Atlin

4-19-2015

     We decided to take a very scenic way to Alaska by going South to Skagway, taking the ferry to Haines, then driving North back into Canada, then West back into Alaska. But first, we decided to check out a dead end road that led to Atlin, BC. What a great decision!

    Atlin is a mining town way off on its own in British Colombia. There's only one road in and out, it starts in the Yukon Territory, and it's about 60 miles long. As the crow flies it's actually not very far from Skagway in the US, just on the other side of some mountains, but by road it's a solid day's drive. It looks like it's on a sound, like Skagway, but the water is actually the very large Atlin Lake, a huge glacial lake. 

    The town itself is small, maybe a mile long. Most the houses are neat and tidy, of the cute fishing cottage sort, and almost all of them have a view of the lake because the town is on a bit of a hill. There's a small marina with lots of docks, and a few odd but picturesque churches. Most of the businesses are historical buildings, and they have placards on them explaining what the building used to be. Some have a long history, some have stories. Most of the stores were closed because it's not yet the summer season. There was a gas station and restaurant that were open, that was it. 

     We went to the restaurant just to get a cup of coffee and learned about a guy who makes jewelry out of the gold the miners of Atlin find. He sells it to jewelers in Skagway, where the price gets marked way up, and takes his stuff to jewelry shows in Canada, where buyers purchase it for their stores and do the same. 

     We were told we could buy directly from him, too, but we'd have to catch him at his house. So we went to his house (the waitress told us where to go) and it wasn't until we got there that I realized how rude this really was, since we didn't intend on actually buying anything. Too late, though. This was a very small town and we had already pulled in and parked in this guy's driveway. It was likely he'd come outside just to see who we were and what we were doing there. And he did. 

     He was a super nice guy, he welcomed us right in. He had two dogs that looked like labrador mixes, one short haired and one long haired, that were really friendly. He led us down some rickety, old, wooden steps into the basement, where he had his work table and a few huge display cases set up. Wow did he have some cool jewelry! He made jewelry out of the raw, uncut gold. He had huge nugget rings and necklaces, he had small nugget linked necklaces and bracelets. He had some of the coolest rings I've ever seen. I wanted one so bad but they were a little out of my budget, even at half the price of the jewelry stores. Now I am determined to save up and go back, at least on the way back to the lower 48, and get something. I mean, how cool would it be to have a gold nugget ring with real gold from a real place that we actually went to, found by real people we actually talked to, from such a unique and cool little town. And at a good price, too! I have to go back. 

     The coolest part is that it's not at all a tourist town. Hardly anybody drives that far out of the way without good reason, so everything there had a real local, homey feel to it. I may have just made up words there, but I hope I got my point across. It's a real down to earth place. 

     The surrounding area around Atlin was really cool, too. The paved road from the Yukon ends in Atlin, but there are two dirt roads that continue on for a few more miles before ending in the middle of nowhere: Discovery Road, and Surprise Lake Rd. Discovery Road continues south, and we took that one first. We drove past some houses back in the woods, then started seeing signs for Warm Bay on Atlin Lake. Before too long we passed Warm Bay. There wasn't too much there, just a small beach and a tiny little trickle of a stream that went under the road and fed into the lake. It was the only part of the bay that wasn't covered in ice. 

     Later down that road we saw a small sign for Warm Spring. That sounded intriguing, so we pulled in. The "road" was a short, muddy two track that led right to a bright, emerald green pond. It was the greenest thing we'd seen in Canada so far. We parked right next to it and got out to explore. Luke touched it and confirmed that yep, sure enough, the water was warm. Not hot, but warm. Like a baby's bath water. Just offset from the middle we could see a grey gravel bottom and some small bubbles rising up in little rivulets. It was the only part of the bottom we could see, so we assumed that was the direct source. The rest of it was covered in algae, like long, green hair. Mermaid hair. It looked soft to the touch, and most of it was between one and three feet long. 

     At the opposite end from where we parked our car there was a little stream running off. It was only two to five feet wide, and about two feet deep. That same, soft, stringy algae grew in that small stream, too. On the sides bright green patches of moss, shrubs, and green grass sprouted, in complete contrast to the dead yellow grass in the rest of the field. It looked so very odd.

     Warm Spring was the coolest find so far. We drove down the road further but it changed from a reasonable dirt road into an unmaintained two track, comprising of only snow and mud, so we turned around there. 

     We drove all the way down Surprise Lake Road, too, but it wasn't nearly as exciting. There was nothing there but gold mines, which look a lot like gravel pits, so it wasn't nearly as scenic. We did find the town cemetery, and a separate historical cemetery full of Klondike gold rushers, and those were pretty neat. 

    Overall I really liked Atlin. I hope we can get back there and explore Discovery Lake road to the end, and can buy some original, authentic gold jewelry from that nice old man. What a neat town.