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Phil Lind’s family has an unusual rite of passage: hiking up the Chilkoot Trail between two ghost towns dating to the Klondike Gold Rush: Dyea, Alaska and Bennett Lake, British Columbia.
On paper, it doesn’t seem that long, about 53 kilometres. But Lind says it can take four or five days, because it’s a challenging hike through rough terrain, including climbing a 1,100 metre-high mountain.
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Lind’s grandfather Johnny Lind did it in 1894, when he went prospecting in the Yukon and Alaska. When gold was discovered at Bonanza Creek in the Klondike in 1896, he was one of thousands of miners who flooded into the region around Dawson City.
Hooligan caught from the Chilkoot River in 2017. (File photo by Emily Files)
The arrival of the hooligan, at one time, meant the difference between survival and starvation at the end of a long hard winter in Southeast Alaska.
Traditionally hooligan, also known as eulachon, candlefish, or saak, provided not only food for the Chilkat and Chilkoot Tlingit people of the Upper Lynn Canal, but also medical, social, and spiritual well-being. Their arrival is often forecasted by the presence of gulls, ducks, seals, sea lions, and orca.
Reuben Cash is the Environmental Coordinator for the Skagway Traditional Council and is working on the Northern Southeast Alaska Eulachon Population Dynamics Monitoring program. The purpose of the program is to learn more about these anadromous fish, their ecology, population dynamics, and distribution.
Juneau, Alaska (KINY) - It is many days beyond the start of Spring, but the weather gods are not cooperating in Juneau.
The Juneau Forecast Office has issued a winter weather advisory for today between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m.
The forecast calls for blowing snow with accumulations of 2 to 6 inches along with winds gusting to as high as 40 miles per hour this afternoon.
In addition to Juneau, Skagway, Dyea and the Klondike Highway, and Haines and the Haines Highway are in the affected area.
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