to Happy Camp and found the shelter was packed and we didn’t really want to stay with all the people in such a cramped area. So, we had something to eat and decided to move on to the next camp 2 miles away. We both felt okay, that is until I started hiking again. My right knee had really started to bother me (it gets sore from the constant impact of going downhill) and Jim had to act as my coach the entire 2 miles, encouraging me the whole way. He felt great, and probably could have hiked the entire rest of the trail! We actually saw some blue sky on the way, and were able to appreciate the beauty of the tundra and all of the emerald coloured lakes on the Canadian side. So, we arrived at Deep Lake Camp to find that the only people there were Robert and his son Morgan – a terrific relief from the crowds at Happy Camp! I hobbled in and Robert greeted us with a shot of Grand Marnier. We set up our wet camp – I was starting to get concerned that I was going to become hypothermic – and we had dinner. Later, a couple of funny girls – Jessica and Jessica – showed up, and it ended up being only the 6 of us at camp. Nice.
Next am we were due to hike to Bare Loon Lake, but we planned instead to hike the entire way out if we felt good enough. Robert and Morgan were going to do this, and we knew another couple, Julia and Bruce were due to do the same thing. This would avoid the large groups of people again, because most were due to camp at Bare Loon. We headed out on our 10mile hike into what turned into a beautiful, sunny day. My knee didn’t hurt half as much, and we made it to the end of the trail, Bennett Lake, by 4pm. We were thrilled to find Robert and Morgan there, at a campsite far away from any people and set up camp with them. It was sunny, with a nice breeze and we were able to dry out all of our gear. It was a great feeling that we were finished – we could just relax the rest of the night and next morning and catch the train in the afternoon.
The Chilkoot Trail is a humbling experience – the goldseekers in 1898 had to do the trek up the pass 40+ times to get their ‘ton of goods’ – the RCMP insisted they have – over the pass before they entered the country. (Not to mention hardly any of the goldseekers ever actually found gold!)The Tlingit indians did the trek often on a daily basis for survival. We saw a lot of ‘artifacts’ on the first couple of days and the last day, however, we missed any artifacts the day we did the pass because of the weather. Unfortunately as well, we don’t have many pictures from that day as our cameras would have been soaked. It would be nice to do the hike again if we could be guarranteed good weather – we would have spent much more time on the pass looking around and enjoying the views, however, it sounds like nice days up there are few and far between. The hike is definitely worth doing, if anyone is interested. As long as you are in half decent shape, it is do-able. The elevation gain is from sea level to ~3700ft, with ~2700ft gain on the day you go over the pass. The scenery is fantastic, and the history even better. The artifacts that we saw were really cool, although in places the running joke was “how long does something have to be around before it is not garbage and becomes an artifact?” Along the trail near and at Bennett lake has a lot of cans and bottles strewn around, that if one didn’t know better just look like garbage. We were on the trail from Tuesday to Saturday, but finished the hike on Friday – you can be on the trail as long as you want as long as you go over the pass on the day you are assigned. It could be done in less days – depending on the amount of hiking one wants to do and the weather is always a determining factor as well. Keep in mind that it is a very busy trail – the campsites are bound to be packed unless you do more hiking to get away from the majorities.
Robert, Morgan, Julia, Bruce and us had some great laughs over dinner – it’s always funny how “like” people always end up weeding each other out in a crowd – and we were happy for their great company.
Next AM we again enjoyed some good times with our new friends over breakfast, and then packed up to catch the train. The backpackers are all put on 2 separate cars from the tourists – we think it is because we smell so badly from being in the bush for a few days! The train ride was incredible – went by some of the old White Pass trail which was an ‘alternate’ to the Chilkoot trail – with lots of scenic views and good company. A very funny thing happened while on the train – the conductor came over the loudspeaker and said if anyone wanted to take a picture of the train on a ‘drive by’ we could….they actually stopped the train, people got off, the train backed up and then proceeded to move again forward towards us for picture taking opportunities! One of the fellows working on the train said, “quiet on the set” and we all had to be silent as people were videotaping the train coming at us and they wanted all the sounds of the steam engine on their tapes. It was pretty bizzare, however, I have to admit the sound of a steam engine is like nothing else….chugging along with its whistle going is a wonderful noise that makes one think of how it may have been like in the old days!
Julia and Bruce were kind enough to ask us what we were doing for dinner, so after we got off the train we all went out to a local restaurant – Julia, Bruce and I had veggie burgers….Jim had a double cheesburger. We found out that they are from Alberta, are avid hikers and have done many trips elsewhere in the world. They also have a similar story to ours….they met when Julia was a summer student at Bruce’s work, Julia is my age, Bruce is Jim’s age, etc etc. Bruce is a pilot as a hobby, and for part of their trip they rented a plane and were flying place to place. Pretty neat.
We said our goodbyes after a great visit, and headed out. It was our last day in Alaska, and we were officially heading home now with our next stop at Erik’s house in Fort St. John BC.
Kristin