Day 8: Skagway...Reid's Falls

It is said that people who spend a lot of time together begin to think, talk, and act like each other. Yesterday we confirmed that when ALL of us, regardless of activity level the day before, slept in until 10am. It was a welcome change from having to be up, fed, and out of the hostel by 9am, like in Juneau. We took our time getting ready, some doing a little laundry and others starting to pack up for today's departure.

Our group trail took us up-up-up the steep Upper Dewey trailhead to Icy Lake and then on to Reid's Falls. The Falls are named for the gunslinger sheriff Frank Reid who killed Jefferson "Soapy" Smith. From what we gather, Smith was a con-artist who came to Skagway and made a living swindling gold-rushers and merchants out of everything they had. Smith and his followers ran the town, and no one crossed them. Things came to a head, and Reid and Smith were locked in a gun battle. Smith died immediately, and the gang was broken. Reid sustained injuries that he never recovered from, dying a couple of weeks later.

Icy Lake freezes solid in the winter and shoulder season and would make a great place for ice-skating, although I'm not sure it's used in that way by locals. Reid's Falls isn't a single waterfall but rather a long, cascading series of falls and pools and more falls as the water works its way down the mountain, just beyond the Gold Rush Cemetery, where the remains of both Smith and Reid are buried.

We hiked in two groups to the Falls, in a somewhat off-the-beaten-path kind of way. (My group stopped to take more breaks and photos than the other.) Somehow both groups got off the wider, main trail and ended up walking through what we nicknamed Bear Avenue because we just knew that we were going to look up and see a bear standing on one of the many ledges above us. But we didn't!

After eating snacks and getting a drink, we headed back down to the base of the mountain. Jake, Alex, Josh, and Leigh took the trail off to the south and walked the Lower Dewey trail around Dewey Lake. Jen and I decided against Lower Dewey because it was well after lunchtime, and I hadn't even brought a snack on the trail. Instead, we reached the trailhead and decided to follow the train tracks to the Gold Rush Cemetery, just around the corner. More than a mile down the tracks, we remembered that the cemetery was not just around the corner; it was 2.8 miles down the tracks, a much longer hike than if we had done Lower Dewey. We went anyway. The large, round rocks slowed our progress, but we were able to walk on the street back to the hostel. We saw the grave sites of Soapy Smith, Frank Reid, and many other rushers, also called 98ers even though not everyone buried there came in 1898. Some were infants of rush families who didn't make it through childbirth or through the winter. Most were men (and a few women) in their 30s and 40s.

Last night we walked (yes, one block) to the pizza place/restaurant/bar/pool hall behind the hostel and shot pool for hours!! with James and Amy, a couple from New Zealand who we first met at the hostel in Juneau. Great, great people! And James is quite the pool shark. He and Amy held the table for round after round. Jen and Jake knocked them out once, Josh and I knocked out Jen and Jake, Alex and Leigh knocked us out, and then James and Amy were back on top. They even got a challenge from a couple of local guys, but they held their title as champs, despite a last-minute attack from Alex and me. We were still rambunctous, but exhausted, when we got back to the hostel. One by one, sleep overcame our enthusiasm.