Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
At least I wasn't one of the women of 1897, who wore an average forty pounds of
clothes each. The prospect of getting over the pass with a full pack was intimidating
enough, never mind getting over the pass with a full pack and a bustle.
One image, according to Pierre Berton in
The Klondike Fever
, tells the entire story of
the Klondike gold rush. It is a black-and-white photograph of “a solid line of men, form-
ing a human chain, hanging across the white face of a mountain rampart.” Alaskans are as
familiar with this image as we are our own faces, it is part and parcel of our history, it has
been transmuted into legend, it's even reproduced on the Alaska license plate.
In the winter of 1897-98, twenty-two thousand people crossed the Chilkoot Pass in a
reckless quest for their share of the gold discovered by George Washington Carmack in
the Klondike the year before. At some point, each one of the twenty-two thousand had
stood in that solid line of men. Jack London lived it, Robert Service wrote verse about it,
and now Rhonda and Sharyn and I were taking our place in that same line.
This time, it was all Rhonda's fault. Ever since we were college roommates, I've known
her to be hooked on old photographs. “Don't have to know a soul in them,” she admits
cheerfully. She has wanted to hike the Chilkoot Trail, to cross from Alaska to Canada in
the footsteps of the stampeders ever since she went to Dawson City and saw the old pho-
tographs of the gold rush days there. In a weak moment I agreed to accompany her, and
when Sharyn heard about it she foolishly said she wanted to come, too. So we three flew
into Skagway on a Saturday and committed the cardinal error that evening of going to the
National Park Service exhibit to watch their slide show on the Chilkoot. Most of my com-
ments were unprintable, and we returned at once to the hotel to re-evaluate what was in
our packs. “I don't really need to change my underwear every day,” I said. “We don't need
bowls,” Sharyn said, “we can eat out of our mugs.” “I don't need camp shoes,” Rhonda
said, dumping her sneakers. At the Trail Center when we picked up our permits that after-
noon, Ranger Jim Wessel had told us, deadpan, “The rangers are happy to haul your packs
over the pass.” Pause. “For a hundred bucks.” I immediately said, “Is that a hundred bucks
for all three of us?” Still deadpan, he said, “No, that's each.” I barely stopped myself from
asking if they took
Visa
.
The next morning we took Dyea Dave's taxi to the trailhead, where the first half mile is
twelve hundred feet straight up and then twelve hundred feet straight down. “There's
