That got me thinking, so I asked Google Maps to tell the driving route. Here it is.
View Larger Map
Personally, it seems way too hard. 1900 miles drive to Prince Rupert, then 400 miles by car ferry? Why not 1) turn right at Whitehorse and go through Skagway AK? I have done that road in the dead of winter (right by Lac Laberge) and it was still (barely) open. That would be about 800 miles. Even 2) driving to Haines AK would seem possible, but maybe not in the winter. This is only 750 miles. It would seem crazy that there wouldn't be a regular weekly ferry to Anchorage.
Flying would seem simpler but much more dangerous. In 1990, I flew into Wrangell AK (named after Russian Governor who negotiated the Alaska Purchase for Russia in 1867), and then by helicopter up the Stikine River to the Eskay Creek Gold Mine (now part of Barrick Gold Corp ). This rich orebody was a mountaintop. We next travelled up to Fairbanks AK to see what has become Fort Knox Gold (now part of Kinross Gold Corp.) and then flew over to Nome AK, home to a large coldwar air force base, to visit the Red Dog Mine which was owned at the time by Cominco Ltd. - now Teck Cominco). While in Fairbanks, I recall being shown the "hydraulic1" mining that they still allowed in many of the rivers! That trip was the modern equivalent of a visit to the Klondike!
Footnotes:
1) Hydraulic gold mining is just a modern update on the "placer" mining technique used during the regions Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. It involves pumping river water through high-pressure hoses, eroding the riverbank and channeling the sediment through a sluice gate system. This holds a series of graduated fine mesh screens to extract the gold nuggets and dust from the sediment. Environmentally - it is a disaster!
Chart of Gold + Silver ETF (Dec 22,2008 Monthly)
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