Steve Hoyne's video: Virtual Alaska Vaction 6-30 White Pass Yukon Railway

To my Grandchildren, The boundary mountains lie along the western edge of Canada and tower over the narrow strip of Alaska which extends from British Columbia to the Yukon territory of Canada.  The Yukon River rises on the inland side of the mountains and flows west and north out of Canada and across Alaska to the Bering Sea which separates Alaska from Russia.  In the late 1800's gold was discovered in the Klondike, an area in Canada's Yukon Territory along the Yukon river.  One of the major pathways to the Klondike was the White Pass Yukon Railway which began at Skagway, Alaska and climbed through the boundary mountains to the White Pass.  From there would-be gold miners would fashion rafts to cross Summit Lake and several other mountain lakes and float down the Yukon river to the Klondike. Today the railway primarily carries tourists who enjoy the scenery of mountainscapes as the train makes its way up to the White Pass.  The roadbed looks down through valleys carrying mountain streams to the ocean.  The milky water of those streams result from silt and pulverized rock released from the ice of melting glaciers.  Waterfalls cascade off the mountains and under the railbed.  The ride starts from sea level and ascends up through deciduous forests, through pine forests, through lodgepole pine forests and into areas of thin vegetation.  The intense winter weather creates near-tundra landscapes at the 2864 ft. elevation of White Pass.   Here are video clips of our trip along the White Pass Yukon Railway in 2007.