The Klondike express (page 4)
After we leave Bennett, the one-year-old drifts off to sleep,
which causes Grace to turn her attention to one of the young
coach attendants, who we'll call Kristie. Their conversation
goes something like this:
Grace: "I'm in grade three. What grade are you in?”
Kristie: "I'm in second-year university.”
Grace: "So how old are you?”
Kristie (smiling): "I'm 20.”
TRAINSPOTTING
Getting there The White Pass
& Yukon Route Railroad runs
between Skagway, Alaska, and
Carcross, Y.T. There are no
passenger flights to Carcross,
but it's just a 75-kilometre drive
or bus ride from Whitehorse
International Airport.
Staying there Whitehorse,
Carcross and Skagway all offer
a range of accommodations,
from campsites to hotel rooms.
Listings can be found at
www.carcrossyukon.com,
www.skagway.com and
www.travelyukon.com.
Playing there
Hold your breath
as the train clings precariously
to steep mountainsides and
soars high above alpine valleys.
The six-hour round trip between
Skagway and Carcross costs
$165 for adults and $82.50
for children. Reservations are
strongly recommended.
www.whitepassrailroad.com
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Grace: "Twenty! That's way younger than my dad. He's 64
and weighs 91 pounds. So where do you live?
Kristie: "Skagway in the summer. At university the rest of
the time.”
Grace: "We lived in Paris once. Well, not me, because I wasn't
born yet. And I play the piano and the violin too. Well, not the
violin, but we have a violin. My mum plays it, but she doesn't play
it anymore.”
The conversation, if you could call it that, continues on in this
vein until the baby wakes up, at which point Grace drops the
young attendant like a slimy bug. Shortly thereafter, we cross
a narrow bridge and roll straight into Carcross, whose main
claim to fame is the Yukon's oldest operating commercial enterprise
- the Matthew Watson General Store - which has been
selling its wares for more than a century.
WE HOP A MOTORCOACH for a different view of the way
back to Skagway and pick up our rental car. Soon enough, we
are back in Whitehorse. The next day, we finish off our stay by
visiting some local attractions, such as the MacBride Museum, the Yukon Arts Centre, the long, low-bottomed SS Klondike
riverboat (which is up on a dry dock beside the river and is operated
as a National Historic Site) and Yukon Artists at Work (a
co-op just outside town, with studio and gallery space), all
eminently worth visiting. But it isn't until we make the short
drive upriver to the Robert Lowe Suspension Bridge, over
Miles Canyon, that we feel our trip is complete and that we have
even the smallest visceral sense of what it must have been like
to live through the gold rush.
Standing at the unfenced cliff edge of the canyon, we marvel
at what it must have been like to try to run a scow on the boiling,
angry rapids spilling through a serpentine basalt chute
15 metres below or, God forbid, a massive steamboat. The stampeders
did. It wasn't just romantic and adventurous, though it
surely was those things, but truly, utterly life-threatening.
It's hard to believe, even today, that such a site isn't fenced
off. This is not rock climbing tied into a harness. One untied
shoelace and a bit of bad luck would mean the end. No two ways
about it. And our hike along the river's far edge is not without
its nervous moments. On our way back across the bridge, we
stop in the middle, and it is then I know the pill has gone
down with the jam.
"Can you imagine?” I ask Jessica. "Can you just imagine
what it must have been like to go through these rapids in a tiny
little boat full of supplies, full of every single thing you owned?
It would be terrifying, don't you think?”
She peers over the wire railing, down to the churning waters.
"Yeah,” she says quietly, before grinning. "But cool, too.”
Curtis Gillespie is a writer based in Edmonton. His most recent book
is the novel Crown Shyness. Derek Crowe is an award-winning
photographer in Carcross, Y.T.
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