After two years of COVID-19 closure, an easing of restrictions at the border between Skagway and Yukon Territory will make it possible for tour companies to run cross-border excursions this summer. That’s good news for many Skagway tour operators that take cruise ship passengers into Canada.
But Skagway’s largest tour operator, the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad, said its trains won’t cross the border despite relaxed COVID testing rules and faster processing times. On April 5, the railway notified its partners that it would not operate into Canada this season.
The excursion train will run from Skagway to the White Pass summit at the Canadian border and back.
White Pass executive Tyler Rose said there were a number of reasons why only the shorter trip.
“We just couldn’t find a workable solution to it,” he said. “It was logistics, some restrictions. The uncertainty around wait times — it just wasn’t possible for us to provide the consistent, high-quality service without delays. And we thought it would create a significant disruption to the passenger experience.”
Yukon’s Minister of Economic Development Ranj Pillai said his team is disappointed in White Pass’s decision.
“We essentially went through a series of problem-solving on border issues and ensuring that we would have the ability for White Pass to come back and not have delays. And you know, we solved those issues. So yeah, this week was it was very tough to get that news,” Pillai said.
The Yukon government and Yukon businesses aren’t the only ones affected. White Pass partners with several Skagway-based companies to offer combination tours that involve a train ride and other excursions like kayaking, bus rides or bike tours.
Sockeye Cycle owner Dustin Craney said he’s been booking tours based on the idea that the train would run to Fraser, British Columbia, where his company would meet passengers for a bike tour on the Klondike Highway. Now he has to issue about $10,000 in refunds.
“I didn’t think we had kind of any kind of guarantee from them. But we definitely had been booking tours. And I think all the indications from both the kind of the cruise line partners from White Pass and from folks locally was that it seemed like things were coming together, depending on the Canada border situation,” Craney said.
But the work done by the Yukon government to relax border restrictions has paved the way for other Skagway-based tour companies to resume their trips up the Klondike Highway to Yukon communities. Fears over long delays at the border kept some companies in limbo wondering if they’d be able to operate at all after two years of pandemic-related shutdowns.
Now some tour companies, including Chilkoot Charters and Holland America Princess, plan to resume bus tours into Canada.
Skagway’s cruise season starts on April 26. But things are expected to get busy when four large cruise ships arrive in town on May 17.
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