The White Pass road climbs 873 metres in twenty-two kilometres, a gradient that defeated pack animals during the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush and claimed three thousand horses in a single winter. Today the Klondike Highway follows that original trail, crossing from Skagway's sea-level port into British Columbia and the Yukon Territory within forty minutes. The route threads through Tormented Valley, where glacial meltwater has carved vertical walls of black schist, and crests at White Pass Summit—elevation 873 metres—where a weathered wooden marker divides Alaska from Canada. No railway whistle sounds here anymore; the narrow-gauge White Pass & Yukon Route discontinued daily freight service in 1982, and the highway became the primary conduit for visitors seeking the subarctic plateau beyond. Skagway Yukon discovery tour operators run coaches and vans along this corridor year-round, pausing at the suspension bridge that spans the Tutshi River gorge and the husky kennel camps that breed dogs for recreational sledding. The Carcross Desert—a three-square-kilometre sandbar left by a retreating glacial lake—lies ninety minutes north of the border, the smallest desert on any geological survey. Emerald Lake, coloured by light-refracting calcium carbonate, sits five kilometres beyond Carcross village. These sites anchor the itineraries that depart Broadway Street each morning, timed to the cruise-ship berths that dominate Skagway's harbour between May and September. The husky camps operate under Yukon territorial permits, housing teams of Alaskan and Siberian huskies that pull wheeled rigs in summer and sleds once snow depth exceeds thirty centimetres. Handlers demonstrate harness rigging and the commands—"hike," "gee," "haw"—that direct a six-dog string. Some tours include a cart ride; others offer only a kennel walk-through. The distinction matters for visitors arriving on tight port schedules. White Pass itself holds no visitor centre, only a gravel pullout where coaches stop for photographs. The pass served as the safer alternative to the Chilkoot Trail during the gold rush, steep but negotiable without rope work. Stampeders who chose this route paid packers to haul gear in relay stages, a system that moved seventy thousand people and their required "ton of goods" into the Yukon interior between 1897 and 1899. The road bisects avalanche chutes that still run each spring, visible as treeless corridors striping the mountainsides. Tour vehicles carry tire chains October through April, though the highway closes only during active avalanche control work.