Klondike Goldrush National Historic Park and the Chilkoot Trail
Climbing Chilcoot Pass
Hiking the 33-mile Chilkoot Trail requires careful planning and carrying everything you need for 3-5 days.
Hardware Along the Trail
Other entrepreneurs constructed a cableway across the most difficult stretches of the Chilkoot Trail. The towers have decayed and collapsed, but much of the hardware, hand tools, cableway, a telgraph line and even the boiler fora large steam engine remain visible along the trail.
The Trail into Canada
A Fast Trip Home
After four days of hard hiking, a trip back on the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad was a relief.
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Chilkoot Pass
We passed into British Columbia at the summit of Chilcoot Pass, and celebrated completion of the most challenging portion of the hike.
Boats on a Mountaintop
A hundred years ago, entrepreneurs brought kits of canvas, strips of wood, and hardware for making boats to the Canadian border. They'd hoped to sell kits to prospectors seeking a fast route downriver from Bennett Lake. Unfortunately for them (and luckly for the prospectors) the Canadian Mounties refused to allow their flimsy kits into Canada. Now, more than a century later, dozens of the discarded boat kits remain stacked in piles above the Chilkoot Pass.
Freight Wagons
We found the remains of this freight wagon close to the site of a sawmill that was constructed to supply the miners needs. This wagon was the inspiration for my (Bob) painting "After the Rush".
Park Rangers check the condition of a subsistence trapper's cabin along the trail.
Saloon
A visit to the historic Red Onion Saloon and a brothel tour by a lovely lady in red capped the trip.
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