KHNS - Haines

Some cruise lines have misgivings about tying onto part of a Skagway dock because of the danger posed by a large rock high above it. One solution would still allow all scheduled ships to come to town this season, but it would mean shorter visits for some passengers.

Last summer, rockslides from the hill above the railroad dock in Skagway caused cruise lines to cancel some dockings there through the end of the season. Borough Manager Brad Ryan says the cruise companies seem mostly satisfied with new mitigation measures in place to catch falling rocks. But one large rock, known locally as ship rock, could fall — and that scenario has cruise lines reconsidering their docking schedules.

“We have dual monitors we are going to have on it so we are comfortable,” Ryan said. “But some of the cruise lines are not.”

The large rock looms over a short section of dock close to town. The remainder of the dock is long enough to accommodate two cruise ships, provided one of them is relatively small. But on some days, both scheduled ships are too large to fit together. Ryan says the cruise lines have decided that on those days, each ship will spend half a day in port.

“The cruise lines have indicated that there are certain days that they are going to hot berth,” Ryan said. “Which means one ship will come in early, be here for about six hours or so, it will pull off, and then the second ship will come in and  be here from about two o clock until the evening.”

This arrangement might be necessary about fifty times this season, but Ryan says the cruise lines are looking at ways to fit the longer ships into the shorter space.

“They are ordering more bollards, trying to slide the ships back,” Ryan said. “They are talking about coming in and flipping around so that the port side goes to the dock. There is a whole bunch of conversations trying to cut those hot berths down — nobody wants it.”

The borough administration says the slopes above the docks will be monitored closely. The municipality is hiring people spend the summer living in wall tents east of the slide area, where they’ll spend eight to ten hours a day watching for rockslides. They’ll be equipped with radios so they can alert traffic handlers below if they see or hear rocks starting to move.

“There is about twelve to twenty seconds from the time you notice a rockslide up there before it would reach the docks,” Ryan said. “And so that would be enough time for a bus to pass through, and obviously, if we started to hear one we’d stop the busses beforehand.”

Ryan says these measures are redundant, as a series of nets and barriers are being set up on the slope to slow down and catch any falling rock. He says those systems are on track to be ready by next Tuesday, when the first cruise ship of the season will dock.

What started as an online ripple became a wave of public comments at the last borough assembly meeting in Haines. At issue is the planned performance of the troupe Juneau Drag at the Southeast Alaska State Fair this summer.

Spencer Douthit chairs the fair board. After posting the lineup on the fair’s website, he says he 95 emails by Wednesday — with a slight majority in support of hosting Juneau Drag.

Douthit estimates he’s spent more than 25 hours dealing with the communications over the past week. He hadn’t expected such a reaction.

“Juneau Drag has done many public performances over the course of many years, and what they are going to present at the fair would be the same performance you would see in Skagway or Juneau at a public venue,” he said.

Douthit says some of the comments he received were worrying. One sender fantasized about a world where violence would prevent such shows from happening. Douthit says he forwarded that one to the police department.

The comments during the borough assembly meeting — where representatives of the local ministerial association voiced their opposition to the show — were not that inflammatory.

Resident Courtney Kelly said she objected to what she called the sexual nature of the show.

“For me, this is not an issue when it comes down to religion or any of those things,” she said. “The fair has an opportunity to put forth an event that everyone can enjoy. We are talking about something that is sexual whether we want to say it is or not. It doesn’t matter if someone else says it is not sexual, or someone else says ‘Well, that’s just how they express themselves.’”

Resident Ali Zeiger spoke in support of the show.

“One of the reasons I go to the fair is to see other parts of Southeast Alaska, parts that I can’t necessarily go to to see myself. And for that reason, I support bringing the drag show to town,” she said. “There is a lot to see at the fair — you don’t have to go to the shows you don’t like.”

Assemblymember Gabe Thomas suggested getting all of the children out of the fair before the performance.

“Everybody exits out, like they do the shows, comes back in. Let the parents let the families have their choice. It’s kind of a middle ground,” he said. “It’s not saying we don’t want it, we don’t support it — it’s just saying let the families have their choice.”

Many people opposed to bringing Juneau Drag to Haines said the show would not be family-friendly. But Gigi Monroe (James Hoagland), the drag mother of the troupe, says each performance is adapted to its audience.

“I would say drag is an art form like any other art form, and it can be family-friendly, or it can be adult only,” she said. “Just like music, like painting, just like dance performance, there is a range. So when we look at attending an art event, we look at who is going to be there. And we tailor the performance to that audience.”

Monroe says over the last eight years, the shows have been adapted to fit a variety of venues.

“We started out at some of the local bars, but then we started getting requests to perform outside of the bars. So we started doing one-off events, whether they were block parties or performances at the university. And we had a huge call to have family-friendly offerings so that parents and kids could enjoy the shows as well,” she said.

One thing leading to another, the troupe started doing an annual Drag Story Hour at the Juneau library.

“We show up at the library, and they have selected a pile of books that would be good options for us to read, and so each of the performers selects a book, and there is three or four of us, and we show up in drag, and we perform a short song that is kid-oriented,” she said. “And then we read the book. And then it’s three or four songs and three or four books, and then we just have a group dance party at the end, and it’s a lot of fun.”

Monroe says the Drag Story Hour is now the second most popular event at the Juneau library, just behind the day when the fire department gives kids tours of their trucks.

As for the controversy in Haines, the fair board is looking into rescheduling the Drag show for later in the evening, and there are plans to host a meeting to give community members a chance to voice their concerns.

A member of the ministerial association says they have reached out to the fair board to discuss the matter. Until then, they have chosen not to comment further.

You can find the full recording of our conversation with Gigi Monroe below:

The town of Skagway is preparing for tourists to rush in. With increased docking capacity at the port and a longer season, the municipality is expecting a record number of visitors this year.

The tourism industry in Skagway is on track to recover from its pandemic slump, with 1.2 million cruise passengers expected this year. That’s almost double last year’s numbers, and a 25% increase over the previous record year, 2019.

Renee Limoge-Reeve is vice president of community relations with the Cruise Lines International Association. She sees an increase in passenger numbers throughout the industry.

“We know from our research that intent to cruise is higher than pre-pandemic levels,” she said. “And that’s both among people who have cruised in the past, and people who have never cruised. Intent to cruise is through the roof, I think there is definitely a pent-up demand.”

All these passengers will visit multiple ports, making the boom regionwide. Ketchikan is also expecting a record-setting year.

“The Alaska market remains very very strong,” Limoge-Reeve said. “It’s a bucket-list destination, we know that. When you talk about cruising in the Caribbean, the ship is the destination. In Alaska, Alaska is the destination.”

Jaime Bricker is the town’s tourism director. She says she loves seeing the town come to life.

“It’s”I just had coffee with a friend this morning, and there were a ton of new people walking into the coffee shop, lots of hustle and bustle on Broadway,” she said. “Everybody is moving around and preparing for the season around here.”

The first cruise ship will arrive on April 18, and the last one is scheduled for Oct 25. This makes for a longer tourism season than in years past. Businesses will have to adapt to that timeline.

“I think there is a varying degree of acceptance in terms of opening earlier and staying open later, there are also other factors that each business has to consider,” Bricker said. “Like whether or not they have enough staff to cater to that early group of people or staff that will stay late into the season. And does it justify them staying open. I think it’s a decision that each business will have to make for themselves, and it will be interesting to see how that unfolds in Skagway.”

Bricker is optimistic staffing needs will be met.

“I have heard great things about the hiring for this year as opposed to the last several years in particular. It is refreshing to hear that people are ready to come back to Skagway and ready to work for the summer,” she said.

Changes on the waterfront also contribute to the increased number of visitors.

“There is a trend within the industry of having the larger ships that can accommodate more passengers, and we’ve got four berths that have been improved to accept some of those larger ships. Right now we are maximizing this infrastructure in the best way possible to maximize the number of people that can come to Skagway. And so all of those things have led to that growth,” she said.

Renee Limoge-Reeves, of the cruise lines association, sums up why so many visitors want to go to Skagway in the first place.

“It’s a gem in Alaska’s jewelry box,” she said. “We know that people go to Skagway, they see a beautiful little town that is extremely welcoming, we have wonderful excursion opportunities there, it’s a historical location, and we are thrilled to go.”

This year a part of the waterfront is returning under the municipality’s control, after a 55-year lease to a private company.  Associated docking fees from now on are paid to the municipality.

To mark the occasion, there will be a ceremony at Skagway’s shoreline park on April 19, the day after the first docking, at 5 pm.

A Haines store’s misfortune has become the Salvation Army’s gain, as an accidental surplus of milk at a local grocery store made its way to the nonprofit’s monthly food program.

Following an ordering error that left Olerud’s Market Center with thousands of extra half-pint cartons of milk, there was a scramble by the owner to move the excess at extremely discounted prices before it spoiled. The Haines Salvation Army was one organization to benefit. Salvation Army Captains Kevin and Serina Woods picked up many of the small cartons.

Kevin Woods says they were able to distribute them to the community.

“We went there and picked up I think 10, 10 or 12 cases of it — milk crates full of the little small school-sized ones — and gave it all away, part of it in town here and then part of it out of Mosquito Lake,” he said.

Woods says the timing of the discounted milk lined up perfectly with the Salvation Army’s monthly commodities giveaway. The free food, including the milk this month, includes a healthy variety for families that might be struggling to reach their dietary needs.

Kevin said the Woodses have been running the Salvation Army food program in Haines for nearly eight years, something that they take pride in.

“Oh, man, I wake up every day and look forward to what I do,” he said. “Because of my experience with the big food banks down in California, I knew what to do and I knew who to ask, and I knew what buttons to push and whose desk to jump up and down on.”

Families interested in the monthly commodity giveaway can fill out a simple form at the Salvation Army. For those needing help with food in between the commodity giveaways, there are small food boxes available at the Salvation Army during the week.

We have just passed the equinox. The snow is melting fast, and the land is waking up around us — and bird activity is increasing noticeably. KHNS spoke with some local bird enthusiasts to find out who is doing what.

Stacie Evans is the science director at the Takshanuk Watershed Council, and an avid birder. She heard a varied thrush a few days ago.

“One of those really obvious noises that we hear in the spring,” she said. “So they are around. And sometimes they’ll even be around earlier than now, you just don’t detect them because they are not making their mating call yet.”

Evans says varied thrushes spend the winter not very far south of here, so they come back early. She has also heard pacific wrens and dark-eyed juncos, who have returned to the upper Lynn Canal to breed.

She expects we will start seeing robins soon.

“They are starting to overwinter in more northern habitats than they used to, so they are pretty close and they might take advantage of a warm period to hop over here and take advantage of whatever food might be available. So it’s not totally unusual to see a robin in the winter, but it’s becoming more common,” Evans said.

Dan Egolf is a longtime local birder and a naturalist guide at the company he owns, Alaska Nature Tours. He also has stories of birds stretching their seasonal habits.

“One year we had a hummingbird, I think it was Anna’s hummingbird that stayed around way into the winter. The person that had the hummingbird feeder put a heat light by it so that it would kind of warm-up,” he said.

Egolf mentions some of his favorite summer residents.

“There’s pigeon guillemots that nest underneath Port Chilkoot dock,” he said. “They are an interesting little bird that has a lifestyle like a duck but doesn’t at all look like a duck — it has a little pigeon beak. They probably start nesting in May, and then later in the summer by around June or July we see the parents and a fledgling flying around underneath the dock.”

Birders flock together on Facebook. There is a group called Haines Birders where members share photos and observations. Evans says she recently received a video of a killdeer on the Chilkat beach. That is another early arrival.

Other birds are just passing through. There are reports of groups of snow buntings in Haines.

“They are interesting because the males tend to pass through really early to get to their northern breeding grounds because territory is fairly scarce, and they can tolerate quite a bit of snow on the ground,” Evans said.

She says soon the beaches will be crowded with migratory birds. The shores of the upper Lynn Canal are the last stop before those birds enter the interior.

“Migratory birds have flown a really long way to get here,” Evans said. “They have exhausted a lot of resources and energy and we are the terminus of the marine resources they have on their migratory route, so that when they are here, it is sort of their last chance to really fuel up before they have to fly all the way to the high Arctic.”

It is a delicate time for those birds. Evans says beachgoers can help them along their journey by giving them space.

“It’s really important that we try not to disturb them as much as possible, maybe do your best to try not to flush the birds that are trying to feed there,” she said.

Dan Egolf says the Lynn Canal is at the edge of the pacific flyway. Most birds remain on the outer coast, where they can be carried by steady winds. He says he has been there at the height of the migration, when 10,000 birds per hour passed overhead.

Egolf says some migrators sometimes linger in the Lynn Canal.

“Occasionally we’ll get a lot of shorebirds in town,” he said. “The mountain passes have late spring storms and it jams the birds down here. I recall a time when there was a bunch of Dunlins on the parade grounds, so we keep our eyes peeled.”

Some birds choose to not travel at all — notably eagles and ravens. Some are already starting to nest. And chickadees are well adapted to the cold despite their small size. To survive they have to eat constantly. Crossbills and grosbeaks also feast all winter.

“They feed on the high bush cranberries,” he said. “High bush cranberries will freeze right on the  brush and be there throughout the winter, and they fly down and eat what looks like little popsicles.”

Whatever their lifestyles, birds seem to bring joy to us.

Evans says this is the case for her.

“You know there has actually been some studies that have shown that bird song is linked to better mood or better mental health, so it’s not just the light coming back that gives us a little bit of a boost. Sometimes it’s just hearing those bird songs again,” she said.

More birds are expected to arrive in the coming weeks.

A regional conference for child care providers in Juneau offered a chance for attendees to meet with legislators and advocate for more child care assistance from the state.  Attendees also learned about two bills currently in the Legislature that address the lack of child care in Southeast Alaska.

The Southeast Alaska Association for the Education of Young Children has served the region for 40 years. It helps parents find child care, assists providers with training and advocates for improved child care access.

Blue Shibler is the executive director of the organization. Earlier this month, the nonprofit held its annual conference in Juneau. The theme this year was “Be well, care well.”

“We had a lot of workshops about active play and mindfulness, both for adults and the children they work with,” she said. “We had a really good workshop that was all about caregiver stress management tools. So it’s really giving people tools for mindful self-regulation while they are working with children.”

There’s a reason for all this talk of self-care. Workers in the field are overworked and underpaid. The starting pay for child care workers is around $12 per hour. Days are long, and staff turnover is high. Not enough people get into the field. And the problem is especially bad in Southeast.

“Southeast Alaska as a region is considered a child care desert, that means we are meeting less than half of the need,” Shibler said. “There are communities that have no child care, and there are communities that have not enough child care.”

Shibler led an advocacy workshop that offered attendees a chance to speak with legislators. Haines child care provider Kim Larson was part of that group. She is limited to providing care for eight children total, and only three of them can be under 30 months old. She says care for that age range is in high demand.

“We are in need for more providers zero to thirty months,” Larson said. “I have a waiting list for five infants right now, and you know I can only take three at a time.”

Larson told legislators she thinks helping parents pay for child care is part of the solution.

“One of the things we talked about was how they support college-age kids, you know with the Pell Grants and stuff, and then of course they support the K through twelve kids, through the school, and then now they are starting to support pre K,” she said. “But they don’t support zero to three, which is when the kid’s minds grow the most, their brains grow the most, is in those early years. And there is no funding for that.”

Alaska legislators are working on two bills that address the issue. Rep. Andi Story, D-Juneau, was among the lawmakers who met with the group.

“We are trying to expand the number of families who can afford child care by making the subsidies more inclusive,” she said.

House Bill 89 would extend assistance to families who make up to 300% of the poverty level.

“You would make an application and then you apply to child care assistance, which is under the Department of Health, and then they make a payment towards the center to help with the cost of care. They would make a payment on your behalf,” she said.

The payment would be a flat rate, adjusted to the cost of each daycare center.

The other bill — House Bill 46 — would incentivize investments in child care centers through tax deductions.

“If a business makes investment into a child care center, they can deduct up to three million dollars for an investment they might have made into a child care center in their area.

The House bill also includes a provision that would allow child care providers to organize for collective bargaining with the department of health. Story says the bills and increased revenue will help daycare centers function better.

“They can afford to keep the adequate staff on, keep their doors open, keep the experienced staff with your kids, not have so much transition,” she said. “Little ones like to see their same caregivers, they bond with them. You want the people taking care of your kids making a living wage.”

Shibler, the conference organizer, says child care fits into the bigger economic picture.

“Child care is an essential part of an economy, and without it, we are going to continue to see labor shortages in all industries,” she said. “I think everybody needs to come together and realize that as a public good, child care needs to be heavily subsidized, not only at the government level but from private businesses as well.”

The bills are currently moving through the House. Rep. Story says if child care is seen as a priority, they will pass.