I’m starting to lose track of days. I think that’s the sign of a good vacation. Heavens forbid that I might actually like cruising…
We arrived in Skagway early, I woke briefly and glanced at the approach sometime after 5am, didn’t look at a watch. But then there was a bunch of clanging and banging, possibly as outer doors were opened, chains lowered, I dunno. I think I know why the lowest deck is the least desirable, now.
Our alarm finally went off at 6:15. Why an alarm? Because we had a train to catch at 8am.
Yes, a train. This is Skagway.
Skagway is Mile 0 of the White Pass and Yukon Route (WP&YR), a railway that took prospectors into the heart of the Yukon via Whitehorse, saving the men time, effort, and probably their lives (not to mention their horses). It’s a railway of some legend due to its terrain, steepness, and the sheer raw beauty of the area. I knew of it only from what I’d read and the videos I’d seen. It was my singular request when Mom decided we were doing Alaska, and I tried to keep it tame.
We did breakfast at the Lido Market, mostly for time (the Dining Room doesn’t open until 7:30, and it’s not particularly zippy). We kept it light, especially considering yesterday’s dinner. Then we packed up, headed down the gangway, and walked right up to the train. In Skagway, the trains come to you.
Skagway is a tourist town. It exists for the tourists and nothing else. There are four cruise ship docks and one highway that you must take through Canada to get anywhere. In fact, Skagway is in a bit of trouble. The slopes above the Railroad Dock on the eastern side are unstable and avalanched onto the docks below in June 2022 (two of the available four berths) and even damaged a cruise ship. The Railroad Dock has been closed ever since, halving the ships able to come to port.
Still, the trains roll on. (It’s worth noting, though, that the White Pass is owned entirely by Carnival Cruises … who also owns Holland America, the line that we’re on, and Princess Cruises, whose Ruby Princess is also in port, docked next to us. Like I said, Skagway is a tourist town. If Carnival pulled out, Skagway would become a ghost town.)
The train cars looked old at first glance, but a quick scan of their interior (not to mention the Wikipedia) said that many of the rail cars are less than 20 years old. Although a mere Class III railway (by revenue), they take great care of their equipment and the infrastructure.
Train was split in three, a batch of cars in the rear for the Zaandam’s passengers, a middle section for tour bus passengers, and the locomotive at the front. I dropped mom off in a seat, then went to take pictures of the locomotive. Although WP&YR still runs steam, it’s still too early in the season for one. It also wasn’t one of their heritage diesels. It was a massive NRE Model E3000CC-DC, #3003. The heritage GEX3341’s, the slope-nosed diesels that had run the WP&YR for decades, are now all mostly retired. The E3000’s are the next generation, an almost accidental purchase as these engines were meant for Australian railways, but were passed on for some reason, and the White Pass snapped them up (and had them rebuilt for narrow gauge. And sadly, the locomotive was not in the classic yellow and green livery, instead painted in a supposedly more “attractive” black.
The train took off at 8:00 on schedule, not far behind the other train, on a much longer 8-hour tour to Carcross, YT. We opted for the 3-hour tour as going all the way to Carcross wasn’t really on our to-do list (at least for this trip). We, at least, did not need to bring a passport.
The trip is steep, rising 2,900 feet in just over 20 miles (880 meters in 32.8 km), which is a steep grade for a train, some parts hitting nearly 4%. WP&YR’s locomotives are more than capable of the challenge.
We passed the WP&YR shops (which regrettably are not open to the public, a major disappointment in my book), its yard filled with what looked to be a dozen trains of empty passenger cars, then the Gold Rush Cemetery (the stories of which are classical frontier, with shady people and even shadier deaths), and started to climb up the valley.
The clouds were still low, which caused a bit of an ethereal feel as we went. Instead of an expensive kilometer-long viaduct that would likely incur a steeper grade, the railway turns up the Skagway East Fork valley, adding about quadrupling the distance but easing the route. We went by a former WP&YR caboose that now forms the Denver “station”, where we were greeted by a pack of hikers. We continued back down the valley as we climbed higher.
As we turned into the main valley again, we hovered above Dead Horse Trail, an area littered with the bones of over 3,000 animals driven to their deaths trying to climb the torturous route. It didn’t help that many highly unscrupulous traders were selling horses well past their prime to unsuspecting (and frankly, unskilled and unprepared) prospectors who were probably just as likely to die in the process (of the 100,000 thought to have gone to the Yukon, a third never made it there).
We passed the IHOP – the International House of Passports, which is what the locals call the US border control – then up Glacier Gulch before turning back down, climbing towards the summit. The higher we rose, the thinner the trees, the redder the landscape, the more the snow. The high tops above reminded me a little of Rogers Pass, and for a few moments, I had an idea of what it might have been like to ride over it by train (before the line was moved to a tunnel).
We drove through two melting avalanches. Then we passed through the final tunnel and suddenly we were back in the cloud, and barely a few moments later, slipped into snow and ice. The narration (from a Mackenzie Davis look-alike guide) told us to watch for the bronze border marker between the US and Canada. Shortly after was a replica of the NWMP cabin used by police that made sure those crossing over had the requisite supplies to survive.
The terrain was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Low, undulating, with scrub peeking through the snow. Lakes were still frozen over, but the ice is giving way. Patches of glacier blue sit next to splotches of tannin-soaked lake water seeping through cracks. We hit the Divide switch to loop back, the line to Carcross disappeared off into the horizon.
As we headed back around south, I attached my GoPro to the railing on the rear platform and watched as we played the trip up in reverse.
Back in Glacier Gulch, just after passing over the trestle, we met a northbound train. Although the WP&YR is a tourist-only railway – it literally does nothing else, though it is the only rail link to Carcross (the section to Whitehorse is abandoned, the section in the city torn up), it runs a significant number of trains up and down the pass in a single day. And we weren’t even at high season (or at top volume, given the half-capacity in the harbour).
I watched the entire trip back down from the rear platform of the car. It was only as we returned into town that I realized that I’d effectively abandoned Mom for nearly the entirety of the journey.
Back in town, we visited the White Pass gift shop, then headed over to Broadway, which is Skagway’s main street. Even as far back as the early klondike days, Broadway was the main route up and out into the White Pass. (Today, it’s still major, although Highway 98 turns into State Street a block over, presumably to allow easier movement of traffic.) We looked in shops (quite a few jewelry shops, which we saw a lot of in Juneau, too). We stopped for lunch at Skagway Brewing; I ate way too much fried food.
I again walked mom back to the ship, the wind being fairly significant, then tackled Alex’s Adventure Labs. There are only two in Skagway, one of which is a singular stop on a Cruising Alaska route that has points on several different cruise ports (and I forgot to do this one; I guess I’ll have to come back to Skagway), so it was a fairly quick run. I roamed about for a few photos, including catching the late train to the loop on its way out of town (which incurred a fairly brisk run through a forest and over a creek).
I got a couple gifts for the family, then headed back, myself.
We chilled on the ship for the afternoon, stopping periodically to take pictures, usually of the trains coming and going. We had a quick, small dinner before the Glacier Bay presentation, which I really wanted to see because I have no idea what to expect tomorrow. Some interesting facts, one of which is that the National Park Service only allows two cruise ships into the bay a day. I gather Holland America has a pretty good relationship with the NPS and with the local Tlingit people.
Mom stuck around for the show, I watched the Ruby depart again. We ended up back in the Crows Nest to watch our own departure, following the Ruby down the fjord.
My aurora app had been sounding alarms had been going off all day, so I stayed up late to see if I could see any in Alaska. As I paced the decks, hoping for any flash of colour through the cloud cover, I watched as we passed the Ruby Princess, its multitude of lights breaking through the waning dusk.
However, the skies had different plans. No amount of praying for the clouds to part enough to see even a hint of the KP8 storm supposedly going on overhead.
