Tourism

The historic Iditarod Trail took center stage during a Tuesday meeting held by the Army Corps of Engineers on the proposed Donlin Gold mine.

The route has been changed, but not far enough to suit some longtime mushers.

Proposed Donlin Gold mine runs afoul of the dog mushing community.

The Iditarod Trail is a National Historic Trail; there is no getting around that.

After Donlin Gold’s original proposal for a natural gas pipeline through Rainy Pass raised a storm of objections from some in the dog mushing community, the route of the proposed buried gas line from Cook Inlet now swings north over the Alaska Range through Jones Pass.

This route was used to avoid Rainy Pass, but it does not go far enough, according to Dan Seavey, one of the pioneer mushers who created the last Great Race and worked hard to get the trail its National Historic Trail designation.

He notes that the gas line would still follow the trail route from Skwentna to Finger Lake.

“I don’t see any mitigation. I see selecting an alternate to the historic trail,” Seavey said.

Many other mushers weren’t at the meeting, because there is a gag order on those who plan to run the race.

Donlin is a major sponsor of the Iditarod.

The Army Corps of Engineers is trying to find ways to mitigate the problem posed by the gas line and other parts of the huge mine project.

Sheila Newman, with the Alaska district of the Army Corps, thinks that with enough people at the table, a solution can be found. She hopes that the Seavey family will continue to be involved.

“It was good he was here to talk about what his concerns are and continue the conversation about, you know, what, if anything, can be done to help address some of them,” she said.

Donlin points to community archeological projects like the one recently conducted at Crooked Creek, the nearest village to the mine site, as a method to help mitigate problems.

But as far as moving the pipeline right-of-way off the trail route, Enric Fernadez, senior environmental coordinator for Donlin Gold, says the reason it runs along the Iditarod Trail to the Alaska Rage is because of the geography of the region.

“It offers the best geo-technical conditions to place a pipeline, which is coincidentally the reason why the Iditarod Trail is there,” Fernadez said.

There are those who say the company needs to build connections between its proposed gas line and nearby villages.

David Gililak Sr. from Akiak says he doesn’t see any reason to build it if it does not improve the infrastructure to the point that affordable natural gas will be available to local residents.

“They shouldn’t actually build a pipeline if it’s not going to benefit Calista region, because we’re the most economically, electrically, socially depressed region in the state,” he said.

Calista Corporation owns the subsurface rights for the proposed mine site.

June McAtee, vice president of Lands and Shareholder Services for Calista, said the Donlin Gold project is not a social service, but it would provide an economic boost to the region, and Donlin’s proposed pipeline would bring affordable natural gas that much closer to the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta.

“The prices of fuel and power and everything else in the region are very high, and there’s no way they’re ever going to come down unless you build something. That’s where we’re coming from, and we think this project has the potential to help us get things built in the region.”

But even if all these issues are resolved, some village residents worry that the pipeline will open remote areas to outside hunters.

Gililak said the temporary road used to build the gas line won’t stay temporary, even if the company tries to close it, and that would have consequences for Akiak.

“They will be coming in from all over the world. It is a whole lot cheaper to drive than to fly,” Gililak said. “I mean we’ll have a lot of traffic in that area, eventually to the point where the state will have to call it a road.”

The Army Corps of Engineers plans to hold another meeting on the issue in Bethel by the end of the month or early November.

The Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly voted Monday to approve about $230,000 of the borough’s cruise passenger head tax funds to help pay for City of Ketchikan tourism-related projects.

The Assembly also approved $25,000 to help fund publication of the “Our Town” magazine; and $40,000 from the borough’s economic development fund to pay for legal expenses.

That last item is related to the borough’s challenge of the state’s assessment of Vigor Alaska shipyard’s property value.

The borough claims the state-owned shipyard is exempt from taxes, and shouldn’t be included in the borough’s overall property value determination. By including it, the borough argues, the state has falsely inflated the borough’s required local contribution to the Ketchikan School District.

A pretrial hearing on the matter is set for mid-December.

The grant to the city initially was earmarked for the city-owned museum’s bathroom renovation. But that caused some concern among Assembly members.

Assembly Member Glen Thompson says the state has questioned some of the borough’s use of its share of state Commercial Vessel Passenger funds – commonly called CPV funds.

He proposed amending that to a more general grant for projects that fit CPV guidelines.

Those guidelines stipulate that the funds be used on projects that directly benefit cruise passengers.

“What this allows us to do is give them the money they need to do the improvements, but it doesn’t tie it to anything specific other than CPV-related; and it puts the onus on the city to defend their expenditures,” he said. “They could certainly spend it on something else that’s CPV-related inside city limits and use other funds for the museum or do other substitution spending, but it takes the earmark off of it as opposed to the museum.”

Assembly Member John Harrington noted another benefit from the amendment.

“The other thing this does is, it avoids the city having to spend any money on a valuation to make sure that’s how much the bathrooms cost,” he said. “It’s an outright grant for the total amount and I’m happy with that. It saves them money and keeps it clean.”

The amendment passed 6-1 with Assembly Member Stephen Bradford voting no.

He noted that taking away the earmark means there’s no possibility of a refund to the borough if the bathrooms end up costing less.

The main motion passed unanimously.

The bathroom portion of the museum renovation is estimated at about $475,000.

Also Monday, Bradford noted that Ketchikan was voted “Community of the Year” at the recent Southeast Conference annual meeting in Wrangell.

He added that Southeast Conference’s 2017 fall meeting will be in Ketchikan.

ANCHORAGE — A hotel outside the entrance to Denali National Park is expanding with an adjacent facility.

Denali Hotel Properties says it has broken ground on a 64-room addition to Denali Bluffs Hotel to be called RiverView at the Bluffs.

RiverView at the Bluffs will feature four cedar-sided buildings fabricated by International Homes of Cedar, Inc. of Seattle. Rooms will have a veranda looking over the Nenana River.

The property’s parent company is Old Harbor Native Corp.

Company vice president of tourism Joe Merrill says room construction will be a boom to the Healy economy over the winter.

He says the hotel staff will expand by 10 positions.

A grand opening is planned for June.

As the air gets colder and the days shorter, the Skagway tourism season is coming to a close.

Overall, tourism staff said this summer was a success.

The last cruise ship of the season has come and gone and shop owners around Skagway are preparing for winter, cleaning up and closing their doors.

The streets that were recently busy with visitors are quieting down.

“Overall I think our 2016 season went remarkably well,” said Cody Jennings, Skagway’s tourism director. “From the feedback that I’ve had from local business owners and tour operators, everybody is really pleased with the season.”

Skagway saw the biggest ship it’s ever seen this summer.

The Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas made weekly visits to town, and holds just over 4,000 passengers at capacity.

Jennings says the new addition was a success.

“It went really great,” Jennings said. “I think it was a great addition to the mix of ships that we get here, everybody seemed to enjoy it.”

The summer was not without its challenges.

One day in September two ships couldn’t dock because of high winds. The Crown Princess holds just more than 3,000 passengers, the Nieuw Amsterdam about 2,000.

“And all-in-all while that was unfortunate I think all-in-all that was really the only sort of hiccup that we had during the season,” Jennings said.

There also was some concern going into the season about the exchange rate for Canadian tourists.

The slumping Canadian dollar is about $0.76 against the stronger U.S. currency.

But Jennings says it doesn’t seem to have been a problem.

“From the feedback that I’ve received for example from hoteliers and the restaurants and stuff, obviously being on the border we get a fair amount of travelers just from our Canadian neighbors,” Jennings said. “But really we didn’t see much of an impact. Even in the RV parks. My understanding is the long weekends that they came down the continued to do so despite the dollar difference.”

Jennings said Skagway continues to have a lot to offer visitors.

“They come into this community and they see the effort that’s made in maintaining our downtown historic district,” Jennings said. “It’s incredibly charming and one of the things that we see often in our comment cards here is that the staff and community members are incredibly friendly. So I think that leaves an impression on our visitors and definitely one we want to leave.”

She won’t have hard statistics on tourism dollars and numbers of visitors until later this year.

The town anticipated 800,000 cruise ship visitors and 125,000 non-cruise ship travelers.

With the last cruise ship gone, Jennings is confident it was a strong season.

ANCHORAGE — A growing consumer demand for Alaska cruises has put the state back in the million-passenger club as it rebounds after a leaner stretch. And next year is expected to be even better with larger capacity ships added to the Far North lineup.

The millionth passenger was counted as the Alaska cruise industry’s season was nearing its end. Estimates for total passengers are expected to be slightly higher.

John Binkley, president of Cruise Lines International Association Alaska, says the 2017 season is expected to bring up to 45,000 additional passengers from this year’s tally. That would make it a record year, beating the record set in 2008.

Before this year, Alaska’s last million-passenger season was in 2009.

The increasing demand is prompting Holland America Line to replace two smaller vessels with larger capacity ships for next year.

Gale-force winds and high seas on the outer coast are keeping about 4,500 cruise ship travelers from seeing Sitka this week.

Three Holland America Line ships – the Westerdam, the Amsterdam and the Maasdam – have canceled their port calls.

Sherry Aitken is director of tourism for Visit Sitka, which is part of the Greater Sitka Chamber of Commerce.

“Largely, it’s because they have to go on the outside of Baranof Island. They cannot take the path of the ferries, through the interisland areas. And so, they’re exposed to any type of heavy seas and right now it’s tremendously heavy seas,” she said.

The ships were scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week.

Two ships are still scheduled to call in Sitka before the end of this month. The Norwegian Jewel is slated to stop on Saturday and the Westerdam next Wednesday.

Aitken hopes the weather will allow them to sail and bring passengers to Sitka shops and tours.

“September is a time when you’ve probably made your costs for the season and you’re looking at expanding your margin of profitably,” she said.

Weather cancellations aren’t all that unusual this time of year in Sitka. Storms kept the 380-passenger Silver Shadow from calling on Sept. 10. Three years ago, two of the larger ships also skipped Sitka at the end of the season.

“I think it’s always disappointing that we don’t have the potential guests here. And it’s great when we can finish up September strong. But for Sitka, it is really weather dependent,” she said.

Alaska is seeing just over 1 million cruise ship passengers this season. But only 12 percent of them visit Sitka. Tourism officials expect that number to climb next year when Holland America and Celebrity have planned additional calls in Sitka.