South OZ Adventurers - Adventure, Travel, Expeditions


Getting to Skagway, Alaska

So it has finally begun.

We left whistler on Thursday the 15th of June.

So how do 2 South Aussies, with 19 foot sea kayaks travel over 1000 miles to the start of a 3 month expedition. Hitch hike, naturally. Are kayaks went up to Skagway by barge, thanks to the guys from Seaward for organising that. Then it took us about three days to get to Whitehorse. This trip was somewhat of an adventure in itself. With what has definitely been the scariest part of the trip so far. One of the people who gave us a ride was a young guy from Hong Kong called Cyrril, I think, his idea of safe driving was 180 km/hour down the highway, and 110 through towns. After about 5 hours of this we decided to get out, we'd rather take an extra day and get there than not get there at all. it took us another 2 days to get to whitehorse with various other people, stopping off at our good friends at BC Jade in Jade City, what is probably the smallest city in the world, with a population of about 15, 7 of them in the same family!

Once in Whitehorse we met up with the Kanoe People who had been looking after some of our gear for a while and gave us a ride over the border to Skagway. We ran into a bit of trouble at the border because I (Lachie) hadn't removed the piece of paper that said that I had left the USA 9 months ago. This wasn't a paticularly good situation for us to be in. It that meant I was an illegal immigrant, and had been for the last 9 months. The theory behind the customs argument was that because I hadn't removed the tag I musn't have left the country, despite there being stamps for 7 other countries, and that I was entering from Canada!!

Technically the guys at the border didn't have to let me in, which would have made our trip end right there. But we had decided that should this occur then we would get Harris from the Kanoe People to pick up our boats and then we would head down the Yukon River out through Alaska to the mouth, it didn't occur to us that we would have the same problem again when we got to the border! Luckily we managed to get into Alaska and down to Skagway.

After spending a day in town, taking delivery of our boats, and buying enough food to get us down to Haines we left on the outgoing tide at 2:08am on the 22nd of June. Right on the solstice.