Sunrise in Skagway, Alaska, comes at 4:00am in July. And the
blackout shades in our cruise ship’s state room leak enough around the edges to
confirm it. So “bright and early” is exaggerated. And with a sunset round about 10:30 the night
before, “O-dark-thirty” never really happens. And therefore a good night’s
sleep never really happens either. But there’s CycloMonkey, looking at me like
I’ve over-slept on Christmas morning. “The ship’s already docked. Can we go
ride?”
Even though we had a great ride yesterday and covered 40 miles, there’s a new cycling adventure on tap
today. We had signed up for one of the Princess Cruises’ excursions called
“Summit to Sea,” a bicycle ride offered by the Sockeye Cycle Company (somehow
related to Cycle Alaska, I believe). For this ride, I won’t need my shoes and
pedals, I won’t bring my own helmet and I won’t even wear a proper cycling kit.
This isn’t about exertion; it’s about coasting and taking in the sights.
Skagway is a borough (meaning “county”, not a city) in a
narrow, glaciated valley on the northern-most fjord on the Inside Passage, 90
miles north of Juneau. According to Wikipedia, the name Skagway was derived
from shԍagéi,
a word the native Tlingit used for “rough seas in the Taiya Inlet.” The actual
meaning translates to “beautiful woman” more or less. But there is a Tlingit
legend about a mythical woman named Kanagu whose nickname is shԍagéi
and is said to have transformed herself into stone in this area and then caused
the strong winds to blow toward the neighboring town (today’s Haines, Alaska).
That wind causes the rough seas which the locals referred to by her
nickname. Sadly, in the time it took you
to read this story, you could have walked the 25 blocks from one end of town to
the other.
Skagway became important because gold was found in 1896 in
the Klondike in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Even though the gold fields were 500
miles away, this was a convenient port from which to start. The population
swelled to 30,000 and a railroad was started to take prospectors up and over
the White Pass. By
1899, the stream of gold-seekers had diminished and Skagway's economy began to
collapse. By 1900, when the railroad was completed, the gold rush was nearly
over. Today the year-round population is a little over 900 but each summer,
with seasonal workers and cruise ships, it swells to over 6,000. Including my
wife and me on this beautiful day.
A
van with a trailer-full of hybrid bikes was waiting at the bottom of the
gangway. We signed waivers and filled out forms that asked how many times we’d
ridden a bike in the last three years. My wife wrote none; I saw some other
tourists write single-digit numbers. I started extrapolating my weekly rides to
150-odd weeks and decided to just write 1,000. (Checking today, I started using
Strava in Feb., 2012, and it says I’ve logged 1132 rides.) I introduced CycloMonkey to the guide and the
other cyclists. Alas, no lifelong friends or future travel companions in this
group.
The van took us up the mountain on the opposite side of the
canyon from the White Pass and Yukon railway which slowly hauls tourists a bit
farther than we were going. At a wide spot in the road near the 3,200-foot
summit sign, the van let us out and we got fitted to our bikes. From that
vantage point, we could see the Canadian border and British Columbia on the
other side – we could have thrown a rock that far. My wife and I were tempted
to bike down there just to cross into Canada – we had our passports with us –
but the guide didn’t make that offer. There’s no border guard or passport check
there. Instead, the Canadian customs building is a few miles further inland,
and the U.S. customs building is a few miles downhill in the other direction –
making this wide spot in the road some sort of international no-man’s land.
Intriguing, eh? (1)
Our guide, Matthew Jillson, asked us to ride single-file and
not pass each other. He took the lead in order to control the pace and asked me
– since I was 1,000 times more experienced than the others – to bring up the
rear. And with that and a single pedal stroke, we were coasting down the
mountain (on the brakes already).
Along with CycloMonkey in my backpack and a few little
things, I had my Garmin bike computer to capture the ride details.
Over the 14 miles and 3,204 feet of descending, we actually had 108 feet of
climbing – that’s it! The average speed was governed to about 12mph, but
somewhere along the way Garmin says I clocked 32mph. I certainly don’t remember
that. It also says we had a full hour of stationary time; i.e., resting from
all the coasting. At the one and only climbing portion, we stopped before and
after the climb. My wife asked if we could go back down and climb it again –
apparently such enthusiasm for exercise is rare among the cruiser clientele.
We coasted, then stopped for pictures, then coasted some
more and discussed geography, history and the transient lifestyle of seasonal
workers with our guide. Jillson, as he’s known, is from Vermont but attended
film school in L.A., lives in Seattle and is constantly roaming the world
working in jobs like this. Apparently there’s some sort of 24-hour mountain
bike ride on the summer solstice, when you can ride for 24 hours without
needing headlights. And you can hike from Skagway to Haines in a day, take a
half-hour boat ride there, or take the road for 350 miles round-trip. The latter
takes you to Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon Territory and it sounded like the
most appealing option! Skagway is a rare city in this part of Alaska that is
actually connected to the lower 48 by paved roads.
The views were fantastic from the top and it was warm, clear
day. Around every bend would be some new spectacular scenery. Little by little,
we descended until the 25 little blocks of civilization came into view. But
long before that, the towering cruise ships in the harbor dominated the
landscape, er, seascape as it were. The cruise trade completely transforms this
area from May to September. Jillson says that none of his friends use their
cell phone or try to get on the internet when the ships are in port. Everything
is satellite up here – no fiber optic cables over the mountains – and the
cruisers consume so much bandwidth that data traffic slows to a crawl. First
world problems. A bigger problem is getting groceries. The barge comes in on
Tuesdays and stocks the local grocery. If you miss that day, or if one of the
restaurants screws up their order, you might not get bread or milk that week.
Once we got back to town, I bought a Sockeye Cycle coffee
mug and another jersey. Then we wandered around town and had lunch at the Skagway
Brewing Co. Skagway was a fascinating
little place and my favorite port of the trip. In the afternoon, we tried our
hand at glassblowing. But that’s another story and no place for a monkey.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) Did you like my Canadian “eh?” there? That translates loosely to the British
“innit” which was derived from “isn’t it?” and basically gets appended to
almost any sentence as an audible endpoint. It’s not actually a question that
requires an answer.
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