Published on March 25, 2026
A rumbling in the mountains was the first warning. It had snowed heavily overnight, following weeks of storms that kept hundreds of prospectors holed up at Sheep Camp in coastal Alaskan forest. Warm winds blew in that Palm Sunday, April 3, 1898, and some of the stampeders hit the trail, eager to continue their journey to the gold fields in Dawson City, Yukon. The Tlingit, the local Indigenous people who occasionally packed goods for the white men, refused to venture into the mountains that day. They knew the risk.
When two snow slides came tumbling down the valley, people began to flee, clinging to a rope as they moved single-file down the icy slope. At noon, an avalanche roared down, burying everything in its path under thirty feet of snow. “The scene was a weird and terrible one,” writes Pierre Berton in his book *The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush*. “Small air holes sometimes appeared in the snow to mark the spot where a man or woman had been buried, and somewhere beneath them, the searchers could hear the muffled cries of the victims… Relatives above called out their last good-byes to those entombed below.” Many were saved stampeders, but approximately 70 lost their lives. As hours passed, those not rescued quickly became incapacitated from their own breathing, drifting off into a dreamless sleep from which few awoke. This was the deadliest avalanche to hit the Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike Gold Rush.
In the days that followed, bodies were unearthed, many frozen in running positions. They were transported to a makeshift morgue—a tent—at Sheep Camp, eventually to be buried in a hollow not far from the avalanche’s site. , when the snow melted, those making a belated trip through the mountains would discover a lake filled with floating corpses. Eventually, the bodies were moved to sea level and buried in Dyea, an inlet off the Alaskan coast that, in the gold rush days, buzzed with tents and hotels, but is now a ghost town. Wooden tombstones are scattered in a clearing amidst dense, mosquito-infested woods.
The Chilkoot trailhead is less than one kilometer away from this somber site. Here, thousands embark on what marks the most challenging stretch of their journey to Klondike—a month-long trek through forest and mountains to Lake Bennett, today located in northern British Columbia. On the shores of Bennett, prospectors would build boats to sail roughly 800 kilometers down the Yukon River to Dawson City.
Today, the trail attracts around 2,500 hikers from across the globe each summer. Modern trekkers trade horses and heavy crates for conveniences like freeze-dried food, Gore-Tex, merino wool, and lightweight stoves. I hiked the Chilkoot last summer, and my first day on the trail felt like a trial . Accompanied , we left Dyea eager and energized, dancing around bear scat and singing pop songs to fend off wildlife. My pack, however, was a monstrous burden, and 12-kilometer mark, I was rushing into the trees, hastily digging a hole in the moss for a desperate bathroom break.
As we reached Sheep Camp that night, I found myself throwing up in the rickety outhouse, while hives erupted across my arms and legs. Doubt sank in about my ability to survive the remaining days, particularly after a park ranger had warned us at the permit office that a helicopter evacuation—should we need one—would cost $28,000 U.S. As I curled up, shivering in my sleeping bag, I lamented my choice in my journal, questioning, “Why did I want to do this?”
The Klondike Gold Rush began in the summer of 1896 when three prospectors found gold on Rabbit Creek, igniting a nationwide frenzy nearly a year later when two ships carrying more than two tons of gold arrived in American ports. The announcements sparked what was known as “Klondike fever,” motivating thousands to brave the harsh wilderness, usually unaware of the trials ahead. “Suffering seems inevitable,” said one newspaper of the time as hordes of panning hopefuls disembarked in Skagway or Dyea. Towns rapidly rose with great chaos—a frenzy of people and supplies, as ships delivered heaps of goods onto the shores.
The prospectors faced two treacherous routes through the mountains: the Chilkoot and the White Pass. The former was tougher but shorter and generated a greater rush of travelers laden with weight meant to last a year, while the latter, known as the Dead Horse Trail for the bodies of 3,000 pack animals left behind, had a reputation of its own. The Chilkoot’s infamous climb, known as the Golden Stairs, consisted of 1,500 steps carved out of ice, symbolizing both the physical and mental struggle of the stampeders. The scene would be immortalized in photographs depicting a line of travelers against the stark white snow, endeavoring upward in search of fortune.
Due to the area’s remoteness, the Canadian government mandated that each person carry a year’s worth of supplies. Most stampeders, however, were unprepared for the grueling journey ahead. Of the 100,000 who ventured north, only about 30,000 reached Dawson City, with countless stories of hardship, injury, and loss along the way.
We reached the snowy base of the Golden Stairs on day two. To minimize avalanche risks, rangers advised early starts, and we woke at 4:30 a.m., exhausted yet determined. The first four hours up were brutal, and I felt the crushing weight of my pack as we crossed into