Northern Exposure II
^{Towards Alaska, 2005}

Thursday 8 Sept 2005 - ESCAPE FROM WHITEHORSE!
_{From Wolf Creek to Nares or Tagish Lake, YT}

MORNING: Up early and out of Wolf Creek campground before they could catch us, and into the rain, and now it's SOUTH TO ALASKA! Ja, Skagway is about due south from here. What will we see? Not much if the rain don't let up.

En route from Whitehorse to Carcross we pass the Lady Luck Kennels: if you're lucky, you'll get your dog back. We could also use the Lady Luck Financial and Tax Services: if you're lucky, you'll get your money back. Lady Luck Political Club: if you're lucky, you'll get your freedom back. Lady Luck Psychiatric Institute: if you're lucky, you'll get your mind back, freshly washed. Maureen suggests Lady Luck Catholic Church but that's almost too much to hope for. And Lady Luck Laundromat: if you're lucky, you'll get your clothes back. But that's almost trivial.

We pass a bakery at a Yukon resort. The first sign (rather common actually) shows the picture of a moose and an arrow, and says GET YOUR BUNS IN HERE. The next sign says EAT HERE OR WE WILL BOTH STARVE. Is that the Lady Luck Bakery? If you're lucky, you won't get food poisoning.

CARCROSS: We slowly drive across storied Chilkoot Trail country through the rain, up to Cariboo Crossing, now called Carcross (because a pastor 100 years ago complained that his letters were all going to towns called Caribou or Crossing). This is where the White Pass railroad starts its trip to Skagway, no longer running through Whitehorse to Dawson and beyond. It's at the neck between Bennett and Nares lakes, surrounded by the Southern Lakes and low peaks stretching up into the arctic zone.

This is a quaint old village just chock-a-block with 1900-era buildings. The big attraction was formerly a steamboat but it burnt down some years ago; only the boilers and bow remain. Before that, cruise ships stayed in Skagway long enough for passengers to cavort around Southern Lakes resorts, but no more. Now Carcross serves as a waypoint for ferry-bound travelers, rail sightseers, and back-country adventurers.

During the season, cruise ships daily pull into Skagway for a few brief but lucrative hours, disgorging untold thousands of spendthrift passengers, over­whelming numbers — but the merchants are ready. So are the tour buses that haul some dozens or hundreds up to Carcross where they can stop at the few quaint shops and buy authentic Canadian crafts and souvenirs and brik-a-brak. Yes, we did too, but not much. Better stuff here than in Whitehorse.

We spend some hours in tiny Carcross, chatting with Info center gals and merchants, poking around the wet splendor. We're told that several cruise ships are due in Skagway tomorrow, fewer in upcoming days, thus with diminishing thousands of anxious shoppers to compete with. We decide to stay up in higher country until they thin out down below. And we can outwait the weather, which is supposedly clearing. What, we hurry?

We're told that between Carcross and the border there are numerous spots where to just pull out and squat-camp for a night or ten. We drive a ways and we find one! We're overlooking long thin Nares (or maybe Tagish) Lake. A few surrounding mountains bear termination dust; others are merely laden with colorful trees climbing briefly to their own limit. The clouds rise and fall; the rain moves away.

DARKNESS: It's now late, close to midnight. I'm outside; the Milky Way is splendid and shimmering overhead, a few dark clouds here and there but they do very little to interfere with the starshow. Chilly but not terribly so, the sensor says high 40s fahrenheit. No spacecraft noted, alien or otherwise, but I didn't stare up all that long.

I should note that for our several days in Whitehorse, we were only struck once. Many Canadian drivers seem calm and courteous; many Yukon drivers aren't. I'd say that, generally, drivers in Mexico are more careful that drivers in the Yukon. Maybe it has to with insurance. If you're insured, you're immune, right?

Well. Tomorrow, SOUTH (further) TO ALASKA!

Friday 9 September 2005 - DOWN TO SKAGUAY!
_{Into Coastal Alaska Where Prices Are No Better}

NOONISH: We laid around all morning soaking up wonderful rain-free sunshine. I had barely enough time to process yesterday's words, let alone images from the last 1.25 months. But it's too nice a day to squat and be creative. So around noonish we finally got away along Nares Lake (or is it Tagish Lake?) past scenes of spectacular beauty, over rises, past more great lakes. Beside and above the road and Tutshi Lake, we spy the ruins of 1900-era mines, especially the Old Venus Mine reclining her weathered wooden frame along the steep slope. Much color on the mountains, etc.

We cross the line into Brutish Columbia. Maureen says this country is almost as good as Switzerland, and it's what she expected Banff and Jasper to look like, but they don't. This is ruggeder, wilder, with bigger lakes and fewer tourists, at least in their own vehicles. Along the road, signs warn of AVALANCHE ZONES. We look across the long thin lakes at shadowed mountains and see many snow chutes shooting down their sides. More snow on the peaks around us, both recent dusting and more permanent encrustations.

I saw another likely spot for a squat-camp just on the BC side of the territorial-provincial boundary. We'll have to check that out on our way back. And we ARE coming back this way in a few days — no boat rides to anywhere, not with our broken budget.

At the Log Cabin stop on the historic Chilkoot Trail on the Canadian side of White Pass, we talked to a couple of hikers, a couple of guys (maybe in their late 40s) originally from Fairbanks but now dispersed to Anchorage and Seattle. They said they wanted to make this hike while they still could. Said they had two days of solid rain out of Skaguay but a nicer climb yesterday and today. Many artifacts on the trail, they said, mainly old shoes. They looked completely fragged-out. They were tending their feet. The top of the pass is only about 3500 feet elevation, but getting there from the coast it's a steep and rocky climb.

WHITE PASS: We climb up into the White Pass area, replete with muskeg and scraped-clean granite masses and scraggy lichens, all in a flattened-pass littered with small lakes in stoney basins. A mountainside across the narrow valley looks like a recently-congealed blob of pudding; beyond are peaks like filed teeth, covered with glacial-looking decorations. We've passed pleasant cascades; the guide book warns us of more ahead. We see snowmelt dripping in sheets and waves on the rocky walls facing the road. This certainly gives our Carson Pass a run for its money. [Maureen laughs.] Alpine and arctic aspects, gnarlier than the Sierra Nevadas.

The highway is almost clogged with rental RVs and campers and tour buses of various sizes.

CUSTOMS: We pass the Canadian customs post and adjacent railroad stationette at Fraser BC, which isn't even a hamlet. Now we're in the DMZ straddling the border; US customs is a few miles down. Neither country is crazy enough to put their border outposts right at the crest of White Pass. Although the border *was* established there when, after protracted international squabbling, the RCMP just *KER-PLOP* set up a customs station at the summit in the winter of 1897. A fait accompli, eh?

And now we're at the pass and it's been a fairly gentle grade coming up here from the east. I understand it's a bit steeper going downhill to Skaguay, and coming back.

Ah, the Alaska side is cooler, greener, and yes it *is* steep. We read that White Pass here and Chilkoot Pass a couple miles north are two of only three glacier-free passes through northern Brutish Columbia's icy Coast Range, the second tallest coastal cordillera in the world, surpassed only by the Andes in South America.

Clearing US customs took about 45 seconds. That was after we waited a couple minutes for the vehicles in front of us. And we still might beat the train into town, the one that's been paralleling us across the little canyon since before the Pass. That's "little canyon" in terms of width, not depth. This cut is very narrow and very deep.

SKAGUAY: And on into Skaguay. On the inland outskirts it looks rather like a Pacific Northwest maritime town, like many on the Oregon coast. But the heart of it, ah, we see a main street with Victorian-era false-front buildings and boardwalks, everything definitely tarted-up for the tourist onslaughts. Only about 800 people stay here over the winter; who knows how many tens of thousands are here some summer days? It's really kind of depressing, trying to make our way through the swarms in this Gold Rush theme park. I liken it to Tombstone, with glaciers. Maureen disagrees, argues that Tombstone is a bit worse. Whatever. It's a colorful town set in a steep narrow valley, craggy wooded hills on either side, and the mountains — glaciers visible at elevation across the fjord.

The temperature is great, weather is great, but it's not raining, eh? Most of the cruise-ship-borne tourists are old farts, or at least middle-aged and beyond. The gringos all look like slobs, the Russians are even worse. Some Europeans look like they take the cruises seriously, and dress accordingly. And the locals? They're the folks who AREN'T on the main drag, AREN'T flitting around the dozens of shops that have no reason to remain open after the last tourist-hauling liner departs.

EXERCISE: Descending from White Pass, we passed scores of bicyclists. I wonder how many of them are sag-wagoned up to the crest, just to roll downhill back to town. Rather like we dream of for Haleakala on Maui, eh? And the town is filling with RVs with team markings, names like THE RUN­NING JOKES and LEGALIZE STREAKING and POTHOLE PATTY AND THE ASPHALTS. It turns out there's a race tonight, an overnight relay race to Whitehorse. The moon isn't even full!! Running 125 miles in the dark!!

[Astute readers will note that I use the traditional spelling of the town's name, Skaguay. It's a Tlingit word meaning either "rough water" or "north wind" or "crumpled up" or (according to a Tlingit princess) "lady pissing on a rock". Don't you love traditions?]

Disentangling from the madding crowd, we drive the twisting fjord shore­line road past Smuggler's Cove out to the 'ghost' town of Dyea and the National Park Service campground. It's after 1 September so no camping fees are collected. Finally, a deal! We're all closed in by not-so-colorful hardwoods but there's a creek somewhere nearby and a sliver of a view of glaciated peaks. And it's free. We'll stay here a couple nights or five.

Saturday 10 September 2005 - LAYOVER AT Dyea!
_{Near Skaguay, at the head of Chilkoot Trail}

NOONISH at the Dyea NPS campground under cloudy skies. Virtually nobody else is here. Weather is chilly and damp but not really cold; so lush and green. Rain is forecast for today, thus the lush-ness and green-ness. I'm road-strolling parallel to the Taiyna River towards the Chilkoot Trailhead. Sorry, I ain't doing that trail today.

Tis another day of rest except for my brief(??) walk towards Dyea Ghost Town. I've manipulated and organized recent notes rather than writing anything new. But I am tempted, eh? I look over older notes and find an idea for a song-cycle: INSECT FEAR. I don't know if I can work up enough material for a whole album, but here's a song: INSECT FEAR!

I'm crossing an old rusty-steel-truss-with-wooden-roadway bridge across the Taiya River. Earlier I stumbled around the mudflats at the river's mouth. Striking patterns in the sand; river water is emerald green from the glacier dust.

Depending on the sort of fungi one might be interested in, these forests could be a mushroomer's heaven, with caps and ledges of various shades of (mostly) brown sticking up all over: in the uncrushed centers of soft wet overgrown dirt trails, and along the margins of the hard-surface roads, and off into the cold jungle, past the horsetails and berries.

Idea for another travel guide: how about TRAVEL ATTITUDES, When and When Not to Diss the Drive(r)? Another wordy load of crap, eh?

TO DYEA: Closer to the tidepools and on a shadier shore, the hardwoods give way to conifers, looks like spruce and fir, set in a velvety moist carpet of mushroom-sprouting sphagnum moss, so juicy and spongy and springy! I reach the Dyea historical site, once a booming city, but virtually nothing remains, mostly the remnants of a couple of warehouses-cum-barns built on pilings above the tidewaters. The rest of Dyea was carried away by human or natural agencies.

I stagger around in the trees following the numerous roads and trails above the cold swamp and I manage to get turned around. How do I get back? What looks like the best road goes over a good bridge but someone has written on its sign, what looks like NO EXIT. Am I trapped here? No, a number of hikers have parked nearby, and across the way is a sled-dog kennel. Ah, along comes a motorcyclist who directs me, hopefully in the right direction. And I misread that sign: under NARROW BRIDGE it says NO SHIT, not NO EXIT.

The forest here is quite unlike the Mendocino-Humboldt coast; this is definitely Ecotopia North. And here come some kennel trucks, rolling doggie-condos, each side with two rows of ten cages. I saw such rolling through Skaguay, many furry heads sticking out noisily.

RETURN: I finally make it back to camp, wandering past frog breeding grounds (so say the signs). There's nothing like trekking for a few hours to work up an appetite, eh? Maureen pan-toasts some bagels with cheeze and we settle in to watch the sky drip. We'll try Skaguay again tomorrow; hopefully, fewer cruise boats will infest the place.

Statistical note: We've been out for 36 days. The journal website for just this trip now contains 30 webpages. That's 5/6 of a webpage per day. Am I writing too much?

Sunday 11 September 2005 - DARING TO SKAGUAY!
_{Touring Skaguay by Hook or by Crook}

MORNING: We rolled out of camp mid-morning and over to the Dyea townsite. Still nothing to see but trees and minimal rotted wood ruins and mudflats in this narrow valley between mile-high ridges. We went to the old waterfront to gaze down rows of piling-stumps at the inlet where so many waded ashore for so little reward. Rather atmospheric now. Then we read of people getting off the boats here when thermometers read -30° and a north wind whips down from the pass, "searching us to the bone." Yow.

On the way into Skaguay we log our first sightings of bald eagles (and another bald eagle, and another, and another...) and sea otters. Closer to town, we sight THREE cruise ships at the wharfs. There goes the neighborhood. That means about 10,000 visitors in town — no, it's 12,500, I'm told by a fellow here in the bookstore.

Ah, guidebooks! Here's all the usual Alaska stuff, and also HOW TO SHIT IN THE WOODS and its sequel, UP SHIT CREEK. I think I'll write HOW TO SHIT ALMOST ANYWHERE: A Complete Guide to Elimination for Travelers. That'll be a useful addition to the literature, eh?

EVENING: We did the town walking tour and pursued Maureen's current quest, polar-bear earrings. We didn't get a good hit here, might have to try again in Carcross in a couple days. We did run into a couple merchants who, after the last cruise ships leave on 24 September, will head for Central America or SouthEast Asia or both, depending on the year. [One couple keeps their boat in the Rio Dulce, Guatemala.] We're told that in Indonesia, Bali is safe and Djkarta isn't. Since the infamous terror bombings, Bali is the best-policed place in the world, sez Terry of NORTHWEST PASSAGE ARTS.

In Indonesia (and many other places) don't travel on the day before a national holiday, that's when the underpaid local cops will shake you down, so they can get enough money to go home. And don't travel on a national holiday either — too much mischief happens then. And you can rent a two-storey bungalow cheaply, maybe US$1500 per year, but be sure to hire a housekeeper or you'll be considered unbearably frugal. And the housekeeper will get much better prices than you can when going to market.

There's still more of town to see, but not today, we're too tired. And not tomorrow because, the next time we hit Skaguay will be the last time, and when we leave we need to stop at the no-competition grocery to finish resupplying, but they're out of eggs and meats and won't have further shipments until Tuesday. So Monday is a layabout, and Tuesday we say goodbye to Alaska and head slowly back southward. Sayonara, suckers.

Monday 12 September 2005 - AVOIDING SKAGUAY!
_{Laying Over Again at Dyea AK}

Cloudy, almost rainy. It wouldn't have been a good day to ascend White Pass, even if the grocery had the supplies we need. So it's a little more stomping around and laying around, reading and writing and resting. I churned out a couple more wonderful Travel Guides; can you tell which are new? Neither can I.

Tuesday 13 Sept 2005 - ESCAPE FROM SKAGUAY!
_{Retreating Into the Yukon Again}

We roll leisurely from Dyea campground through the rain and scenery into Skaguay for our last bit of provisioning before heading to the wildlands of the Coast Ranges. In town, the rain stops. The sun is out, mixed with clouds. Four cruise ships are in town. The streets are jammed. The excursion buses and trains are busy. The merchants are very very busy. END OF SEASON SPECIALS! EVERYTHING MUST GO! And so must we. [Maureen laughs: We're outa here!]

Note: Skaguay is a cruise-ship destination, a theme town; the theme is KLONDIKE GOLD RUSH; the activities are, stare and shop. Cruise ships are themselves theme parks; the theme is INFINITE FOOD; the activities are, eat and pretend. Or so it seems. Tell me if I've got it wrong.

Climbing back up the White Pass route — it's craggy and steep and rocky and cloudy and steep. Wisps of vapor in the trees that don't make it to the ridgetops. Across watercourses strewn with great boulders. Gnarly ledges dropping off to nothingness. And compared to the Chilkoot Trail, this is the easy way.

Then through customs in 60 seconds and we're back in Canada again after just four nights in Alaska. Well, at least we can say, "We bin thar!" The trip is thus justified, eh? Right. In just the few days since we came over, the Canada-side hardwood forests visible from the road have gone almost totally to color.

Alas, that turnout I mentioned at the BC-Yukon line is a prohibited gravel pit, so we're back at our last Yukon camp on Windy Arm of Tagish Lake. Nares Lake is also one of Tagish Lake's many arms; Tagish is like a great wet spider squatting on zillions of hectares of this terrain, well over 100 kilometers in any direction. And it's a grand skating rink in the winter, eh?

Wednesday 14 September 2005 - YUKON AGAIN!
_{Tagish Lake to Squanga Lake, Yukon Territory}

NOONISH: We evacuate our Tagish Lake camp and head off thru a landscape of bright red fireweeds, yellow hardwoods, dark green conifers, mountains of mixed shades nearby and various blues in the distance, white clouds, the blue lake, silver UFOs with purple death-rays, etc. A bit more colourful than an Etch-a-Sketch rendering.

The rain has let up but it's still too moist to dry our home-agitated wet laundry by hanging it variously around the coach interior. (I tried a trick: put my dirty clothes in a sealable plastic jug with soap and water, leave it in the RV shower for a few days whilst driving over bumpy roads, then rinse before our next shower. But they still smell bad. Oh well.)

We pass Bove Island overlook where busloads of giddy German tourists happily photograph each other, like Japanese but with more animation and posturing and guffawing. These Germans seem to be from the cruise ships, not the cheapo over-the-pole flights. But I could be wrong.

AFTERNOON: Then we're back in Carcross nee Caribou Crossing, the end of Lake Bennett, the end of the Chilkoot Trail. The place where we throw wet laundry into clothes driers ($1 per 16 minutes) at an RV camp with a strong WiFi signal I can't connect to. The place where Maureen connects with a First Nations merchant — more on that in her write-up. A pretty town, until the blizzards plaster it flat.

We bid farewell to Carcross and take the Tagish Cut-Off through more vivid pre-winter country (glacial valleys and rounded peaks, ribbon lakes, amber forests) to the Alaska Highway at Jake's Corner, almost to Johnson's Crossing and the Canol Road, which eventually leads north to frozen oilfields on the MacKenzie River. But we ain't going that way; we stopped at Squanga Lake for another campfire-cooked lentil stew, another layover, another couple nights in southern Yukon before pushing on.

After tending the campfire and cooking dinner, Maureen (hiding out in the RV) says I smell like Smokey the Bear — singed fur and shit. But she's wrong. Just wait till those lentils kick in.

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