All Aboard the White Pass Scenic Railroad

One of the most popular shore excursions from Skagway is a trip on the White Pass & Yukon Railroad, known as "The Scenic Railway of the World" and "The Railway Built of Gold." After taking the 67 mile rail journey from Skagway to Carcross, Yukon Territory, I can honestly say that this is one shore excursion you don't want to miss if the weather is halfway decent. If it's raining and foggy, you won't see much. But we got lucky with the weather.

It was fascinating to travel back in time to the days of the gold rush on this legendary narrow gauge steam train. As we traveled, our train conductor relayed some interesting tales of lust for gold. Historians estimate that 100,000 left their homes and started for the Klondike in 1897 and 1898. They were in such a hurry they earned the sobriquet, "The Stampeders." Of the 100,000 brave souls who went for broke, only 30,000 to 40,000 actually reached the gold fields of the Klondike. Four thousand prospectors found the gold but only a few hundred struck it rich.

The ordeal that the stampeders endured to get to the gold fields was harrowing. Once they reached Skagway, they had to choose between The White Pass or the Chilkoot Trail to get over the Coast Range. Either way, they were required by the Northwest Mounted Police to be fully equipped to spend a year in the great north. Dried foods and medicines, picks and shovels, sleds and stoves amounted to a ton of goods for each person and it all had to be packed in relays over mountain passes in the dead of winter. And God help them if they fell off the trail. The lucky ones somehow managed to get back on after waiting for hours for a break in the trail and the not-so-fortunate were buried by snow. Remnants of the trail are shown in the photo to the right. The poet Robert Service wrote:

Never will I forget it, there on the mountain face.

Antlike, men with their burdens, clinging in icy space.

All I can say is I was very happy to be going over the White Pass by train effortlessly gliding over deep gorges and along sheer cliffs while admiring some gorgeous scenery.

Once they got over the White Pass and reached Bennett Lake, the stampeders then had to hammer together a fleet of over 7,000 boats to take them through five sets of seething rapids that punctuated the final 600 miles through a series of lakes and rivers to Dawson City. I swore the next time I found myself on a seemingly unbearable plane ride across the Atlantic I would think about the grit and determination of the stampeders, ask for another glass of wine and just grin and bear it.

More photos of my train ride