Once I moved to the open air car I had a chance of getting a few pictures. Good thing because I get very grumpy when I can’t take pictures!
I got the train going around a curve
Another of the train going around the curve.
Lake Fontana
The Trestle Bridge
Train going around a curve.
Back of the train coming around the curve. See the little red caboose.
Lots of foliage.
Safe from the picnic sleeps the unlittered dell.
The last Good Humor sounds its final bell
And all is silence.
Summer, farewell, farewell.
Excerpt from Ode to the End of Summer by Phyllis McGinley
The ship arrived in Skagway in the wee hours of the morning or maybe it was night.
It’s getting harder and harder to tell with the late sunsets and early sunrises the farther north we go.
Skagway is located at the northern tip of Alaska’s Inside Passage.
As we roused ourselves for the day’s adventures we looked out on a busy dock with a rock wall to hold the bank in place.
Above the rock wall on the boulders embedded in mountainside we saw logos and ship’s names painted. The story is that when a crew likes the captain they come ashore and paint the ship’s ID on the rocks, the higher and more dangerous, the more the captain is esteemed.
After breakfast, with the all clear to go ashore, we headed down to find the excursion bus that would take us to the White Pass and Yukon Railroad.
We needed our passports because this adventure would take us into the Klondike region of Canada.
The train would take us through the White Horse Pass. During the gold rush in 1896 there wasn’t a train. The stampeeders ( prospectors) had to either take the Chilkoot Trail which was shorter but steeper or the White Horse Pass that was longer but summited lower at 2885 ft. Both ways were challenging and deadly. The Canadian Mounties waited at Lake Bennett to check supplies. Anyone without enough to survive was turned back at the border.
I can assure you the train was much easier but even today it was easy to see the challenge. We passed huge gullies and mountainsides as the train wound its way to the summit.
We passed over trestle bridges and passed into and out of fog banks and clouds.
Water poured down the mountainsides in everything from torrents to trickles as the snow on the peaks began its spring melt.
Pretty soon we had reached the snowline but even though we were traveling through snow the water continued its downward path. At times we were so close to the mountain side that a foolish person could have reached out and touched the rocks as they flew by…and lost a hand or arm had they been so careless.
At times we could see across the “gulch” where another train ahead of us was already traveling upward or maybe returning downward.
We could see where we would soon be. More than any place else that we’d been, this train ride captured the true wildness of the Alaska mountains.
I admit, I stood in the cold outside the car in an attempt to capture some of the fantastic wilderness that surrounded us. My efforts fell far short of what we actually saw. The fog or clouds (depending on who you ask) only added to the drama of the ride.
Once we arrived at Lake Bennett we had to wait for the Canadian Customs Agents. We were told not to speak unless spoken to, to have our passports out and open and to NOT TAKE ANY PICTURES!
2 Agents boarded and made their way down the aisle. They never smiled. They were quite intimidating. The only time they spoke was to ask a foreign visitor for his visa as well as his passport. He had the visas for his whole family so they checked all of them then left the train.
The bus was waiting to take us to the next stop, a suspension bridge. Everyone headed to the lake to take pictures but the bus driver rounded us up with promises that we’d be back and we could take pictures then. He said we had a schedule to keep.
Mendenhall Glacier is part of our tour package but for those who aren’t on a tour and wish to check it out there are regular shuttles that leave from Franklin Square by the Mount Roberts tramway station.
Meanwhile back on our tour bus, Phil handed out Nature Valley Bars and bottled water as a snack before our hike to the glacier. The Mendenhall Glacier is one of 37 glaciers that flow down from the 1500 square mile ice field. The glacier stretches approximately 13.5 miles from the ice field right into the valley finally ending in Mendenhall Lake.
The Glacier once covered the whole valley reaching it’s fullest extent around 300 years ago. Since then it has been in retreat. When Sandy and I planned out trip we joked we wanted to get to Alaska before the glaciers all melted. Scientists predict that Mendenhall Glacier won’t be visible from the Visitor Center in another 40 years if it continues it’s current rate of retreat. Maybe our joke wasn’t such a joke after all.
Meanwhile the retreating glacier often spawns large icebergs that drift across the lake.
The area is known for it’s wildlife sightings as well as the glacier but today at mid-day we didn’t see much in the way of wildlife.
At the edge of Mendenhall Lake is a beaver lodge but even the beaver were missing, maybe taking a siesta?
We started our hike to the lake on an easy trail through more of the rain forest. Phil stopped often to point out different mosses and lichen.
The trail opened out into more open, dryer land. Phil explained that the type of soil didn’t retain the water as well as the topsoil in the rainforest which resulted in the more sandy, open area. We could see a waterfall churning it’s way down the mountains. At this time of year, spring, waterfalls are everywhere as the snow melt makes it’s way into the valleys. By summer these torrents will be little more than a trickle if they exist at all.
While we waited for stragglers to catch up and enjoyed the sunshine, Phil told us the story of Romeo, the Glacier Wolf. I’ll share that with you in another post.
With everyone together again, we started downhill to the shore of the lake and the glacier views we’d been looking for.
Sure enough. the lake was filled with ice bergs.
The glacier glowed blue in the shade of the mountain side.
I am so glad the sun decided to come out today. They say the glacier is pretty in the rain but I find it hard to imagine it could be any prettier than it was today with the sun shining and the icebergs floating on the cold lake.
