Digital Art Image 2221,
selection 7 of White Pass gallery 3:

Glacial and Subsequent Meteorological Phenomena:

Huge conical mountains in the distant mist gleam purple, as in the foreground, the tips of young pines jut into view. Here, the same train can be seen only as a tiny sliver as it when the wends it's way on the downgrade to the city of Skagway below. The same boulders now dwarfed by the immense distances involved in the stupendous White Pass.  A rounded cliff perhaps even sculpted by aeolian erosion of the winter winds.

The pass is more than a mere chasm leading a few miles inland.  These were formed by immense glaciers miles high that once covered the entire north.  The White Pass leads into the largest fjord in North America.   The land at the mouth of the Skagway river was sunken by the immense weight of the rocky ice.  The valley floor rises about one inch per year.

The rift carved by the glaciations and other phenomenon, including geologic, provides a sink hole for the immense high pressure cells that build up in the arctic over the Canadian North American continental shield, and parts of the cells drain to the warmer Pacific through the pass before they blob down south through the Lower 48 contiguous United States.  It may be a part of this meteorological process -- a small influence on major weather known as the "butterfly effect" phenomenon.

The wind from this meteorological event is unabated for a period of two to three months during the winter.  The average speed of the incessant winds is seventy miles per hour.  A small windmill, built by a resident in town to provide electricity for his house actually earns him income from the commercial power company because he puts more power back in the grid than he uses.  A commercial venture, attempting to harness the wind, built a large windmill on the edge of Skagway which disintegrated in the phenomenal blast, it's parts strewn throughout the town. 

The edges of the cliffs surrounding the pass sculpt the wind currents so that they create micro leas and eddies as the constant gale continues it's several-month-long onslaught.  You never hear about this, but, up here, things go on on a planetary scale.  It is called The Town of the North Wind. 

You ought to see it.  Save up four hundred bucks and grab one of those boats.  You can bop up here on one of your vacations.  If you head into Dedman's Photo Shop and go upstairs, you can sit down in that little white chair and have a peek at the albums of original photos from the gold rush days a couple of centuries ago.

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... the valley floor rises about one inch per year...
Copyright (c) 2005 by Paul A. L. Hall.  All rights reserved.
... the same train ... the same boulders ... dwarfed by the immense distances ...