Saturday 7th July 2012 - Skagway - The Alaskan Wilderness at its Best

A a slightly delayed arrival in Skagway due to fog but no time anyway to explore the town since an all day excursion to the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve. After the pioneers George Washington Carmack, Skookum Jim Mason and Dawson Charlie (DK Eyewitness Travel Alaska 2012) discovered gold in the Klondike in the late 1890s, the steamboat captain William Moore founded Skagway as a gateway to the goldfields. In the subsequent year over 30,000 prospectors passed through seeking supplies and entertainment. By 1900 when the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad made the trip easier the goldfish was already subsiding. In the 1940s Skagway revived in fortune as a staging camp for the Alaska Highway. Today the town's economy is largely tourist based as witnessed by the presence of Celebrity Century, Sea Princess and "Something of the Seas".
The first part of my excursion was a 45 minute ferry trip to Haines founded by Presbyterian missionaries and sits on a site known to indigenous natives as Dei-Shu or "end of the trail" and it is certainly that although today it boasts and award winning library, an Olympic sized heated indoor swimming pool and a High School which last year had a graduating class of 9 boys so the School Prom was staged as a "drag" event!
A further 45 minute bus ride brought us to the wages of the Tatsh River a tributary of the Chilkat River. The river is fed by glacier melt and is heavily sedimented but at this time of the year full of spawning salmon which is of course what attracts the Bald Eagles and the Brown Bears. Did you know that there are 5 species of Pacific Wild Salmon: Chubb, Sockeye, King, Silver and Pink. Some rivers have runs of all species whilst others may only have one kind.
The river is shallow and free flowing as we board Zodiac rafts and begin our float down the Tatsh River. The views are quite spectacular with the wild rugged mountains and the shallow rier meandering along through rich vegetation. In all we spotted 86 Bald Eagles in an hour all feeding on the abundant salmon. Although the eagles are large with a wingspan of 7 feet theweighty weigh about 17 - 20 pounds and can only pick up a small fraction of their weight so they fish in shallow water where they can pounce on the fish and drag them ashore.
We also spotted a young Brown Bear in the distance as well as a Mink dashing along the river bank.
This was the most exhilarating trip yet. I felt this was the real Alaskan wilderness.

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