EPISODE 240 YUKON DIARY DEAD HORSE PASS, CHILCOOT TRAIL TO SKAGWAY IN 1962
TITLE: DOING THE YUKON IN REVERSE
alan skeoch
Jan.2021
Have you ever got so immersed in a dream that you want to live
that dream in real life? No joke. I dream a lot. Good dreams for
the most part . Dreams that I would like to live out in my real life.
That’s the way I felt about the Yukon. Stop. Change the tense from
past to present. That’s the way I feel about the Yukon to this day.
I relive it. All that revelry in the Mayo barroom was a replication of
the Yukon gold rush days … right down to the drunkenness…the story
telling…the indescribable brutal work that was a necessary base to brining
the Yukon tensions and glories of discovery back to life.Vomit, staggering,
laughing, agonizing, fear, joy, triumphs, tragedies. Almost every feeling a human
being can share is there…’Is’ not ‘was’…present not past.
No Yukon replication is complete without the mystique of Skagway.
The brutality of Skagway. So I planned this lonely trek as an integral
part of living out the dream. To not do so would mean the whole Yukon
experience would be truncated. A tree without roots. A dream without
meaning.
Wednesday , Sept. 12, 1962
Arose early today. Nervous that I would miss a connection. I have no watch.
Never have had one. My body usually serves me well if I mentally set my
brain correctly. “Alan, get up early, you must board the White Pass Railway
on its downhill trip to Skagway.” And click…brain lock…woke in time to
get my ticket, $19.00, for the down hill rumble to Skagway…down mountain says it better.
We are descending from theYukon plateau to a tiny village hanging on the hostile glacier clad
shores of the Pacific Ocean. Descending. Imagining how the gold crazed men and s
few women made the trek upwards when there was no railway. Only the impossible near
vertical climb up the Chilcoot Pass. Could I have made that climb? Did I have the guts
and determination those men and women shared. Did I have a thirst for great wealth
the would free me from labour for the rest of my life? Not sure. But I think I could
do it.
Hindu philosophy says “You can have whatever you want in life.” Which forces the
big secondary question. “What do I really want?” Great wealth? Fame? No, I want
to live my life to the fullest. I want to share my life with others. I want to marry
Marjorie as a starter. And one small goal… I want to complete my experience of the Yukon.
And there before me on this day were two passes through the coastal mountains. White Pass, also called the Dead Horse Pass
and the Chilcoot Pass. Men … 100,000 of them had answered the Hindu question. They wanted Wealth and were prepared to
die to get it. Gold. Gold Gold.
I stared at those rocky slopes from my railway car.
FLASH: I thought of those back breaking loads three of us carried on the Groundhog River
job way back in 1959. Loads so heavy that the metal packframes twisted into scrap and
our backs screamed. i thought I could do it. Why would I want to? Fair question. I suppose
the answer makes no real sense. I wanted to prove something to myself. I could take it.
Not pride of strength. But force of will. There comes a time in everyone’s life when there is
challenge where failure and success are both present at the same time. On the Groundhog River
job three of us lived cut off from normal life for nearly three months. I hated and loved that
job in equal measure I failed sometimes and succeeded in other times. I met that wall.
On that job Floyd Faulkner, our crew chief, named me Fucking Al. A compliment. I think
and still do. He did not call me a crybaby…a quitter…
Funny how that all came back to me as our near empty train made its slow descent.
AND NOW I AM DOING THE YUKON IN REVERSE ORDER
Dead horse pass
STORY COMING IN EPISODE 241
CONTINUED IN EISODE 241
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