Skagway bus only to/from emerald lake?

[erdoran]

frontier excursions has a Yukon explorer tour out of Skagway that sounds like it covers a lot of ground which I like. My only concern is am I missing something by just doing bus and not taking a tour which includes the train? I’m thinking for scenery and views. Thanks

[Kamloops50]

If you can take a bus and train combination. On the train you'll see the actual White Pass. The bus goes thru a different pass .

[wheezedr]

I usually recommend the bus train combination. That way you get to cover the best of both worlds and are not doubling back exactly the way you came.

[Eaglecw]

We've done that excursion before. It's a nice trip. It stops for lunch at Caribou Crossing trading post and goes up to Emerald lake. It also stops in Carcross. It'll make a few photo stops on the way up to the Yukon.

[ccndfw]

We did the Frontier Excursions bus only tour last summer and loved it!

 

We liked that the bus driver could stop as needed. We have a ton of great photos and we spent at least 10 minutes watching a bear on the side of the road and we would not have been able to do that on a train.

 

When we were planning for our trip, this blog had a lot of great info about the Frontier Excursions tour:

 

https://travelontheside.com/2016/07/05/alaskan-cruise-klondike-highway-to-yukon/

 

Have a great trip!

[erdoran]

Wow, thanks! Yep, I learned about Frontier Excursions from that blog actually, which I discovered on CC thanks to posters like you!

 

On that tour, any thoughts about whether the dogsled thing is worth an addition $40/pp? It's a LOT of $$ for 15 minutes, but it sounds interesting, one of these "once in a lifetime" experiences - but do you pretty much get everything except rear ends in the sled even if you don't go for the ride?

[ccndfw]

From what I remember, I believe we had people on our bus that had opted to do the dog sledding so we were all on the same tour. The difference was that those that did dog sledding were given a wristband and when we stopped for lunch which was about a 90 minutes stop, they could go for a ride in the dog sled. During the lunch stop, in addition to actually eating, there is a taxidermy exhibit, sled dog puppies to see, gold panning, and feeding the goats and alpacas. We flew thru all of that and probably wouldn’t have had time to see the taxidermy exhibit if we had tried to do the dog sledding as well. We did watch some people leave on the sled and it looked fun, but we didn’t feel we missed out by not doing it. If I remember correctly, we could have opted to purchase tickets for the sledding during our stop as well, but they told us with limited time there, if you are doing the sledding, go sign up before you eat lunch to make sure you have time for it.

[nw gardener]

Just got back from our cruise and used Frontier last Tuesday. They were great and loved being able to stop and take pics along the way. Saw 2 bears and mountain goats. Caribou Crossing was touristy and the taxidermy display was good. Seeing the sled dogs and puppies was nice but the extra $ for a 15 minute ride didn't make sense to us for the amount of time there. I highly recommend them

 

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[DarkJedi]

We used Dyea Dave bus and train combo. 15 passenger bus up to Emerald Lake and then the train back. Best of both worlds.

If we did it again on our own we would probably rent a car, but doing the train once was well worth it.

[Cruise_More_Often]

I'm one of the few who didn't enjoy the train. We did the combo excursion that year with Chilkoot Charters and much preferred the van ride over the train. On our next Alaska cruise we did the van excursion both up and back with Dyea Dave. There were only two couples on the tour, all photographers, and the driver stopped several times for us.