Saturday, August 28, 2010
Victoria from sea...
On the bridge
When there is heavy traffic, bad weather, or coming into port, they have six on the bridge.
To change the course, it takes the approval of two officers and then final approval by the Master. At various points, they also have a pilot captain who comes aboard in an advisory position because s/he knows the area very well.
The navigation console
They do have a "ship's wheel" to manually move the ship but it's about the size of a car steering wheel. Apparently big ship's wheels are passe...
Bridge tour on the M.V. Infinity
After seeing our Master turn the ship 360 degrees in the narrow Tracy Arm fjord we were already impressed. The bridge tour was interesting -- the ship uses gas turbine engines, they have six navigation areas around the ship. There are even 'port holes' in the floors so the officers can look down to sea through the decks.
Leaving Skagway
Day 5 is at sea - travelling out of the Inside Passage to the west side of Haida Gwaii and then south to Vancouver Island.
Just down the street...
Arctic Brotherhood in Skagway
The Fraternal Order of the Arctic Brotherhood was organized by eleven men in February 1899 en route from Seattle to Skagway. They formed the Arctic Brotherhood to provide mutual assistance, friendship, and social interaction in the northern communities of Alaska and the Yukon.
Covered with driftwood, their building in Skagway is part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park reserve.
The actual White Pass Trail
Raining in White Pass
I saw bear tracks along the rail lines. Although the naturalist on the ship, Brent Nixon, had told us how to identify grizzly versus black bear tracks (grizzly claw marks are further from the foot print itself), I'm not sure what they were. Probably black bear. The bear was not in sight, however.
Crossing the Canadian border at Fraser, British Columbia
There's a train station and a customs building. That's it -- except for the beautiful scenery!
Captain William Moore Bridge -- where are the other supports?!
It was the first of its design in the USA, apparently. The side without the pylon rests on the rock which has a massive fault line in it.
Our guide said it has moved up to three feet to accommodate shifts in the rock face from time to time. They allow one commercial vehicle on the bridge at a time (alternating one way) and there is a speed limit of five miles per hour.
Enroute to Fraser, British Columbia
The terrain is incredible. These are the Sawtooth Mountains south of Fraser. If the mountains still have their teeth, they were above the last glacier to go through. If the mountains are rounded, the glacier ground the peaks away, depositing huge boulders in its wake, up to 100 miles away.
The terrain is incredible...
Glacier carved river valleys are the norm here.
Fortunately, an enterprising group build the White Pass - Yukon railway, mostly complete in 1899 and the last spike in place in Whitehorse, Yukon in 1900.
It's a narrow gauge railway for reasons of cost and design (it can take narrower curves as a result). A marvel of civil engineering. This is the model of the route at the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park Museum in Skagway.
Two ways to the gold fields -- both were harsh...
The tale of the gold rush of 1898 through Skagway is one of huge sacrifice, hardship, and few results. Thousands came through. Few were properly prepared. 1000's of horses died as men desparately tried to move the year's supply of goods required to access the Yukon up one of the two treacherous mountain routes.
The Chilkoot trail was shorter but steeper with 1000 stairs carved into the ice at one point: the "Golden Staircase".
By the time they got there, the claims had already been staked the summer before. It was too late.
Scenes in Skagway
Canadian Mounties patrolled the border about 30 miles north, requiring every gold rush seeker to have a year's worth of supplies (1 ton) so to ward of famine in Dawson in 1898.
Downtown Skagway
This is a Gold Rush town and in the upstairs windows of many buildings are mannequins depicting the "Good Time Girls".
Skagway is maintained as a US heritage site. The wooden boardwalks and architecture date from the 1890s. It is the base of both the Chilkoot and White Pass trails to the gold fields in the Yukon.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Heading into Skagway
The tide was going out again. The tides changed every six hours or so and fluctuated between 4 feet at its lowest and 17 to 20 feet high tide in this area.
The infamous Red Dog Saloon
Back in Juneau - the narrowest "streets" in the USA
Sea lions on Shelter Island in Auke Bay
A new appreciation for wildlife photographers...
The first humpback we saw kept surfacing to breathe; no dive.
The naturalist on board observed it for a couple sequences and then told the captain to motor on in search of other wildlife -- that whale was sleeping!
It was nice to know our boat was quiet enough not to disturb it.
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