KHNS - Haines

Skagway’s historic Red Onion Saloon is changing hands.

Oct. 10 was the final night of the season under the current owner. Patrons shared wild stories and reminisced about the old days.

Long-time Skagway resident Scott Logan recounted people bringing dogs in to have dress up contests. Donkeys, horses and chickens would visit, too.

It was the closing night for Red Onion’s 44th year, and Jan Wrentmore’s last season as the owner. She reopened the gold rush brothel as a pizza restaurant and bar more than four decades ago.

The saloon has always been a place to find love. Lara Labesky got two marriages out of it. Coincidentally, both men were named Denny.

“This is the first place I came the very first night that I arrived in Skagway,” Labesky said. “It’s been important in my life, because I met both my husbands here. And I don’t know that the story’s over yet.”

The Red Onion is famous for its entertainment.

While mud wrestling is no longer allowed, this season’s events included adult prom, a Mr. Skagway pageant and live mural painting nights by a local artist.

Bar manager Deb Potter remembers how cruise ship crew would pop in and play instruments that were left out. Beach night used to include actual sand on the floor until the janitor got too tired of the clean up.

Red Onion started Skagway’s first drag show about 20 years ago, before drag was widely accepted. The funds raised went to a specific community member in need.

“It started off as not necessarily queer focused, but just you know, community members who wanted to perform,” Potter said. “Straight men who were willing to perform in drag for the benefit of their community. And it was always just the best night of the year. And it continues to be the best night of the year, even though there’s all these other drag show events that are quite a bit more professional.”

Going back further, Potter pointed out that when Wrentmore opened the Red Onion in 1980, there weren’t many female business owners, and none who owned a bar.

“And she took a lot of flak for it,” Potter said. “And she just created this amazing place that is so dear, not only to people who are here in Skagway, but to tens of millions. I’m so proud of Jan for doing this. And I also really look forward to seeing what Tracy, who is also another independent businesswoman, what she’s going to be able to do with it.”

Tracy LaBarge is the new owner who lives in Juneau. She also owns Tracy’s King Crab Shack. But once upon a time, she frequented the Red Onion and worked Skagway’s popcorn wagon as a second job. She first came to Skagway in 1992. She says owning the Red Onion is a dream come true.

As the new proprietor, LaBarge addressed some major concerns held by many Skagwegians, such as whether she believes in the Red Onion ghost, Lydia,

“Heck yeah, and I’m hoping to meet her,” LaBarge said.

She also said she hopes the bed pans lining the wall will stay.

The festivities went late into the night, with both the old and new owners present. As a party favor, many left the saloon with an uncut red onion.

The Haines Assembly has passed its first cruise passenger fee. The tourism director says the move will help the adventure capital be ready for expenditures related to tourism.

The Haines Borough Assembly unanimously approved a new tariff on cruise ship passengers. The revenue passenger fee will start next year.

Reba Hylton is tourism director for Haines. She said the town, which will host roughly 100,000 cruise ship passengers this year, has never had a passenger fee.

“No, we didn’t have a fee at all,” she said. “So that was kind of like a big, big red flag to me when knowing that the existing cruise ship dock needed some maintenance. And you know, you want to know how you’re going to fix things, or how you’re going to make things better. And when there’s no pot of money specifically targeted to do that, for me, bringing forward a port fee was a must.”

The fee will start out at $9 per passenger in 2025 and increase to $12 in 2027 and then $13 in 2029. The Assembly has not defined exactly what the funds will be used for, but legally, the money must go towards improvements that benefit passengers, such as a floating dock or other infrastructure need.

Hylton said the discussion regarding the tariff first started about six months ago.

“It’s been to several different committees: the Tourism Advisory Board, and Ports and Harbor, Finance and Commerce,” she said. “So it’s had a lot of vetting and discussion, and now it’s in place. So it was a lot of work.”

A Skagway tour bus lost control and overturned on the Canadian side of the Klondike Highway on Friday. It happened late afternoon, near the Yukon Suspension Bridge. No other vehicles were involved.

Skagway Police Chief Jerry Reddick says his team’s assistance was not requested by Canadian officials. Borough Manager Brad Ryan went to the site to assist with Starlink communications in the remote area.

Ryan estimated there were 20 passengers.

Skagway’s fire chief was unavailable for comment as she remained on site in Canada.

The incident delayed the start of the weekend’s Klondike Road Relay by four hours and the first three legs were canceled.

One unpleasant aspect of winter living in the northern Lynn Canal is transportation.

Sometimes the ferry isn’t running. So when Haines residents try to catch a flight to Juneau, they watch the sky expectantly, hoping the cloud cover will lift and allow small planes to land. Sometimes, this can last for days.

Here’s some good news: officials from Alaska Seaplanes say flight cancellations should be drastically reduced this winter. The company has recently rolled out new instrument navigation approaches to a number of Southeast communities, including Haines.

“IFR, so the flight rules under instruments, we are actually allowed to penetrate the clouds and not see anything but still just as safe as we are when we are flying VFR, if not safer,” said Gregg Hake, a pilot with Alaska Seaplanes.

He said there are two ways to pilot a plane. One is Visual Flight Rules, or VFR, which is often how smaller planes are flown. Pilots use their eyes to situate themselves within the landscape. The other is Instrument Flight Rules, or IFR. That’s the high tech way of flying where the instruments do the tracking. The pilot has to trust the technology, and follow a path — also known as an approach — that is recorded in the navigation system.

“If you imagine a tunnel through the sky at different altitudes, and around the terrain, that takes you from whatever altitude the approach starts at, down to the runway essentially, or close to the runway,” Hake said.

IFR is already in use in Southeast Alaska. The Federal Aviation Administration produces public approaches that are valid for all airplanes equipped with IFR systems. Hake said these are broadly used in the Lower 48, and there isn’t much to improve on.

“But it’s places like Southeast Alaska that are just so tricky to operate in and out of and there isn’t the same traffic volume that you would see down south, so the FAA doesn’t commit perhaps the same level of resources to producing more exotic approaches that we need,” he said.

But the FAA also certifies private approaches that are produced by particular operators. These approaches are tailored to a specific airplane’s capacity. This is the upgrade Alaska Seaplanes has recently rolled out.

Pilot Cable Wells has spent the last few years developing approaches for Island Air and its parent company, Alaska Seaplanes. There are many steps to the process.

“Site surveys, terrain surveys, figuring out what is possible to do in the terrain that still meets all the FAA requirements,” Wells said. “And then you have to go out and flight check everything, equip the aircraft with all sorts of sensors, and collate all this data and send it to the FAA for approval process.”

Wells said it takes a couple years to get an approach certified. In April, Alaska Seaplanes introduced new approaches for eight towns across Southeast, including Haines, Juneau, Kake, Klawock, Hoonah, Petersburg, Wrangell and Sitka.

Andy Kline is the marketing director for the company. He explained what the advantages are over the old approaches.

“Once you get to the runway, you have to be able to still see the runway at a certain limit,” Kline said. “But those limits have been lowered based on these new approaches and this new technology. And that’s one of the big reasons why we are able to get in Haines much more often now than we were even just a couple months ago.”

This means the planes can now fly with a lower cloud cover. Previously, if clouds around the Haines airport were lower than 1,700 feet, just low enough to touch the summit of Mount Riley, planes could not fly in. Now that limit is much less, at 940 feet.

Hake, the pilot, said this is a big improvement since the cloud cover around Haines is often around 1,000 feet.

“I think it will prove over time, to be a significant change in our reliability into the community,” Hake said.

Alaska Seaplanes has equipped most of its fleet with IFR. It costs money to train pilots and retrofit a plane with the proper equipment. And of course, producing the approaches was a significant investment. When asked if the company would pass on that cost to its customers, Kline said the improvements should pay for themselves.

“In a lot of ways, the less cancellations we have, the better our economic outlook is,” Kline said. “So we think that its’ going to be basically a hold harmless situation, as far as fare and things like that go, but people will be able to have a higher reliability, we have higher safety.”

Kline said he doesn’t have numbers yet on the reduction in cancellations, but he hears from pilots.

“Every single pilot that flies IFR has stories about ‘the plane in front had to turn around, because he wasn’t on these new approaches, we flew out, and we landed in Haines no problem.’”

There is no IFR approach to Skagway. Hake said it is unlikely to happen there.

“There just aren’t buffers in that tight little canyon, in the Taiya Inlet, that you need to fly safely in the clouds,” he said. “So I don’t know that there will be instrument approaches into Skagway for a very long time. Maybe when you are in an airplane that doesn’t have a pilot, they’ll do that … which could be sooner than you think.”

But he said he expects service to Skagway to also improve since planes can fly on instruments to Haines, then fly on visual the rest of the way if the northern Lynn Canal is clear.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recently announced some new rules meant to keep rabies out of the U.S.

Beginning Aug. 1, the rules will make it more complicated for dogs to come into the country. Among other things, the agency required all U.S. bound dogs be vaccinated, and come with a form signed by a vet within the last six months.

After receiving what it described as “valued feedback”, the agency amended the rules this week. It now exempts dogs traveling from low risk countries from some of the measures. Starting next week, customs will require a one page dog import form for dogs who have been “only in dog rabies -free or low risk countries in the 6 months before U.S. entry”. Dogs traveling from high risk countries will still be subject to the full extent of the new rules. Luckily for local dogs and their people,  Canada is considered a rabies free country. So is Mexico.

However, the new rules will still introduce some novel requirements. All dogs crossing into the U.S. will have to have a microchip ID that can be detected with a universal scanner.

The animal will also have to appear healthy, and be at least six months old when crossing into the U.S. These requirements will prevent people from traveling with their puppy, and could introduce uncertainty when taking a dog to a vet appointment  in Canada.

CaSandra Nash is the director of the Haines Animal Rescue Kennel. She says her organization can implant microchips. But, with about 25 chips left, she has a limited stock, and she says the chips are on backorder. Nash says the new rules could really complicate some situations.

“As far as emergency situations, needing to get through the border, most folks tend to go to Alpine of All Paws, in Whitehorse,” Nash said. “And if they are barred (re)entry, the only other option would be to go to Juneau, and most of the time, getting an appointment in Juneau or flying or ferrying is very restricted, so it would narrow down the options for folks in town drastically.”

A customs employee who was not allowed to speak for the agency said the requirement for the dog to appear healthy would likely apply only to signs of rabies, and not, for example, to injuries. Still the new rules, as written, would prevent people taking a puppy to Whitehorse for an emergency vet appointment from coming home with their companion until the dog reaches six months of age.

A representative for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Alaska said he is still waiting to hear from the CDC for details on how the rules will be applied.

Alaska’s congressional delegation is also concerned about the changes. U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola sent a letter to the CDC asking for more consideration for people transporting their dogs over the border, including mushers transporting sled dogs from the Lower 48.

“This rule does not work for Alaskans who travel with their pets,” Murkowski says in the release. “Many Alaskans go through Canada to get to the Lower 48 with their pups in tow, and this rule will add unnecessary expense and complication for travelers. We are working directly with the CDC to fix this.”

This story has been updated with comment from the Alaska congressional delegation. 

It’s the second summer since Alaska State Parks banned camping at the Portage Cove state recreation area in Haines. But on Friday night, a smattering of tents popped up there. A few dozen people showed their support for reopening the park to tent campers.

Mayor Tom Morphet organized the event, calling it a camp-in. He said he was acting in his unofficial capacity as a resident and supporter of state parks, not as mayor. According to Morphet, some 40 people attended, and they left around 1 a.m.

“It’s about consciousness-raising and keeping the pressure on,” Morphet said.

For years, Portage Cove was the only public place to set up a tent in town and the only one intended for visitors without cars. About a mile from Main Street, the cove is easier to access by foot or bicycle than the other state-run camping areas in the Haines Borough, like Chilkoot Lake and Chilkat State Park.

But at the end of 2022, the Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation turned the long-time campground into a site for day-use only. Park managers were looking for ways to cut costs, curb litter, and reduce bear attractants. Southeast Area parks superintendent Preston Kroes said at the time that the site generated little revenue from camping fees. Kroes could not be reached for comment about the camp-in.

Since then, some Haines residents and officials have called on the state to restore the campground or hand over management to a private contractor or the Haines Borough. Earlier this year Mayor Morphet wrote a letter to the Department of Natural Resources to see if the state would sell the site to the borough for one dollar.

In response, DNR Commissioner John Boyle said the state wouldn’t consider selling the park because its designation as a national Land and Water Conservation Fund site “greatly increases the time and complexity required for such a transaction.” The Land and Water Conservation Fund is a federal grant program for public outdoor recreation areas.

Jennifer Allen was one of the residents who attended Friday. Allen worked for the division of parks for over a decade as a natural resource technician. Her job involved maintenance at Portage Cove.

“I’m a strong supporter of camping in Haines,” Allen said. “I was very disappointed when the campground was closed to camping and turned into a day-use area.”

Allen said she wouldn’t expect running the campground at Portage Cove to cost much more than a day-use area because parks employees still have to do maintenance, like pumping the site’s outhouses, and are now missing out on camping fees.

Sue Libenson also showed up at the camp-in. She told KHNS that Portage Cove is particularly special because it was the first place in Haines that several long-time residents stayed when they first came to town.

“It’s just a great cornerstone of the Haines community and it just needs to come back into service,” Libenson said.

Bill Zack, a former Haines park ranger, spent his first night in town at Portage Cove — about 40 years ago. In 2022 he told the Chilkat Valley News, “It was one of those beautiful days. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”

In that interview, Zack predicted it would be tough for park managers to keep people from camping at the cove.