THE TREK OF DOING THE CHILKOOT PASS HAS BEEN A POPULAR ACTIVITY FOR ADULTS AND FAMILIES WITH TEEN-AGERS. THE PASS HAS BEEN MADE MORE ACCESSIBLE SINCE FATHER BOBILLIER CLIMBED IT IN 1958. WE HOPE THAT THE LOW DOLLAR, WILL HAVE CANADIANS THINK OF THIS ADVENTURE IN CANADA WHILE THOROUGHLY ENJOYING IT.
BOBILLIER, MARCEL (2-4A) (124 ENGLISH)
4th Day: the arrival at Bennett Lake
We got up at 5 o'clock and one hour later, we left, crossed on the last stream, storm-trooped the mounds in front of us, and in a few minutes, we were soaked from head to toe.
The walk from 6 o'clock to 11 o'clock in the morning was the hardest of our whole trip. Our goal was to reach the railroad, but the path was a very long one and these miles were covered in scrub and under-wood as well as with trees and rocks.
During the morning, we climbed to 2000 feet of altitude to try to get out of that wet scrub and under-wood.. When spreading the thick branches in order to clear a passage through the jungle, we were constantly sprinkled and our clothes clung to our skin. There was nothing more annoying. Father Boyd slipped and fell; the ax he carried by hand caused a slight wound on his forehead. Blood streamed over his face. He wasn't nice to look at!
We climbed and climbed continually. We saw tree stumps here and there cut by the gold-seekers in 1898; we remembered that they had need for many tree trunks to build their boats and row-boats which would transport them from Lindeman Lake to Bennett Lake, the country of gold.
Once having reached the heights, wet, and our clothes all torn, we finally were overjoyed to see the railroad about one mile away. From that area, the view of Lindeman Lake was superb, and so were the mountains which overhung it. But the sight of the railroad was even more comforting! We headed in that direction through the forest, the under-wood, the scrub and the slough or bog. Around 10 o'clock, we finally arrived at the railroad tracks, midway between Log Cabin and Bennett.
We did not stop because we still had four and one-half miles to go, and we had to reach Bennett before the daily train.
We walked at a good pace without meeting a single railroad workman. We crossed over bridges which overhung the ravines and saw Lindeman Lake once again, one mile from Bennett. Father Boyd washed his face in a stream which flowed under the railroad tracks and at 11:30 we arrived quite satisfied and happy at the end of our trip.
We ate a good meal at the hotel-station at Bennett before the train arrived from Skagway which always arrived at noon bringing about 60 tourists.
After a one-hour rest, I felt the fatigue from the accelerated morning walk, and was happy to take off my boots in the compartment reserved for the train personnel. Throughout the whole trip to Carcross, the conductor held a lively conversation with us.
Ah! How good it felt to rest on the stuffed seats, with our legs up, while the train skirted along the Bays of Bennett Lake, and while the rain-clouds and fog passed over the mountains whose crests were covered in fresh snow from the previous night.
When I reached home at Atlin, after a 90-mile train ride, I was so tired that I slept a deep sleep for twelve hours. The distance we covered on foot was certainly not enormous, about forty miles perhaps, but the continual ascensions, the under-wood and scrub, and the humidity of the last morning made it all a more heavy and painful walk that the distance itself spread over four days would let us believe.
Father Boyd and I were the first priests to have walked through the coastal Chain in actual painful conditions by the Chilkoot Pass.
Along this long and complicated journey, in each step we relived the epic race to the gold of the Klondike by following the thousands of gold seekers who penetrated into the Yukon by the Pacific in 1898, sixty years before.
ref: Father Marcel Bobillier, o.m.i.
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