The Chilkoot Trail is an interesting piece of Alaskan history. It’s about a 33-mile trail that leaves Dyea, Alaska, which is now a ghost town near Skagway. The trail goes through the mountains over Chikoot Pass and ends up in Canada’s Yukon territory. It’s supposed to be a beautiful hike; I haven’t done it, but the trail winds through the coastal rainforest of the Alaska panhandle, through the alpine environment around Chilkoot Pass, and into the great boreal forest on the far side of that famous pass. During the Klondike gold rush from 1896 to 1899, it was a popular route to get to the gold fields around Dawson City.
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Now it’s a hiking trail, managed on the Alaska side by the National Park Service, and for the first time in quite a while, it’s open to the Canadian border. Which brings up an interesting question: What about that border?
“We are excited to reopen the Chilkoot National Historic Trail for the season here on June 1, 2025 after a long hiatus,” Angela Wetz, superintendent of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park, said in an interview.
That means hikers will be able to hike to the Canadian border from Dyea, a gold rush ghost town near Skagway.
Will hikers be allowed to cross the border?
Less certain is whether they’ll be able to cross the border and continue on to Lake Bennett, in British Columbia. Wetz said the Canadian Border Services Agency is currently reviewing a proposal by the National Park Service and Parks Canada and will decide if visitors will be able to enter the country on the trail.
That’s a fair question. The border between Alaska and Canada does not draw a lot of attention, even with all of the scrutiny the Trump administration has placed on border security. There’s good reason for that. There are only two entry points along that long, long land border, on Highway 2 southeast of Tetlin Junction and Tok, and on the Top of the World Highway at Little Gold. The Highway 2 route takes you to the Canadian town of Beaver Creek and on to the city of Whitehorse; on the northern route, you can drive to the Yukon’s Dawson City after passing through the great Alaskan metropolises of Chicken and Jack Wade. That route is closed in the winter.
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In other words, illegal border crossings from the Yukon into Alaska aren’t a huge deal. But could the Chilkoot Trail be a new challenge? The United States has already weighed in. Hikers will not be allowed to enter the United States from Canada on the trail.
The U.S., for its part, has already made up its mind.
“U.S. Customs and Border Patrol will not allow hikers to enter the US on the trail this year, as it’s not a designated port of entry,” Wetz said.
Previously, hikers were able to walk the entire length of the trail in either direction. But Canada’s decision will affect the most hikers — Wetz said the vast majority start in the U.S. and end in Canada.
The re-opening of the trail might present one risk.
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A major part of the crisis on our southern border has to do with narcotics trafficking. Consider that most narcotics, like fentanyl, pack a lot of dollar value into small, light packages. Could there be enough of a market for the illegal drug to make smuggling over Chilkoot Pass profitable?
That seems unlikely. Most drug smugglers aren’t outdoorsy, and even in summer, this is not only a long hike, but can be a cold, damp one. The trail in the U.S. side ends in a ghost town, but one would have to proceed to Skagway, where you can pick up Highway 98, which takes you… Back to Canada.
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It may not be worth the United States’ trouble to build and man a border station along the Chilkoot Trail. But it seems pretty certain that the decision is an economic one, not a border security one.
Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left’s lies, new legislation wasn’t needed to secure our border, just a new president.
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