The trouble with roads and highways around the Yukon continued today, but improvements seem to be on the horizon for frustrated travellers.

The South Klondike Highway to Skagway is still closed as crews work at clearing a massive landslide just beyond the Conrad Campground.

The latest update was provided Wednesday evening, with the Yukon Department of Highways and Public Works stating it hopes to have one lane open by an unspecified time Friday.

The avalanche left upward of 200 tourists stranded on the Yukon side of the slide, most in Carcross. However, some innovative work on behalf of the tourism industry in both the territory and in Skagway resolved many of those problems fairly quickly.

Cameron Webber,  a spokesperson for the Yukon Department of Tourism and Culture, told The Yukon Star “Tuesday evening, department officials were alerted to the fact that multiple buses carrying approximately 200 cruise ship passengers found themselves stuck in Carcross due to the South Klondike Highway road closure.

“Staff at the Carcross Visitor Information Centre kept the centre open beyond normal operating hours (circa 10 p.m.) and, with the help of the Carcross community at large, were able to provide the passengers snacks and warm drinks until department officials had liaised with our partners at Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to confirm that the Dalton Cache-Pleasant Camp border crossing could accommodate processing the buses (circa 1 a.m.) so they could reconnect with their ships in Haines, Alaska.”

Webber added that “typically, cruise ships are responsible for their passengers and would be the ones co-ordinating support. In this instance, however, we were glad to be in a position to assist.”

Holland America/Westmark has been able to divert all their bus traffic to White Pass & Yukon Rail Tours, so Carcross has not seen a significant reduction in cruise ship visitors.

That was confirmed this morning by Heike Graf, the owner of Caribou Crossing Coffee at the Carcross Crossing Compound.

She told the Star the businesses are weathering the highway closure reasonably well so far – but that could change unless the highway re-opens quickly.

Graf said her shop was surprisingly busy Tuesday, as measures were being worked out to handle the stranded tourists.

The slowdown in tourists is “OK for a couple of days,” she said. “It’s like a reset, and we should be all right for two or three days.”

Graf said she would expect businesses in the community to start feeling the closure bite into their profits by the weekend if the highway wasn’t reopened.

She added she was pleased with the news from the Yukon government that the highway could open to one-lane traffic tomorrow.

“I heard that, and it’s amazing, almost miraculous,” she said. “I’m not counting on it, though.”

Graf said the White Pass railway was scheduled to have a train arriving today. That would bring a welcome flood of visitors to Carcross and the Commons businesses.

Krysten Johnson, a spokesperson for Highways and Public Works, says another update was to be released at 4 p.m. today.

As the situation develops, the department will be working closely with the Emergency Measures Organization to ensure visitors have up-to-date information on emergencies and road conditions.

Meanwhile, the flooding on the Alaska Highway near Toad River, B.C. hasn’t prevented the road from being reopened to one-lane alternating traffic.

As with the South Klondike Highway, few new details were available late this morning, but it appears the situation is fairly stable.

There are no indications of damage to the fibre-optic line running alongside the highway, so a telecommunications outage does not appear imminent.

Closer to home, the Wheaton River is surging and causing problems in the Annie Lake area south of Whitehorse.

Yukon government representatives say “the Wheaton River has now peaked and is not currently receding. This peak event discharge is tied for the third-highest on record, the record having been set in 2014.

“The Annie Lake Road is currently closed at 20.5 km and the Wheaton River Bridge remains closed due to the high water levels. Crews are currently on site assessing the road and are working to have it open to single-lane traffic as soon as possible.”