A week down, a week to go.

On June 11th, we flew from Nome to Juneau, hopped in a taxi that drove us to the wharf to meet a bus that took us to a Glacier, and then onwards to a Tourist Ferry, with a minor stop at Haines to drop off Greg so he could pick up the rental car, and finally, after 14 hours of traveling, we stepped foot in Skagway. Yep, no easy way to get around in Alaska unless you have a lot of moola or your own private plane.

But it wasn’t as bad as it sounds, the Glacier was amazing. We stopped for an hour, most of that time I spent out at Nugget Falls – a 45 min round-trip walk from the bus stop. Most of the people didn’t want to venture out to the falls with me because they were scared that they would get left behind by the bus, but it was only 1.2 miles one way, an easy 15 minute walk for a health person and those that didn’t go – my lazy Producer and Cameraman, plus 95% of the bus tourists – missed close up photographs of ice blue glaciers, cairns sitting on a rock bed, and a massive waterfall pouring into a crystal clear lake. It was beautiful and well worth the short walk. John ended up running out to meet me towards the end of the hour. He tried getting me to run back to the bus, but I made it 15 feet, faked an asthma attack and walked.

The boy has so much natural energy, someone should bottle it and sell is as an alternative to bio diesel; he’s always hopping, running and jumping. I’ll be lethargic and he’s half way up a freaking hill, bouncing at the top in impatience while I expend all my energy putting one foot in front of the other to follow. Maybe this is a hint that I’m either getting old (pretty sure that’s not it) or I’m a lazy, out of shape person (yea, that sound about right).

Anyhow, Beau, John and I ended up in Skagway around 8:30pm. Greg ended up being stuck in Haines. Haines was the only place in the areas we were going to that would rent us a car for a one way route – Skagway to Anchorage - but the one problem was that Greg needed to take a ferry from Haines to Skagway and he ended up missing the one that got into Skagway on the same day as the rest of us. Poor Greg, he was stuck in Haines, a very small town with mosquito infested fishing lakes, 3 blocks of tourist shops, and a view of the lake for 24 hours.

The other boys and I spent the next day proving that we could continue shooting the show without our Producer. We followed my schedule to a “T” and shoot amazing footage from Beau, recorded great sound from John, and I got to interview our guest for the day. Greg spent the day texting me, “Get me out of here!!!”

We spent 6 days in Skagway, the main starting point for pioneers heading over the Chilkoot and White Pass Trails to Lake Bennett. Skagway became a bustling metropolis within 6 months of the start of the Gold Rush, offering supplies to the stampeeders before they begin a 33-mile hike along a steep snow covered trail to Lake Bennett. Along the Chilkoot Trail, at mile 16, they encountered the “Golden Staircase”, a 45% incline hill that they would have to lug 1-ton worth of supplies up and over. There was a Canadian Mountie’s station at the top of the summit and if men didn’t have the right amount of supplies, they were not allowed to enter the Yukon Territories. The 1-ton rule was imposed because stampeeders would just head out to the gold fields on the hearsay of lying reporters – “Gold is everywhere, just an easy 12 day trip and you’ll be home in no time with your pockets lined” – and perish due to harsh weather conditions and malnutrition. The average man spent up to 2 weeks just lugging his supplies up the Staircase.

The other popular route over the Summit was the White Pass Trail, but it was muddy, narrow, and steep. It became known as “Dead Horse Trail” because almost every animal that started the trail didn’t finish it. The stampeeders would work the animals so hard, barely feeding them because they didn’t want to have to carry horse food on top of their other supplies, that the animals either laid down and died in the middle of the path or they feel off the trail due to the severity of its incline. The men became desensitized to the deaths and would just buy new animals to continue their journey’s. Sad, the cruelty of man.

Once the stampeeders reached Bennett Lake, they had to build a boat or raft that would sail 500 miles to Dawson City. If they spent too much time hiking over the Summit, they’d get stuck at Bennett Lake for 3 months waiting for the river to thaw out. On average, pioneers made it to Dawson City within a year, arriving when people already living in Dawson City had claimed most of the gold. It was a disappointment for some, arriving after months of strife to find it was all for nothing, but there were numerous accounts of the survivors (yes, survivors – many people lost their lives or turned back when everything got too much for them that only about 10,000 stampeeders actually made it to Dawson City out of the 100 of 1000’s that started) saying that they wouldn’t have traded the adventure/experience for anything. Serious, what else was there to do in 1898?

Anyhow, a brief overview of the places we filmed at:

Klondike Gold Fields - a lovely historic park showcasing a gold dredge, giving panning lessons, and explaining how the Iditarod works while letting you hold 3 week old huskies (so cute! – I tried to steal one for our crew mascot, but got caught). They also dress in period costumes, not the puppies, the docents.

Liarsville – yes, this is actually what the town was called because when the reporters were sent to document the Gold Rush, they saw how hard the trip was going to be and said “Hell no, we won’t go!” But they needed to write to get paid, so they’d butcher hearsay and stories from the true stampeeders and published them as first person accounts. They wrote so many false articles, that the pioneers named the writer’s tent city, “Liarsville”. Today, Liarsville has dressed up people that put on a small show about the history of the Gold Rush and the town. There’s a mock town to visit and gold panning to do.

The “Days of ‘98” Show – great, funny and entertaining show about “Soapy” Smith, a notorious gangster in Skagway who robbed people with rigged gambling halls, fake mail centers, and down right “conking a person on his head and stealing his gold” schemes. I laughed a lot and Beau almost fell off the ladder he was sitting on to film when the gunshot that kills Soapy blasted.

The Red Onion Saloon – Most popular Saloon/Brothel of Skagway. There were about 10,000 men in Skagway at the time of the Gold Rush and only 300 “Seamstresses”.

White Pass & Yukon Route Train – the train now accomplishes in 4-6 hours what the Stampeeders spent up to 6 months doing – traveling from Skagway to Bennett Lake. Bennett Lake is amazing from an anthropological stand point because there are still remnants of the pioneers – 1000’s of tin cans, gold pans, buckets, shovels, and numerous supplies all needed for the trip. They’re lying in heaps throughout the once thriving town, now taken back by Mother Nature.

Dyea (Di-ee) – Literally the last pioneer town before the Stampeeders began their ascent up the Chilkoot Trail. One building front and a few wooden wharf posts are all that remain of this 20,000-person town. No one really knows what happened to all the buildings, but it just proves how everything will eventually go back to Nature. Like a story from “Life After People” the TV show.

We also shot various Historic Buildings and a Ranger lead tour of the town, explaining its history from creation to present day.

All and all, it was a great 6 days of filming and I highly recommend visiting Skagway, if not for the local history, then for the people that live in the city. We arrived on June 11th to empty streets and closed stores, but woke the next morning to 9,000 cruise ship tourist clogging the sidewalks and shopping to their hearts content. In the evenings, after most of the tourist left, the locals, who adopted us into their small town family, included us in Skagway’s nightlife – singing karaoke at the bar, sharing a few beers, having a meal, and telling stories that had our sides hurting from laughing so hard. What a great town.