A landslide triggered by heavy rains Tuesday night closed the South Klondike Highway between Carcross, Yukon, and Fraser, British Columbia, with officials stating they hope to reopen at least one lane of the road by Friday.
“Our crews were able to begin clearing the road (Wednesday) afternoon and we will be assisting essential services this evening,” Yukon Highways and Public Works stated in Wednesday post on its Facebook page. “The road will remain closed (Thursday). While we are aiming to open to single lane traffic on Friday…your safety is our top priority, and we appreciate your patience as we work to resolve the situation.”
Among the people affected by the landslide on the highway between Skagway and Whitehorse, Yukon, were about 150 cruises hip passengers from the Holland America Koningsdam and a Princess cruise ship. The passengers were riding on the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway when a massive rockslide overtook the tracks and then the roadway between markers 80 to 86 of the Klondike Highway, effectively cutting them off from returning to Skagway on Tuesday afternoon.
Laurie Wilcox and Michelle Plasschaert of the Quad Cities in Iowa and Illinois and Dennis Hurd of Vancouver described the slide blocking first the train, then the buses they’d boarded in an attempt to get back to Skagway.
“It came running down the road,” Hurd said, his voice trailing off. “It was good that … we had a good bus driver.”
Cruise line management, port staff and others arranged an unusual solution to the problem and turned the group around and began the sixish-hour, several-hundred-mile drive to Haines.
“It’s pretty unprecedented,” said Cruise Lines Agencies of Alaska port manager Leslie Ross who – along with Haines harbor master Shawn Bell – met the group on the dock on Wednesday morning.
Ross worked to coordinate with Canadian and U.S. border officials to keep the Dalton Cache-Pleasant Camp border crossing near Haines open so the passengers could get through and rejoin their ships.
The Greens, who are headed to Glacier Bay next, said this is their first cruise.
“It’s been a great day,” Sharon said, enthusiastically. “We’ve had a rock slide. We’ve had mud over the train.”
The Greens said they took the train to Carcross but on the trip back a slide had taken out the tracks. So they loaded onto buses and continued on toward Skagway, but then the landslide blocked the road.
“So the bus took us back to Carcross,” she said. “The lovely women there fed us everything they could find.”
“Yeah at about 9 o’clock at night,” Arthur chimed in, laughing.
“It was wonderful,” Sharon added. She looked over at her husband, “Then, where’d we go? Crazy Horse? Red Horse?”
“Whitehorse,” he said.
The drive was dark, so they didn’t see much of Canada. Sharon said she was able to sleep but Arthur didn’t.
“I kept the driver awake,” he said, with a laugh.
• This story was originally published by the Chilkat Valley News. The Skagway News’ Gretchen Wehmhoff contributed to this report.
Passengers are loaded onto a craft to be taken to a nearby cruise ship on Wednesday, in Haines. About 150 people, primarily cruise ship passengers who had disembarked in Skagway, were trapped by a landslide in Canada and then bussed several hundred miles to Haines to rejoin their cruises. (Rashah McChesney/Chilkat Valley News)
