A Foggy day on the Chilkoot Trail

Alaska – Day 8 – 7/3/15

13 miles over Chilkoot Pass, Sheep Camp to Lindeman Camp.

It rained all night but finally stopped by morning and stayed dry all day. Yay! I was the first to leave camp and hiked by myself up to the shelter at the top of the pass where the others met up with me.

The lower section had lots of flowers and berries.

All morning the views were of fog or barely lifting fog.

Lots of old artifacts line the trail. Mostly rusting iron pieces from a tram, stove, teapot, frying pan, food tin cans, shovels, axe, and more.

The trail is well marked with cairns or orange rods or flags. Often I couldn’t see the next one until I had stepped away from the one I was next to. It was kind of fun searching for the next one. In 1897 and 1898 the gold seekers hiked in this weather and much worse weather all the time. And for hundreds of years before that this was a trade route of the Tlingits. It would have been nice to see the mountains around the pass but this weather seemed almost more in keeping with the history of the place.

Find the next orange wand.

Canvas artifacts

The Canadians mark the route with flags.

Parks Canada warden cabin. No one was there today.

This was the hiker warming shelter. At first I thought it was abandoned and almost didn't stop at it.

My new friends emerging from the fog.

Inside the shelter. My friends heated water for me so I had hot coffee. Thanks.

We crossed lots of snow fields and water crossings so we all had wet shoes most of the day.

We got teases of clearing skies

Check out the screws in the toe. Crampons!

The gold rushers spent the winter making boats because they could travel by water from here.

Lindeman Camp has 2 warming cabins. The first one had a big group from Spain all settled in. We got the other one to ourselves and had a nice fire in the stove which warmed us up and dried our stuff out.