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BRAVING BEARS AND THE CONTINUING THREAT OF AVALANCHES, CA JONATHAN SMITH GOES HIKING IN THE WILDS OF ALASKA.
"Does anybody need a lift to Whitehorse in three days time?" asked the slim guy with a distinctive French accent. He had wandered into the Skagway Youth Hostel not long after I'd finished my lunch of reindeer sausages at the Alaska Bar and Grill down the road. I was talking to a young couple who were honeymooning on the Sea Princess, one of the huge ocean lines that frequents the Inside Passage and was now docked in Skagway.
"Why three days?" I asked, "Are you planning to hike the Chilkoot? "Yes" he grinned.
When I told him I was also planning to hike the Chilkoot Trail, we decided to pool our resources (ie. our overstuffed backpacks) and do the hike together, starting the following morning. Whilst reorganising our gear, I remember Jeff (since he was now living in New Mexico, his name had been Americanised from Jean Francois) saying: "You won't need that insect repellent - it'll be too cold for insects!"
Waking at 7 am next morning, we took Jeff's old Ford Econovan to the trailhead at Dyea, leaving my beaten up old AMC Concorde at the youth hostel. Dyea was once an exciting frontier town of over 10,000 souls that provided lastminute supplies to the Klondikers before they set off through the Chilkoot Pass. But Dyea became a ghost town after a huge avalanche killed 60 stampeders, and its fate was irrevocably sealed with the completion of the White Pass railroad at the end of last century.
The National Parks Service (NPS) ranger parked at the trailhead was intently reading a book on mushrooms. She was short, young and softly spoken but became serious as she warned us that black bears had been seen on the trail in the last couple of days. With the wind well and truly at our backs, we headed on our merry way.
Beavers had ravaged the swampy beginning of the trail, turning it into a mosquito-infested quagmire. The trail wound up the valley alongside the Taiya River, which was still showing the brute force of the spring runoff. Jeff and I negotiated the mud and broken branches...