I hiked the Great Chilkoot Trail!

Hello all!

I have now completed the one adventure goal that I had for myself this summer. This last weekend I hiked the Chilkoot trail which is an old miners trail that thousands of prospectors heading to the Klondike gold fields took back in 1897 and 1898. The trail is 33 miles and starts at Skagway's old competitor- a ghost town now, called Dyea and ends up in Bennett City, British Columbia. Back in the day the miners began at Dyea and began the 500 mile trek to Dawson City, Yukon. But they first had to get over the mountains before they could get to the lakes where they could build boats and transport their goods a lot easier. The ironic thing about the whole trip is that once they did manage to make it to the many lakes in Canada, it was winter, the lakes were frozen and they were stuck!

But back to the Chilkoot. It's 33 miles long, and my friends and I hiked it in 4 days. Some extremely motivated people complete it in 1 day, but in order to get the most out of the experience we decided to take our time and enjoy ourselves.

The trip went like this. Day 1, we started out at 10:30am after an orientation at the Parks Service. We finally ended up at Sheep Camp at 7pm, after stopping for quite a few photos and snacks. This day was the most difficult in my opinion. We hiked a total of 12 miles and were struggling with our heavy packs. At Sheep Camp it began to rain and we ate dinner, despite almost burning down the food cabin and tried to get some sleep.

Day 2: We hit the trail at 8:30am, despite the Park Rangers' suggestion of hitting the trail at 6am.... oops. This day we hiked a total of 8 miles.

We hiked and could tell that the famous Golden Staircase was coming up. We gained elevation quickly and by noon we were up and over the staircase. If you haven't done research on the Chilkoot Trail, do it! The staircase is a 40 degree angle of boulders that the miners carved steps in the snow in order to get up and over it. The crazy thing is that the miners climbed the staircase an average of 40 times each!!!! We only did it once, with relatively light packs and were pretty exhausted at the summit. But the reason the miners had to do this in 1898 was because they needed to have 2,000 lbs, yes, an ENTIRE TON of goods in order to cross the border into Canada. There were no trains, no hired helpers, and no light camping stoves.

We were up and over the staircase and the summit around noon. The conditions on the staircase were absolutely horrible. But we loved every minute of it! It rained all day long- well a light drizzly really that had us drenched by the time we reached our camp for that night. Happy Camp. It's well named isn't it? Oh, and the wind blew all day long as well. Pushing us sideways as we're crawling on all fours up the boulders to the summit. We felt so hardcore for climbing in these conditions. It was so incredible to make it to the top and cross an international border on foot! So we crossed into Canada and continued on our way to camp. The trail flattened out after the summit, but with the rain refusing to stop, we were drenched. Our shoes and feet were soaked and we had to cross so many little streams to get to camp that we finally gave up trying to be dry and just walked right through them. But we finally made it and spent the next 24 hours at Happy Camp.

Happy Camp was very full that night, only 50 people are allowed on the trail at one time, and the warm up cabin was very crowded with wet, smelly people. It was like a very smelly sauna in the cabin, which is only for warming up and cooking, not sleeping. That night the rain continued to come down and we sleep like logs in the tent.

Day 3: We left Happy Camp very late, about 2:30pm because we knew we only had about 5 miles to go today. So we had breakfast, attempted to dry our clothes on the propane stoves and hit the trail once more. And then a miraculous thing happened. The sun appeared just as we were starting out. And it continued to shine the rest of the journey! We slowly made our way to Lindeman Camp and spent the night next to Long Lake. Everything has such original names up here! The camp was the first one we'd been to that had a wood burning stove in it and we had an amazing feast of backpackers food, which included chocolate cheesecake and apple cobbler for dessert..... and went to sleep in the tents one last time.

Day 4: We hit the trail around 8am to hike the final 7 miles to Bennett City. The weather was gorgeous again but we knew that we had to keep on pace because we needed to catch the train back to Skagway that afternoon. At this point in the journey we had gotten quite used to our packs, which were lighter by the day and we made it to Bennett City by about 11am. It was one of the most beautiful sights I'd ever seen. The last mile of trail was through the Carcoss Desert, considered the "smallest desert in the world" although its not technically a desert. It was quite difficult to hike through the sand in hiking boots, but we were so motivated to get to our destination that it didn't matter. Once we arrived we saw the old church at Lake Bennett and the beautiful lake itself. After 33 miles of trail, heavy packs, rain and 4 days without a shower, WE HAD MADE IT!!!! We were greeted with a cauldron of beef stew and a spectacular train ride back to Skagway. What a way to spend the weekend! If you want to see more pictures I have two albums posted to my facebook page!

From Skagway to the Interior!!!

One of the coolest experiences that I have had so far this summer is being chosen to participate in the 2010 Highway Fam Tour. Skagway used to have a highway division that was recently moved to be stationed in Fairbanks. To make a long story short, the highway division might be coming back into Skagway next year and one of our drivers this year is going to be doing a special highway tour in July. So in order for her to be prepared for her upcoming 10 day tour she needed to have a refresher course in the terrain and the location stops, etc. And the company decided that as a treat for 4 of us, we were able to come along on the tour. When I first heard about the PAID vacation I was very excited and signed up.... along with 20 other people. But I knew that only 4 of us in the company would be chosen, so my hopes weren't very high that I would get to go. But I was wrong. Dead wrong and got to have an amazing experience in the interior of Alaska and the Yukon that many of the other drivers were very jealous about.

The tour was 5 days long and we started our journey from Skagway to Dawson City in the Yukon on the first day. Dawson is an incredible city, with only dirt roads where the gold was originally discovered during the Klondike Gold Rush. We spent two nights in Dawson and then headed on the Yukon Queen Ship down the Yukon River to Eagle, Alaska. One of the greatest perks of this tour was that we are now all trained to drive the E-Model Luxury MotorCoach!

It was in Eagle that I had one of the most amazing/terrifying experiences of my life. While we were in Eagle, on the day of Summer Solstice I might add, we ran into the park ranger who told us that if we really wanted to experience Eagle we should climb to the tallest peak in order to see the town and a fantastic view of the Yukon River.

So.... we proceeded to climb the mountain. The climb was not actually a hike, but turned out to be a rock climb without the proper equipment. No harness, and the footing was VERY unstable. There was one point where I looked like spider man on the side of this cliff hanging on for dear life and shaking. Long story short, we made it up the mountain alive, except for my poor camera which got smashed to pieces against one of the boulders :(

After we made it to the top we couldn't go down the same way because it was too dangerous with rocks falling everywhere and so we continued climbing and then proceeded to make our way down. But we lost the trail and ended up bush whacking to the river again back to the Bed and Breakfast we were staying at. Our boss was very pleased to see us, since they were considering sending a search party in our direction soon. Luckily, the sun doesn't set this far north, so we had plenty of daylight to see!

The few days weren't as exciting as Eagle, but I did get to see the great Alaskan pipeline, Tok, Alaska and then Whitehorse, Yukon before heading back to Skagway. It was a fantastic experience!!!! But I might not be rock climbing anytime soon... :)

For the love of Atlin!!!!

Hello everyone!

My apologies for not updating my blog sooner.... with the way my life is going right now I should really update it every single day. But I'm having way too much fun here!

I have now been in Skagway, Alaska for over 2 months now and am loving every minute of it. The great thing about this division is that we don't work 7 days a week like we did in Ketchikan. So almost every weekend since I've been here I have been able to take some camping trips around the area with my friends. Last weekend was the best so far. 8 of us went out to Atlin, BC to go camping. It was probably the most beautiful place I've ever been to this summer so far. It was spectacular weather, and this small little gold rush town is a bit off the beaten path, so it is not spoiled by tourism. It's a tough thing for me to think about because I received my minor in tourism management, and although tourism is a great thing for many communities, especially in Alaska, I have seen the negative consequences of it as well. Skagway for example is a fantastic community with some amazing local residents in it, but it does have 23 jewelry stores in it. Just like Ketchikan and any other popular cruise ship city. The situation is different in Atlin however.

It is a small community of 400 people and as we were passing through town we met several locals. They were very friendly and offered us advice and friendship immediately. We camped a few miles outside of town at a place called Warm Bay. The next morning we woke up and decided to go "exploring" on the lake. This turned out to be something I'd never dream of doing without the persuasion of my friends. Along the beach we found a rowboat with one oar and decided that it would be a good idea to just go for a ride. On the boat. That didn't belong to us. There was 8 of us total and so most of the people in the boat paddled with tree branches! We ended up having an amazing time and returned the boat in the same condition half an hour later.

The weekend was a very memorable one and a great experience for all. My next blog post will give you all an idea of my amazing adventures into the interior on the 5 Day Highway Familiarization Tour!!!