4 August 2018. Skagway, Dyea, Chilkoot
Once we got into the town of Skagway itself and bought our souvenirs, we headed off to the Dyea National Forest area. Dyea was once a boomtown, but now is just forest with signs of things that once were. The most famous thing here is the beginning of the Chilkoot trail. This is a 33 mile long trail that was used extensively during the gold rush of 1898 -1899, for the gold seekers to head to gold mines. In order to be allowed into Canada to get to the gold area, the miners needed to bring provisions to last one year. This amounted to about a ton of stuff. The miners mostly carried their provisions on their backs across this trail (many multiple trips), over the pass and through the snow. As we didn’t bring packs (or even our water bottles) Chuck and I walked about a mile on the trail. It was tough going. We ran into several people who were hiking the whole thing…
We went to the old dock area of Dyea and had some lunch. Chuck got out his drone, and here is a cool movie of the area.
pretty great.. hand the camera to chuck once an awhile
Yep, he took this with his phone! Who needs fancy cameras?!