The Panhandle

The Panhandle is that strip of Alaskan territory which runs down the west coast of Canada, the northernmost part of which we had now reached – Haines and Skagway.  We chose to stay in Haines because the cruise boats don’t go there and it is a very pretty town with a lovely harbour and a welcome as warm as any we’ve encountered.  A feature of the town is Fort Seward which was established around 1900 to control the huge numbers of gold prospectors travelling into The Klondike, where gold was discovered in the 1890’s.  The fort area has been largely restored and converted to hotels and accommodation and is very pretty.  Again our accommodation was fairly basic but comfortable and everything is within walking distance, including a couple of great restaurants we found.

Early one morning we caught the fast ferry across to Skagway, some 40 minutes away.  Skagway harbour contained 2 Princess line cruise ships, a Disney line and a Holland America ship, total capacity of some 7000 - 8000 holiday makers and Skagway was jumping.  The town looks like a Hollywood film set  - all painted store fronts representing the wild west.  There are dozens of jewellery stores, gift shops and ice-cream parlours and people everywhere.  The main object of our visit was to ride the White Pass railway which traces the trail used by the gold diggers to get to the Klondike goldfields.  The railway is fantastic and the track is amazing, climbing some 3000 ft through the White Pass into Canada, in the distance of some 20miles.  The scenery is amazing with raging waterfalls and rapids on the Skagway River and sheer drops of hundreds of metres into ravines, where many men and horses died making their way to the goldfields.  Most of the carriages are restored originals, some dating back to 1898 and the trip is spectacular – trestle bridges and tunnels and metres of snow by the side of the line.  We stopped at White Pass as this is the entry point to Canada and the pass is surrounded by mountains covered in snow.  The conditions in the 1890’s must have been terrible for the gold diggers, but this sort of thing happened around the world, wherever gold was discovered.

Returning to Haines, we discovered that the weekend was a holiday weekend for Memorial Day and the travelling Vietnam Wall – a replica of the one in Washington – was set up on the parade ground of the old Fort.  It was also the weekend of the Haines Brewfest, an annual event celebrating home brewers and boutique beer and the whole town was buzzing, with campervans, trucks and beer-lovers everywhere.  Every available space in the camping grounds was taken with small tents and we could only imagine what it would be like sleeping on the near-frozen ground. 

Early Saturday morning saw us loading suitcases into a small (5 seat) aircraft for a flight to Juneau, there to catch a jet to Anchorage and the next leg of our journey.  Winding our way through mountains in low cloud and rain in a small aircraft is not the best way to spend a Saturday morning and along the way we saw a number of whales in Frederick Sound, from as low as 300ft.  Our pilot, who seemed to be young enough to still be in high school, mentioned that he’d turn around if conditions got too bad, but he found a way through and we’ve lived to tell the tale.