White Pass and Yukon RR

The narrow-gauge White Pass & Yukon RR was built in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush. It is now an International Civil Engineering Landmark and the subject of travel documentaries. It runs at a profit serving (principally) cruise ships, but it also makes flag stops at two trailheads. We used the flag stop for the trail to the Forsts Service's Laughton Glacier cabin.


Flag stop at Laughton Glacier trailhead	Looking across the Laughton loop on the railroad


		Skagway River rages far below


Old trestle and cantilever bridge


Skagway from the train		Rotary snowplow

Skagway itself is a town of only a few hundred permanent residents, plus a couple of thousand visitors from each cruise ship. Four cruise ship docks aren't enough, so they're building a couple more. The "historic district" caters to these tourists. We're not usually big fans of the shopping areas that serve cruise ships, because they tend to insulate the tourists from the real character of the area. In this case, however, Skagway grew up to separate gold rushers from their money, so Skagway is just doing what comes naturally.


Skagway taxis met the train		Cruise ships offer a bike trip down from the top of the pass

Wings of Alaska airline publishes a flight schedule from Skagway to Juneau, so we booked a flight to connect through Juneau to Anchorage. We didn't even consider the possibility that their planes aren't equipped for instrument flight. -- and Juneau is notorious for clouds and rain. We did fly most of the way to Juneay, then returned to Skagway because the pilot couldn't get into Juneau VFR. The SkagAir flight early the next morning didn't do any better, so we hopped a fast ferry and made our (rescheduled) flight just in time.


Low ceilings forced our flight to Juneau to give up and return to Skagway		But we did get a flightseeing ride down the Lynn Canal

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