KHNS - Haines

A Haines grocery store has more milk than it knows what to do with. An ordering error led to the store receiving many times its usual supply.

Sarah Swinton owns Olerud’s grocery store on Main street. This week, there was a glitch in her milk order.

“When I ordered from Dairy Gold, it was in the individual units, so I proceeded to order that way,” she said. “But UNFI wanted it in the cases. So, long story short, normally I get in a pallet of milk, and I got eight pallets of milk.”

That comes out to over 700 gallons of milk, including ten thousand eight-ounce containers.

Swinton says the supplier will not help her deal with the error.

“They were apologetic,” she said. “Apologetic doesn’t pay for my freight or my cost of goods.”

She now has to sell the milk as fast as she can, at a loss.

“I don’t think I want to freeze milk in my store and then try to sell it to my customers after the expiration date, so I’m trying my best to move what I can out of the store,” she said.

Swinton says she thought of making milkshakes but doesn’t have enough staff. She says now would be a good time for customers to make pudding.

“Just stop on by Olerud’s and please grab a gallon of milk,” she said. “It’s a pretty good markdown.”

The milk’s expiration date is March 27.

A Haines falconer has acquired and trained the bird of his dreams – a gyrfalcon. The large falcons have traditionally been flown by royalty, but recent breeding programs have made them more accessible to the common falconer.

Mario Benassi has had a lifelong passion for birds of prey.

“I remember the very first time I thought of being a falconer,” Benassi said. “I saw a guy — I never saw the guy, but I saw his hawk tied on a perch in the backyard. I would go sneak and look, and I wasn’t even supposed to go down the alley. I was 4 years old.”

From that moment, Benassi became obsessed. As soon as he could read, he ordered books from the library about falconry.  At age 11 he started an apprenticeship with a master falconer.

“By the time I was 13 I got my first bird, and I got a redtail hawk. And, oh my God, what an amazing adventure that was, and how much fun I had with that bird,” Benassi said. “I began to catch game with it right away. Then it was really hard because I was in school, and it would be a beautiful day in the fall, and I’d be looking out the window thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what I am I doing in this school. I have a hawk waiting at home for me.’”

At other times, the bird benefited Benassi’s studies.

“I always managed to get an A on any science project because I would bring my hawk to school and give a talk about it,” he said.

As an adult, Benassi continues to bring birds into schools. He leads a program at the Haines school called Chilkat Forest Investigators, where he teaches a few students about falconry and the natural world.

This year he visits with a special bird named Mirum. She’s a gyrfalcon. Gyrfalcons breed in the Arctic. They are the largest falcons and can weigh close to three pounds, with a wingspan of around 4 feet. Benassi says that in medieval Europe, only kings were allowed to hunt with them.

Benassi consulted with his students to name her. They chose Mirum, Queen of Hearts. The hearts refer to the patterns her feathers form on her chest. Mirum means surprise in Latin. This refers to the surprise Benassi had at being able to care for such a unique bird. Mirum had been in captivity for a few years when she came to him.

“The first year that she was trapped, she was successful as a trained falconry bird,” Benassi said. “And then the guy for some reason his circumstances didn’t allow him to keep her. And he transferred her to a captive breeding program. And she was in the captive breeding program for almost four years. She didn’t like any of the males that were presented to her.”

Because she wasn’t contributing to the breeding program, her owners sought someone else to care for her. When Benassi heard this, he went to Anchorage to pick her up. He and Mirum drove back together earlier this winter. Mirum wore a hood during the trip. Benassi says it is important to cover a falcon’s eyes during transport — otherwise, they might see something that startles them and could injure themselves in the car.

Mirum now has a new house, called a mews. It’s about the size of a small wood shed, with bars on the windows and a perch. It has to be small enough to prevent her from picking up speed when flying so she doesn’t injure herself. Benassi is now training her to fly and hunt with him.

He goes out with her and lets her fly away. But she is tied to a leash. The leash is light and won’t allow her to fly more than 300 feet away from him.

Benassi has to learn to know his birds before he can hunt with them. He starts by weighing them multiple times.

“A bird, this is how their life is, they eat until they are not hungry anymore, and then they rest and preen and do whatever they are going to do while they are satiated,” he said. “And then when they are hungry again, their weight falls into the hunting weight. And so as a falconer, this is what you are looking for, is you are looking for that hunting weight. Then it wants to go out and catch game. Obviously, if the hawk is not in that weight class, then when you release it, it may just as well go out and take a bath and sit and sun itself as hunt.”

The hunt is teamwork for human and bird.

“You take the bird to the hunting ground, and so with a goshawk I release it, and then I walk for miles and miles and miles through the woods,” Benassi said. “And then the hawk just stays in the trees above my head. Any game that I flush, the hawk will give chase, it usually occurs within a couple hundred yards of me, and often I actually get to see the hawk make the catch. The whole pursuit occurs right in front of your face. And that’s really why you practice falconry, is because you have this alliance with the bird, and then you also have to have a ringside seat at this most athletic display of amazing flying ability. A goshawk threading itself through the thickest bushes and trees at 80 miles an hour is just something to witness.”

Benassi says hunting with a falcon is completely different.

“Falcons do not like the forest, and they don’t venture out into the trees — it’s just not their domain,” he said. “And so you need open ground to fly a falcon. Of course, a falcon is going to go up a couple thousand feet if it’s trained well, and wait. And then you push, and hopefully flush a duck or a goose. The falcon will come down in a spiraling stoop and hit the goose or duck and break its back or its wing, and then it falls to the ground and the falcon comes and lands on it.”

Benassi hopes to hunt with Mirum for a few years and then release her. He says maybe she will return to Nome, where she was born, and find a mate to her liking.

A Sunday fire in downtown Skagway destroyed a large building that housed the Southeast Alaska community’s state court and multiple businesses.

The fire took all day and night to extinguish.

According to a Skagway Fire Department statement, a call just before 10 a.m. Sunday reported a “big fire, black smoke and flames” at the Packer Building near 9th Avenue between State Street and Broadway. About half the building was engulfed in flames by the time responders arrived at the scene.

The crews on site connected their trucks to hydrants, doused the fire and prevented its spread to adjacent residences. Due to a strong north wind, the crews were unable to stage on the south side of the building. Homes there were evacuated.

Borough Manager Brad Ryan, who was at the scene, said fighting the fire was a labor-intensive task.

“We had three trucks out there, three engines; we had pretty much all of our paid firefighter personnel out there, as well as several volunteer firefighters,” Ryan said. “There was probably maybe eight to 10 in actual turnout gear firefighters, then there were two police officers that showed up. Several public works employees helped manage lines, water, excavator to take the building down, and then just citizen volunteers helping keep people healthy, and pull hoses when they were out of the scene.”

The fire was mostly extinguished by late Sunday afternoon, except for some hotspots that firefighters continued to work on. The crews used heavy equipment to take down the remnants of the structure. Ryan said crews installed sprinklers to control the smoldering rubble, then worked in shifts throughout the night monitoring the scene.

In addition to the state court space the building housed a local business incubator, the Skagway Development Corp. A construction company, Hanson General Contracting, and a longtime guiding operation, Packer Expedition, were also based there.

Emily Wright, the area court administrator, said the court system has already reorganized to keep functioning.

“We’ve routed everything over to Haines, our Haines clerk of court will be handling all filings,” Wright said. “We were able to switch over the phone numbers; they can still call Skagway, it will route right over to Haines. They can do everything electronically.”

Wright said no documents have been lost.

“The really nice thing is we had switched over to an e-filing system, so all of our files are electronic and they were backed up on Saturday night,” she said. “So that’s a good thing. So at this point, other than people not having a building to go to, there is no disruption in services.”

Tim Bourcy owned Packer Expedition, the guiding company that gave the building its local name. He was having breakfast with friends when he learned the business he has run for 30 years was going up in flames. He lost all the gear he needed to run his tours.

“There is a lot of material there,” Bourcy said. “It’s backpacking equipment, tents, sleeping bags, there’s a full commercial kitchen, there is rain gear, med kits; I mean, it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gear. No, this is a business-ending endeavor.”

Bourcy said he will not rebuild the business.

“You know what, I could, but I’m 60 and I’m not doing it again,” he said.

He said he is uplifted by the support he got.

“I mean come on, Skagway’s community is amazing,” he said. “All the firefighters, everyone that worked on that is amazing so yeah, it’s all good.”

Orion Hanson, the owner of Hanson General Contracting, also lost much of his business.

“I got about 30 calls in about two minutes yesterday morning,” he said.

Hanson rented shop space in the building.

“That area of that building was built by the Army,” he said. “To my knowledge it’s always been a shop of some sort, and many many carpenters and mechanics operated out of there since World War II.”

He said enough of his tools were staged at various worksites around town that he is able to continue operating. On Monday he gathered his crew.

“We met like we normally do on a Monday, and we stepped beyond the fire protection zone and looked at it, and I looked at my team and said, ‘Well guys, let’s go to work. Be safe,’” he said. “In terms of having a company with skilled people and work to do, we’ve got work to do. So I’ll figure out how to rebuild and go on. But I’m still trying to figure out just what was lost really.”

Skagway Fire Chief Emily Rauscher said in the department’s statement that the state fire marshal’s office will inspect the site Tuesday to determine the cause of fire.

She also said the community support was truly exceptional. Residents showed up and provided food and drink during the fire, and got together to clean up after the fire was put out.

The tanner crab fishery begins on Sunday in Southeast Alaska. But crabbers are facing low prices, and bitter crab disease is expected to reduce the sellable catch.

Typically 60-80 boats participate throughout Southeast.

This year the prices are expected to be low compared to recent years. An Anchorage Daily News article lists the end of pandemic stimulus money as a possible factor in reducing consumer demand. But there’s a geopolitical component to this story, according to Haines tender Brent Crowe.

“The biggest thing that’s happening right now is that the collapse of the snow crab fishery in the Bering sea has disrupted the supply chain,” he said. “Markets that are used to having crab available are looking elsewhere. And the Japanese market has started sourcing crab from Russia, through China to circumvent the embargo on Russian seafood.”

The embargo was put in place after Russia invaded Ukraine. Crowe says because Russians seafood processors have difficulty finding buyers, they are cutting their prices. Crowe says the availability of that cheap Russian seafood has impacted the tanner crab market.

“Last year the price was $8,” he said. “Right now it’s looking to settling in the $3 range, the initial offering was $2.50.”

The price drop led to a two-week strike in Kodiak. Crowe says there is no indication a similar action will take place in Southeast.

“Southeast fishermen generally don’t organize like that,” he said. “They either just participate or they don’t based on whether they see it as profitable. Central gulf fishermen seem to be more organized in that kind of a way.”

Some crabbers could see their income further reduced by bitter crab disease. The disease causes the flesh to taste like aspirin. There are some visual cues to the condition, and processors don’t buy those crabs.

The amount of affected crab varies with location, but in the Lynn Canal it can be as high as 80%. That means crabbers get money for only one in every five crab they catch.

The sick crabs are cooked to kill the disease, and brought to the landfill to avoid its spread. Crabs have been known to catch the disease after feeding on dead infected crabs. The disease is caused by a single-celled plankton that uses the crab as part of its reproductive cycle.

Adam Messmer is a shellfish biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

“It gets into the crab’s blood and starts replicating within the crab,” Messmer said. “It slows the crab down, and you see that in fish tickets too, that the first couple of landings that a fisherman will have will have fairly low amount of bitter crab. And then as the season progresses, the percent of bitter crab goes up. And the thought is that those crabs are slower since they are sick, to crawl into the pot.”

Messmer has studied some sick crabs in his lab. The single cell organisms that cause bitter crab are called dinoflagellates. Messmer says they use the crab as a host before releasing their spores.

“We’ve seen them sporulate in the lab, and the crab will kind of sit up on its legs, and start shaking and this red cloud comes out of its mouth, almost out of a science fiction movie. And those are the spores of the young dinoflagellate that are sent out into the water column,” he said. “And, at least the one in the lab, as soon as it was done doing that, it died instantly.”

Bitter crab is not harmful to humans. The only effect is a bad taste in the mouth. Messmer says scientists have not been able to determine what causes bitter crab numbers to rise and fall.

“I think it’s just something we are going to have to live with in this area. For a long time it’s stayed really steady,” he said.

On Sunday at noon, the Department of Fish and Game will announce the duration of the opener. Crabbers can expect a minimum of five days in the most productive and best studied areas, with another five days to fish the less desirable areas.

The Haines Borough Assembly voted on Tuesday night to overturn a decision by the planning commission. The commission had issued a permit to Chilkat River Adventure for a heliport at its property 24 miles up the Haines Highway. The company intended to use the location as a staging area for its heliskiing tours.

The vote means there will be no helicopters landing there.

Five different appeals challenged the permit, mostly focusing on noise.

Jones P Hotch, Jr., Vice President of the Chilkat Indian Village, spoke of the need to protect traditional life in the valley and protect the animals that live there.

“We have been a tribal government recognized by western culture since 1934, but we have had tribal sovereignty since time immemorial,” he said. “We believe there are already more than enough helicopters in our valley. And we hope the Haines borough understands that the heliport is not compatible with surrounding land uses, including our traditional practices.”

Jessica Kayser-Forester, a consultant to the Chilkat Indian Village, cited studies of noise impact.

“The ambient noise level of this neighborhood was measured at 21 decibels. At the helipad itself the measurements exceeded 104 decibels,” she said. “Seventy is what the EPA and World Health Organization consider safe for human hearing. Forty-five decibels is loud enough to wake up a person within a one mile radius. One hundred four decibels will have a large impact on nearby residents. You cannot say that this is not undue noise. And will impact the village of Klukwan enough to wake residents during their sleep.”

Kayser-Forester cited further studies showing some animals are exponentially more sensitive to noise than humans.

And resident Riley Hall painted a picture of the acoustic properties of the area.

“The only things that mitigate helicopter noise are distance and acoustic barriers,” Hall said. “This specific location has none of those. It’s on flat ground with a mountain backdrop. And my joke about that mountain backdrop is it’s kind of a sound amplifier. If a duck farts in Klukwan I’m going to hear it at my property.”

Chilkat River Adventure owner Sean Gaffney took exception to the noise studies, claiming sound at the study area travels differently than at the River Adventure property.

Following a half hour of discussion about noise impacts, the assembly voted 5-1 that a heliport would create undue noise in the neighborhood. Assembly member Jerry Lapp cast the dissenting vote, citing existing industrial uses in the area.

“If you look at it on parcel viewer, this area is about half industrial,” he said. “You ‘ve got a rock crusher there, you’ve got a rock washer there, and you got another pit just down the road right here on the highway.”

Mayor Doug Olerud said the Planning Commission’s November decision emphasized the need to establish clear communication lines between the Chilkat Indian Village and the Haines Borough.

“To the people of the Chilkat Indian Village, I know during this I’d said certain things about having meetings,” he said. “And unfortunately as I looked through code, those meetings were not allowed for me to do. But as we moved forward with this, I would like to continue on working with you and find a way that we can have a government-to-government relationship that we can codify in some manner so as we go forward with things in the future, there is a mechanism for us to rely on.”

Permit applicant Sean Gaffney, whose company already has other helipads operating in the valley, did not respond to a request for comment.

The federal government has designated the Chilkoot Trail as a national historic trail. The designation, which was included in the federal omnibus spending bill, was announced Jan. 7 in a press release.

“It’s a great honor to be recognized as the Chilkoot National Historic Trail,” said Angela Wetz, superintendent of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. “To get people learning about the history of this area, of the park and the stories of the people that came here and the people that have been here for millennia.”

The Chilkoot Trail is the 20th in the nation to get the designation and, at 16 miles, the shortest. The designation could lead to some funding opportunities.

“There is some trail system funding that’s out there, not necessarily something we would get right away,” Wetz said. “But we would be able to compete for those funds in the Park Service.”

Right now the trail is closed due to flood damage from an October storm. Wetz says the designation will not affect the pace of repair.

“We are aiming towards an Aug. 1 opening, but we still have a lot of logistical  issues with supply chains and everything else to get us there,” she said.

To celebrate the designation, the park intends to hold a ceremony when the trail reopens.