This summer was a great year for bears out in Dyea, the area where we work. During the salmon run we saw the same four bears so frequently that they received names; Ned, Rupert, Clyde and Rick James. The majority of these photos are of Ned and Rupert, the two who spent the most time hanging around (and sometime in!) our basecamp. The bridge leading across the stream and into our camp was a popular fishing spot for the bears, and made for some interesting encounters.

A few weeks ago my parents flew up to Skagway for a few days to visit. I got to take them on a few adventures and show them some of my favorite places here. Here are some pictures from our drive out to Dyea and our visit to Glacier Point

And some more from our drive up the White Pass to Carcross, Canada and our hike to Lower Lake

There are a lot of stories in Skagway about how the supply ship Bark Canada was shipwrecked on the shore of Long Bay over 100 years ago. I'm not sure which is true, or if anyone even actually knows the truth, so the story I tell my tourists is different every time (never trust a tour guide). The remains can only be seen when the tide is out, and its usually just a few fragments of the ribs of the ship sticking out of the water. We've been having some incredibly low tides this past week, so when I noticed the entire ship out of the water I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a closer look. Turns out theres a lot more left of the ship than I thought. Nearly the entire bottom of the boat is still intact, although its covered in seaweed and a thick coating of mussles. There are also some big iron pieces that I'm guessing are some sort of bracing.

Steven's been in Skagway 4 seasons and I've been here 3, and neither of us had ever made it up to Lost Lake, so on one of our last days off together we decided it was time to check it out. The hike is short, just under a mile and a half, but really steep. It was a whole new perspective on our surroundings, and neither of us had ever seen the Taiya river from that high up before. We were able to spot the course that the Chilkoot Trail takes as it parallels the river for quite a ways. We have plans to go up again in another month or so, as the trail and lake are both lined with wild blueberry bushes.

This weekend I took Steven surprise camping next to the waterfall on the mountain that we work on. We drove up at the end of the day for a "picnic" and ended up staying the night in a protected area on the side of the mountain. We saw a brown bear on our hike down, so we bagged all of our food and hung it down the gorge just over the river. The only thing that bothered us that night were mosquitos!

Its shaping up to be another warm summer in Skagway and the backcountry snowboarding season is pretty much done. Luckily its warm enough to bust out the stand up paddleboard and explore some of Skagway's waterways. Its an inflatable board that packs into a big backpack, so I can take it up to some of the alpine lakes.

    All of the snow is already gone from the lower elevations in Skagway, but just 30 minutes up the White Pass in the no-man's land in between the US and Canadian customs there is still plenty of snow to be found. Our last few days off we've been riding in an area called International Falls with our buddies Tom and Nate. This has been our first real chance to break in our splitboards, and we've been loving every minute of it.

At the end of our season in Skagway we decided to take the long way home so we could see a bit more of Canada (America's hat). Our travels took us out of the Yukon, down through Alberta and then across Saskatchewan and Manitoba. We dipped back into the US to go under the great lakes, and then drove back up to Niagara falls before heading down to Jennie's family in New Jersey.

The Chilkoot Trail is a 33 mile-long trail that starts in Dyea, AK and ends in Lake Bennett, Canada that was used by the stampeders to get to the gold fields in the Yukon. Hiking the Chilkoot was one of the first big adventures we took together in September 2012, and we decided to hike it again this last September. The first time we hiked the 33 miles in just three days, which didn't leave a lot of time for getting sidetracked (read about it on my old blog here). This year we decided to take enough food for approximately a week so we would have the freedom to stop anywhere we wanted and take time to really enjoy the scenery.

This last summer the company we work for, Alaska Excursions, began operating a new tour from Skagway out to Glacier Point to canoe to the Davidson Glacier. Here are a few of the pictures from each of our visits (we didn't get to to together).