Alaska Day 7 7/2/15

It rained hard all night and it was still raining when I got up.  Time to embrace Alaska weather even tho it isn’t what I want.  A shuttle to the Chilkoot Trailhead was $30. I didn’t want to pay that so I walked the couple of miles out to where the road forks and stuck out my thumb.  So many tour busses and excursion vans drove by.  Finally an empty van with Joe from Skagway Float Tours stopped and gave me a ride. By 10:10 I was on the trail…. walking in the rain. 

Joe

Joe spotted this guy and stopped for me to take a photo

I passed a group of about a dozen kids.  This is part of a summer camp from Michigan for them.    They drove here and this is one of many activities they will be doing.  They were all jealous of my umbrella.  It was the perfect thing to have today. 

The trail is very well constructed and maintained

Lots of boardwalks thru the beaver ponds.

Luckily I didn't have to cross this. A new bridge was upstream.

There are a bunch of camps on the trail which used to be little towns during the gold rush.  At Canyon City there was smoke rising from the chimney of the warming hut.  There were 7 hikers inside.  3 (Andrea, Matt and Jillson) were also going on to Sheep Camp. Andrea and Matt had been on the same ferry that I took from Bellingham to Ketchikan.  We didn’t meet each other on the ferry. 

3 guys from Czech Republic were at Sheep Camp when I got there and had a fire going. It was so nice to be able to dry everything out and get  warm. Plus it was a great place to socialize.

The fire building Czechs

The photogenic Matt, Andrea and Jillson

Heat and dryness makes hiking in the rain so much more pleasant.

The tent sites are all wooden platforms.  I have my Notch Tarptent which is not freestanding.  Luckily it stopped raining long enough for me to figure out how to secure it to platform.  I think I did a pretty good job of it. But, of course I forgot to take a photo.