Tourism

ANCHORAGE — The only road into Alaska’s Denali National Park is expected to completely reopen Tuesday if the weather cooperates and steep terrain nearby remains stable.

A mudslide July 31 closed the road a mile beyond the Eielson Visitor Center, where most tour buses turn around to return to the park entrance.

The slide put an estimated 8,000 cubic yards of material on a 100-foot section of the road and covered it about 10 feet deep.

Park officials in an announcement say steep terrain and near-record rain in July that saturated fine-grain, ancient volcanic ash contributed to the slide.

Park geologist Denny Capps says slides may become more common as permafrost melts and weather events become more intense.

Buses have been allowed past the slide area twice daily.

Juneau’s 6-ton, 25-foot-tall whale statue has arrived.

At least, the body has.

The life-size, bronze humpback whale sculpture came in by ferry early Monday morning. Sculptor R.T. “Skip” Wallen and about 20 people weathered a light drizzle to welcome the whale at Auke Bay.

“The whale, the humpback whale in particular, and especially the humpback whale breaching, has to be one of the grand spectacles of nature, comparable to the migration of wildebeests in the Serengeti,” Wallen said. “So we can celebrate this because it is such a commonly observed local phenomenon.”

After passengers disembarked, a dual-wheeled truck hauled the flatbed trailer with the whale out of the ferry. As the whale was pulled from the ferry, spectators cooed with oohs and aahs.

The truck stopped for a brief moment as Wallen, members of The Whale Project, and others posed for photos before the truck headed inbound to its future home near Douglas Bridge, where it will become the centerpiece for a planned infinity pool at a waterfront park the city will build.

Kathy Kolkhorst Ruddy, former chair of The Whale Project, credited Wallen with the artistic vision to capture a magnificent animal, but also the pride of the state’s capital city.

“This sculpture of a life-sized breaching humpback whale will focus all this international energy on Juneau,” Ruddy said. “We’re ready for it, too. We have a world class waterfront, we have new docks for the cruise ships and we have a million people come in, so we need to give them something amazing to see.”

The Whale Project raised about $2.8 million for the project.

One of the early ideas was to design five humpback whale heads in bubble net feeding formation. That’s the practice when a group of whales use a shrinking circle bubbles to corral fish together so they’re easier feed on, Wallen said. That project was too expensive to realize.

Wallen and a few others from the welcoming party explored the site of the future park.

“You can see the openings here, the holes,” Wallen said, pointing to the several places in the bronze shell. “That’s when the fountain is working the water will come out.”

Inside the whale body, multiple welds can be seen; the main body was a series of bronze castings fitted together like a very large puzzle piece.

A ladder stretches up toward the head to allow access to future waterworks. From the belly looking upward, the top of the sculpture gets very dark on the inside. “Creepy,” someone said.

The whale has large bronze eyes and a multitude of barnacles that stretch along the head.

Former Mayor Bill Overstreet first had the idea for a large whale sculpture while visiting the National Museum of Nature and Science, which had a life-size sculpture of a blue whale installed at its entrance, according to Bruce Botelho, president of The Whale Project. Overstreet died in 2013.

Overstreet visited the museum during his tenure as Alaska’s trade representative with Japan in the 1980s, according to The Whale Project’s website.

His widow Jean Overstreet and son Bill Overstreet Jr. attended the whale arrival. Bill Jr. and his wife Carol traveled from their home in Oregon Hills, California, for the informal event.

The Whale Project’s fundraising efforts began in September 2007 and wrapped about a year ago, according to the Laraine Derr, treasurer for The Whale Project. She said the whale symbolizes the people of Alaska, both the people who are born here and the people who come to live in the state.

“For me it is a gift to the state of Alaska from the people of Alaska in honor of what Alaska has done for us,” she said. “There are few of us that were born here. … Most of us came from somewhere else and we are who we are and what we are today because of the state of Alaska. I think the whale signifies that spirit of Alaska.”

The whale statue is part of the Overstreet legacy, but it’s also been a sore subject for fiscal conservatives and the cruise ship industry.

Cruise ship passenger fees are covering the cost of a $10 million waterfront park and reflecting pool where the whale sculpture will be installed. The industry sued the city in April and cited the whale statue park as an example of misuse of the passenger fees.

Under federal law, cruise ship head tax money must be spent to benefit ships and their passengers.

The whale isn’t quite whole yet.

“In order for it to come to its full realization the fins have to be on,” Wallen said. “It looks very truncated this way.”

The fins are expected to arrive Tuesday. A welder from the foundry is expected to travel Aug. 17 to Juneau to weld the flippers into place.

An informal unveiling is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 3, with a formal dedication sometime next year.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated and expanded. 

Skagway Assemblyman Dan Henry was sentenced this week to just over a year in federal prison.

Henry was convicted of failing to file his income tax returns over a four-year period. How Henry’s prison sentence will impact his service on the borough assembly remains to be seen.

Henry has served in Skagway government for about 20 years.

His current three-year term doesn’t end until 2017. However, he’s been ordered to report to a federal prison facility by Nov. 1 of this year.

That’s about a month after municipal elections, in which two other assembly seats are up for grabs.

Mayor Mark Schaefer briefly mentioned the predicament at an assembly meeting Thursday.

“I think we’re all aware of Assemblyman Henry’s personal situation,” he said. “I’m discussing with the attorney on how we’re going to proceed in the matter.”

Requests for comment from Schaefer and Henry were not returned.

The question of whether Henry’s prison sentence disqualifies him from service on the assembly is up in the air.

Skagway Borough Code states an assembly seat shall be declared vacant if a member is physically absent from the municipality for 90 consecutive days, with a caveat: the other assembly members have the power to excuse that member, allowing them to continue service.

If Henry were to resign his seat or be excused, another question remains.

Would the sitting assembly members appoint someone to the empty seat, or would voters get to decide in the October election?

Orion Hanson was one of a few residents who spoke at the Thursday meeting asking for Henry’s assembly seat to join the other two on the ballot.

“If there is to be a third vacancy on the assembly, I think it would be democratic to have that opportunity for the voters to vote on that in this upcoming election,” Hanson said.

The two seats up for election this term are occupied by Spencer Morgan and Tim Cochran. As of Friday afternoon, no one had declared candidacy.

Denali National Park’s long studied and once popularly viewed East Fork wolf pack is likely no longer. Several members of the park entrance area wolf group have been killed on state land, and the famed pack’s status is unknown.

Denali’s East Fork wolf pack declined to just one known female and two pups earlier this summer.

The pack’s last other member, a radio-collared male, was spotted dead at a hunting camp on state land off the Stampede Trail in May.

Park Service wildlife biologist Bridget Borg said it’s impossible to know for sure if the mother wolf and her pups survived after her mate’s death, but there’s been no recent sign of the animals and their den appears empty.

”We investigated a den site after,” Borg said. “There was clear evidence it was not being used as evidenced by vegetation that was growing around the entrance to the den site.”

The apparent demise of the East Fork pack comes amidst a broader steep decline of Park-based wolves to about 50 animals. The low point is attributed to more than human harvest outside the park, but it appears to be a significant mortality factor for entrance area wolves. Borg points to the human caused deaths of three of four East Fork Pack radio-collared animals in the last year.

”If we just look at the collared wolf mortalities for this past 75 percent died as a result of snaring or being shot,” Borg said. “So this is really high compared to our previously published rate of less than 20 percent.”

“They’re allowing a handful of people to gun them down or trap them,” said Sean McGuire, who is with the small Fairbanks based advocacy group Alaskans for Wildlife. “We feel it’s a scandal.”

The loss of Denali’s East Fork Pack takes with it valuable opportunity for Park entrance area wolf viewing, as well as a lot of history, he said.

“This wolf pack has been probably the most viewed wolf pack in world history. It’s been studied continuously for 70 years. This was the pack that Adolph Murie originally wrote the classic ‘Wolves of Mt. McKinley.’”

Borg agreed it’s unfortunate to lose track of the long tenured and well followed East Fork group.

“But we should note that the potential loss of this pack doesn’t really mean the loss of the lineage of these wolves,” Borg said. “For example, the Riley Creek pack was actually founded by an East Fork female. In the summer one of her pups has dispersed and apparently found a mate and seems to be seeking out a territory along the park road corridor between Toklat and Wonder Lake.”

State wildlife officials point to robust wolf populations outside Denali.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game Regional Supervisor Darren Brunning said the agency has no confirmation of the May East Fork wolf kill, as its radio collar has not been turned in. Brunning said with no other conclusive information about the pack’s status, there’s no reason for action.

“Hunting and trapping along the Northeast boundary of the National Park and the Stampede trail area is the purview of the Alaska Board of Game,” Brunning said. “The Department of Fish and Game would take no action unless directed by the Board of Game.”

The Game Board agreed earlier this year to shorten the spring wolf hunt along Denali’s northeast edge, and will consider proposals to re-instate a former no wolf kill area there at a spring 2017 meeting. McGuire said he has no faith in the board and wants the governor to step in and close the Stamped area to wolf harvest.

Quixotic, an aerial performance group, will perform at Salmonfest, a three-day music festival that occurs the first weekend of August at the Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds, Ninilchik.

This year, the festival will showcase an artist who grew up in Homer, Mica Thomas who helps produce lighting for an aerial group from Kansas City, Missouri.

Thomas said, describing Quixotic as creating an experience. “It’s kind of where you’d go to watch a performing arts piece mixed with a concert, and how you merge all those things together to create spectacle and broaden the imagination,” Thomas said.

Quixotic will perform Saturday, Aug. 6, at midnight during the festival, and their performance is scheduled to go until 2 am.

Thomas and his business partner, Anthony Magliano, are the producers of Quixotic. Magliano is the founder and artistic director of the group, whereas Thomas mostly focuses on the lighting aspects of the show.

This year, Quixotic is one of four headliners for the Kenai’s annual Salmonfest.

Jim Stearns, the director and producer of Salmonfest, says that this year has one of the strongest line-ups the festival has had yet.

“Indigo Girls are the top act, although Trampled by Turtles is a very, very close second,” Stearns said. “They’ve been on a mediocre rise since they were here (at Salmonfest) three years ago.

Although Thomas is the only member of the group from Alaska, this is not the group’s first performance in the state. Quixotic did an Alaska Tour two years ago, and performed in Fairbanks, Anchorage and at the Mariner Theater, Homer.

Getting the entire group and all of their equipment up to Alaska requires a lot of work, Thomas says, so they can only bringing a few members of their cast and crew with them. They even had to ship a portable aerial truss all the way from Kansas City to make this performance happen.

The group is bringing some great aerial performers, live music from percussionist Simon Huntly and violinist Shane Borth and some light to accompany the darkness of the midnight show, Thomas said.

“We’re doing lots of fire performances as well within the show we’re bringing to Salmonfest,” Thomas said. “So we wanted to make sure that we could work with kind of having darkness around to help make all the fire performance shine a little brighter.”

The fire acts will be integrated into the performance, alongside aerial performers and dancers, who will perform in front of a canvas screen that Thomas will produce the light shows on during the performance.

Quixotic are comparable to the famous Cirque du Soleil, whom the group have collaborated with in the past. Thomas says that he’s looking forward to sharing the Quixotic experience with fellow Alaskans.

“I mean I’m excited for the whole festival,” Thomas said. “I’ve never been able to go to the festival before, and I’ve been hearing about it for years and years and years, and so I’m really excited to just go check out the whole experience as a whole.”

Quixotic also is providing aerial-teaching classes in Homer, Aug. 9-13, in the Mat Room at the High School.

You can find more information on how to sign up for the classes by calling the Homer Council on the Arts at 907-235-4288, or by visiting their website at www.homerart.org.

Two hikers from Whitehorse who got turned around on the Arctic Brotherhood Trail outside of Skagway on Tuesday evening, were located mid-morning Wednesday uninjured.

Members of the Skagway Volunteer Fire Department and the U.S. Coast Guard searched through the night.

The search and rescue call went out just before 9 p.m. Tuesday announcing that the two hikers were overdue. Volunteers from Skagway’s fire department and, later, members of the Coast Guard looked for Wei Yang, 30, and Yun Zhu, 22, overnight.

A Coast Guard Jayhawk was deployed from Sitka at about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday. Petty officer Lauren Steenson says they coordinated with the Alaska State Troopers and the Skagway searchers, and looked for several hours in the early morning hours with a spot light.

They were on standby as of 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, but the weather had gone downhill. With the clouds rolling in and visibility waning, the search was relegated to the ground. Temsco Helicopter pilots also were on standby to assist if needed.

According to the Alaska State Troopers, the hikers were located, cold and wet but otherwise uninjured, at about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Megan Peters, a public information officer with the troopers, said the call came in to the Alaska Wildlife Troopers, and while there is no trooper post in Skagway, they often serve as a command center to help with incidents like this one.

“A lot of times we used local search and rescue volunteer assets, or we pool assets from other areas and we manage the search and rescue operation,” she said. “Just because there’s not one physically there doesn’t mean that we don’t have the case and we’re not organizing and making sure people are accounted for. The last thing we want is for somebody to go searching and then become missing themselves.”

The 10-mile roundtrip trek to the top of AB Mountain is a strenuous affair with an elevation gain of about 5,000 feet. And while it’s a popular hike, the trail is not as well-maintained as some of the easier ones in the area.

“All of our search and rescue responders are all volunteers,” said Emily Rauscher, the emergency services administrator for the Municipality of Skagway. “So, the time that they commit is invaluable and it’s really appreciated. Nobody is getting paid, it’s their time that they’re donating, they’re losing out on sleep and then they’re going right into work the next day. It’s pretty amazing.”

She says more than 20 volunteers show up to help with the search efforts.