Updated at 11:45 a.m.
At 4 a.m. Wednesday, just as the sun was starting to cast long blue shadows over downtown Haines – four massive Holland America tour buses motored into the parking lot of the Port Chilkoot Cruise Ship Dock.
Some 150 people climbed down the stairs and slowly made their way down the dock – a handful stopping to photograph themselves in front of the Haines sign before climbing onto tender boats – basically water shuttles – bound for the nearby Holland America Koningsdam.
While many of the passengers were visibly tired, others like Australians Arthur and Sharon Green, were joking and laughing.
“We didn’t expect to make it here,” Arthur said. “We got a bonus tour.”
The crowd was primarily cruise ship passengers who disembarked in Skagway on Tuesday and were riding on the popular White Pass and Yukon Route Railway when a landslide overtook the tracks and then the roadway between markers 80 to 86 of the Klondike Highway. A 50-mile stretch of the South Klondike Highway from Fraser to Carcross has since been closed, according to Yukon Protective Services.
Both the U.S. border station and Canadian customs closed the Skagway Port of Entry after the slide, according to a Nixle alert sent out at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday. That effectively blocked the passengers from returning to Alaska or reboarding the Holland America and Princess cruise ships they’re touring on.
Laurie Wilcox, 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.
Original story
The details are still being worked out, but cruise line officials say about 150 passengers from the Holland America Koningsdam and a Princess cruise ship are en route to Haines to rejoin their tours after being trapped in Canada.
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.
A 50-mile stretch of the South Klondike Highway from Fraser to Carcross has since been closed, according to Yukon Protective Services. Both the U.S. border station and Canadian customs closed the Skagway Port of Entry after the slide, according to a Nixle alert sent out at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
The passengers were transferred to buses and – in an unusual solution to the problem – began the several hundred mile drive to Haines.
“It’s pretty unprecedented,” said Cruise Lines Agencies of Alaska port manager Leslie Ross.
Ross said the cruise ships are headed to Haines to retrieve their passengers from the borough’s dock.
She was working to coordinate with Canadian and U.S. border officials to keep the borders open around 10 p.m. on Tuesday, then said she was headed to bed to catch a few hours of sleep before the crowd arrives in town.
The Skagway News’ Gretchen Wehmhoff contributed to this report.
