Chilkoot: Day 2. The Golden Staircase.

During our journey, Jeff and I were able to sleep in the "warming cabins." Which, during the summertime, are off-limits to overnighters. There are camps spread out along the trail, and during the gold rush, these were nearly thriving cities. Some had saloons, dance halls, and even churches. Nowadays they have little huts, some picnic tables, and latrines.

Jeff cooked us up a breakfast of real bacon and eggs to fuel us up for the big day. And yes, a dozen eggs survived the whole trek without breaking. We woke up unsure if we were going to make it over the pass. We had been warned of fresh snow at the summit, and we found out afterward that many hikers backed out, because of their fear of bad weather. We decided to go for it, and if it looked bad we'd turn around. But we didn't turn around.

The first four miles we hiked on our second day are known as "Long Hill." Some miners even remarked that it was the hardest part of the trail. They said this before they climbed up the pass!

I enjoyed this hike up long hill, and felt pretty fierce after these few miles.

I wasn't bothered at all.

We were getting closer to the clouds, but not too worried.

That little summit was quite a little teaser.

Gaining a good amount of elevation. We were in a cloud, but could still see the trail.

Remnants of the Klondike Gold Rush.

We made it to "The Scales." This was the last chance all those miners had to weigh their goods to be sure they had their ONE TON of goods to carry up over the summit into Canada.

And it seems that some things were just too heavy for the weary miners.

We crossed this rocky valley to the base of our conquest. All the trail markers had been removed for the winter, so we put our trust in an rusty iron cable from an old tramway to guide us over the pass.

Ta-da. Now is the time. Now. We. Climb.

It wasn't so bad at first. We gave up using our trekking poles, and trusted our arms and legs to pull us up. Soon the harsh wind was pushing on us, and loose, jagged rocks started to make me struggle a little.

Jeff kept saying, "Good job, honey" over and over and over.

I soon began to say, "This is the stupidest thing I've ever done" over and over and over.

This is a view from the first summit. Yes, my friends, there were TWO more summits to go! No one told me until we were hiking, that their would be two false summits. It only got worse.

On our second summit. We encountered knee and then thigh deep snow. We were hiking on jagged loose rocks, and in the cracks you could see six feet down to a little river. And NOW that was all covered in snow. We didn't know where to step, as we could step into nothing and break our legs!

I AM NOT HAVING ANY FUN!

The wind was now howling from every direction, and we didn't know how far the real summit was. I was soaking wet and freezing, and the tears streaming down my face were the only thing keeping me warm.

This piece of machinery was left over from the tramway. Normally, I love looking at all the artifacts. But obviously I was more concerned with not slipping into a crevasse. We trekked on...

This picture is taken at the summit. Jeff's idea. It was so hard to smile, but we soon made it into a warming hut. I wanted to stay there and just wait for someone to come rescue us. I didn't want to hike four more miles down in similar conditions to camp. But Jeff forced me to change into all the dry clothes I had, he made me some ginger tea so I wouldn't throw up out of fear, and we kept going.

As we ventured down the other side of the pass, we saw some eerie sights. Fog covered all the breathtaking sights we would have seen in the summer. This was even another reminder of how alone and isolated we were from ... everything. I was still crying and scared, but every few minutes Jeff would yell out "Song time!" and he made me belt out my favorite camping tunes.

I mostly grumbled, but Jeff forced me to sing like a crazed stage mom.

After a while I started to realize what we had done. The Chilkoot Pass! The Golden Staircase! I started to feel like I could really do anything. Nothing would be as bad as that, and I felt pretty powerful.

I even started to enjoy it all. Just a little. Notice my puffy eyes from all the crying!

Natural snow cave. The silence around this phenomenon was haunting.

As we continued on with the cairns to our stop for the night at "Happy Camp" I couldn't get the summit out of my head. I was excited to get into the cabin, hang up our clothes to dry, eat a delicious dinner, and finally laugh about my fear. I was pretty proud of us, and excited for two more days of some much easier trail hiking.