Are you ready for this? BIG update!!

Today was the first time since I got here that I was able to really get out there in the wilderness....and I do mean OUT THERE! I took a van tour out of town and along the White Pass trail of the 1898 Gold Rush. Words cannot describe the power and awesomness of what I saw today, and neither can the pictures. I shot some great video (which I promise is coming soon), which does come pretty close to giving you an idea of the actual scale. We went up over 3,000 feet and standing there, looking all the way down into the valley with mountains towering over you in every possible direction, makes one feel very small and insignificant. I was mind-blown by it and still am. The tour was free for me because I'm a resident and it's one that I intend to re-visit more than once this summer. Here are a few shots of the trails and valleys at the start of the trip.







About halfway through, we stopped at Dead Horse Gulch, a deep valley where - during the Gold Rush - hundreds of thousands of pack animals were cruelly pushed into to die when they were too weak to travel any further. The plaque there is weathered and the picture might be too small for you to read it, but it's written as if the animals themselves wrote it and I actually found it to be kind of touching.





Towards the end of the trip, we reached the White Pass Summit, elevation over 3,000 feet, and got a spectacular view of the valley below us.




Our journey into the wild ended at Tormented Valley, which lies on the Alaska/Yukon border. The valley gets its name from the constant, brutal weather there and it was like suddenly being transported into the Arctic. Freshly fallen snow covered everything and with the clouds, it was an endless sheet of white. In some places, you literally could not tell where the mountains ended and the sky began. The mountains in the far distance were breath-taking and I couldn't get a decent shot of them...but I tried.





Returning to Skagway, we took a detour and stopped at the scenic overlook above the town, which gave us a nice view of things.




There are plenty more pictures where those came from, but I don't want to overload you. Meantime, I'm ready for another weekend!