Tourism

Updated at 11:45 a.m.

At 4 a.m. Wednesday, just as the sun was starting to cast long blue shadows over downtown Haines – four massive Holland America tour buses motored into the parking lot of the Port Chilkoot Cruise Ship Dock.

Some 150 people climbed down the stairs and slowly made their way down the dock – a handful stopping to photograph themselves in front of the Haines sign before climbing onto tender boats – basically water shuttles – bound for the nearby Holland America Koningsdam.

While many of the passengers were visibly tired, others like Australians Arthur and Sharon Green, were joking and laughing.

“We didn’t expect to make it here,” Arthur said. “We got a bonus tour.”

The crowd was primarily cruise ship passengers who disembarked in Skagway on Tuesday and were riding on the popular White Pass and Yukon Route Railway when a landslide overtook the tracks and then the roadway between markers 80 to 86 of the Klondike Highway. A 50-mile stretch of the South Klondike Highway from Fraser to Carcross has since been closed, according to Yukon Protective Services.

Both the U.S. border station and Canadian customs closed the Skagway Port of Entry after the slide, according to a Nixle alert sent out at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday. That effectively blocked the passengers from returning to Alaska or reboarding the Holland America and Princess cruise ships they’re touring on.

Laurie Wilcox and Michelle Plasschaert of the Quad Cities in Iowa and Illinois and Dennis Hurd of Vancouver described the slide blocking first the train, then the buses they’d boarded in an attempt to get back to Skagway.

“It came running down the road,” Hurd said, his voice trailing off. “It was good that … we had a good bus driver.”

Cruise line management, port staff and others arranged an unusual solution to the problem and turned the group around and began the sixish-hour, several-hundred-mile drive to Haines.

“It’s pretty unprecedented,” said Cruise Lines Agencies of Alaska port manager Leslie Ross who – along with Haines harbor master Shawn Bell – met the group on the dock on Wednesday morning.

Ross worked to coordinate with Canadian and U.S. border officials to keep the Dalton Cache-Pleasant Camp border crossing near Haines open so the passengers could get through and rejoin their ships.

The Greens, who are headed to Glacier Bay next, said this is their first cruise.

“It’s been a great day,” Sharon said, enthusiastically. “We’ve had a rock slide. We’ve had mud over the train.”

The Greens said they took the train to Carcross but on the trip back a slide had taken out the tracks. So they loaded onto buses and continued on toward Skagway, but then the landslide blocked the road.

“So the bus took us back to Carcross,” she said. “The lovely women there fed us everything they could find.”

“Yeah at about 9 o’clock at night,” Arthur chimed in, laughing.

“It was wonderful,” Sharon added. She looked over at her husband,  “Then, where’d we go? Crazy Horse? Red Horse?”

“Whitehorse,” he said.

The drive was dark, so they didn’t see much of Canada. Sharon said she was able to sleep but Arthur didn’t.

“I kept the driver awake,” he said, with a laugh.

Original story

The details are still being worked out, but cruise line officials say about 150 passengers from the Holland America Koningsdam and a Princess cruise ship are en route to Haines to rejoin their tours after being trapped in Canada.

The passengers were riding on the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway when a massive rockslide overtook the tracks and then the roadway between markers 80 to 86 of the Klondike Highway, effectively cutting them off from returning to Skagway on Tuesday afternoon.

A 50-mile stretch of the South Klondike Highway from Fraser to Carcross has since been closed, according to Yukon Protective Services. Both the U.S. border station and Canadian customs closed the Skagway Port of Entry after the slide, according to a Nixle alert sent out at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

The passengers were transferred to buses and –  in an unusual solution to the problem – began the several hundred mile drive to Haines.

“It’s pretty unprecedented,” said Cruise Lines Agencies of Alaska port manager Leslie Ross.

Ross said the cruise ships are headed to Haines to retrieve their passengers from the borough’s dock.

She was working to coordinate with Canadian and U.S. border officials to keep the borders open around 10 p.m. on Tuesday, then said she was headed to bed to catch a few hours of sleep before the crowd arrives in town.

The Skagway News’ Gretchen Wehmhoff contributed to this report.

It’s been a busy season for tourism in Alaska. This summer, some remote communities welcomed their largest cruise ships in history – while others turned thousands of tourists away due to wildfires.

The Alaska Travel Industry Association hasn’t released numbers yet regarding how big of an economic impact visitors had in 2023, but it’s confirmed the state broke a cruise ship passenger record.

ATIA president and CEO Jillian Simpson said most sectors of the tourism industry have recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Listen:

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Jillian Simpson: In particular, the cruise sector definitely has recovered from COVID, which I think has been great. We are still seeing a lot of businesses from that time still trying to earn back to the level that they were at before. But I think people have been really optimistic, especially with the last few seasons that we’ve had.

On the independent traveler side, though, I think the businesses that cater most to those are still in recovery. And it’s unknown, really how that’ll keep going for them. So I think that there’s still opportunity for growth in those sectors.

Ava White: Some Southeast communities, like Juneau, are considering limiting cruise ship passengers. How worried are you about these proposals?

Jillian Simpson: Juneau has been a really great example of a community led process when it comes to tourism. It certainly comprises the people that are showcasing their destination, the people that are visiting. And it’s a cultural exchange, as well as being really good for the economy.

Juneau has the tourism manager, Alexandra Pierce, and she has worked really closely with community stakeholders to actually try to have a community led effort that really addresses what they want tourism to look like in Juneau, and they’ve actually done some really amazing agreements with the cruise lines.

It’s unfortunate that there’s also other initiatives that are out there to further limit this important component of our economy. I think having those informed conversations with each other and coming together, and everybody agreeing with what the path forward is, is really the way to do that.

Ava White: Nome recently welcomed their largest cruise ship in its history recently, and Kodiak has also seen an increase in cruise travel this summer. What strategies are being implemented to increase tourism in the state beyond cruise travelers?

Jillian Simpson: The independent traveler is an extremely important part of our travel makeup. Right now in the summertime, 65% of our visitors are on a cruise ship and 35% of them are traveling independently– and that’s either driving up the highway or taking the ferry. The vast majority of them are obviously flying in and out of the state.

Then in the wintertime, they’re all independent travelers, because cruising doesn’t really happen in the wintertime. They’re [independent travelers] a very important segment and definitely one that the Alaska Travel Industry Association focuses on in order to help them plan and inspire them to choose Alaska as a visitor destination.

I think that there are a lot of communities now that are mindfully looking at ways to grow tourism, either by building new ports or developing new tour products.

Ava White: I could see how other Southeast communities might view the proposed cap as an opportunity to increase tourism in their respective communities. Have you seen any communities trying to increase cruise traffic?

Jillian Simpson: There’s been some real interesting developments happening with Huna Totem Corporation. They started at Icy Strait Point, actually, this is their 20th anniversary. They have been really mindful about what the development is going to be and how many ships, and how many passengers, and how it was going to interact with the village of Hoonah.

It’s been such a success story, and it has grown incrementally year over year, and is an amazing positive experience. They have partnered with Doyon as well Klawock and have now developed a new tender port.

Klawock saw its first ships earlier this season for the first time. And again, kind of the same model where it’s going to be a slow development, but I think it provides a huge opportunity for the community to lead the way of what they want their tourism product to be and to have local tour providers providing that and then utilizing the distribution channel of the cruise lines who are bringing those passengers up.

46-year-old Glenda Rodrigo and 24-year-old Christian Rodrigo pled guilty last month to violating the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act. They were part of a scheme to pass off fake stone carvings and wood totem poles as traditional art made by local Tlingít and Haida artisans.

Cristobal Rodrigo, Glenda’s husband and Christian’s father, was sentenced in 2023 to two years in prison for his role in the scheme. Its still the longest sentence a defendant has received for any similar violation in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Rodrigo family ran two storefronts in downtown Ketchikan – Alaska Stone Arts and Rail Creek. They were living in Washington state at the time. Rail Creek sold mostly wooden totem poles and Alaska Stone Art sold stone carvings. Both though were advertised as being made by Alaska Native master carvers and artisans.

But they were actually sourced from a business in the Philippines called Rodrigo Creative Crafts. The company in the Philippines was owned by Glenda Rodrigo. Its sole purpose was to use Philippine labor to make knock-off Alaska Native designs.

They were then shipped to the U.S. and the Rodrigo’s Ketchikan storefronts. The family even hired Alaska Native people to sell the art as their own. Federal prosecutors found that the workers told customers they were all one big family and made everything from locally sourced materials.

The stores operated from 2016 to 2021. In 2019 alone, after they’d unknowingly drawn the attention of federal agents, they sold nearly $1 million of the fake art.

Cristobal Rodrigo worked in the tourist trade for over 20 years before the family started Rail Creek and Alaska Stone Works. According to the Department of Justice, he went to the Philippines in the late 90s to teach the Filipino employees of his wife’s company how to imitate Alaska Native styles. He also handled most of the day-to-day operations in Ketchikan.

Glenda oversaw the Philippines operation from afar, and the affairs at both stores – though she only co-owned one of them with her husband. Cristobal was the sole owner of Rail Creek.

As for Christian, he worked as a salesperson and helped operate the stores.

Meridith Stanton is the Director of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board. In a written statement, she said that she hopes the sentences will send a strong message to those who may prey on real Alaska Native artists and vulnerable consumers.

She said: “Fakes and counterfeits, such as those marketed for huge sums of money by the Rodrigos, tear at the very fabric of Alaska Native culture, Native livelihoods, and Native communities.”

Glenda Rodrigo was sentenced to up to six months of home confinement and 240 hours of community service, and Christian Rodrigo was sentenced to up to three months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service. Plus, both defendants are required to serve five years of probation and write a letter of apology to be published in the local newspaper. The whole family is required to pay a little over $54,000 in restitution.

Only four of nine projects that the Legislature funded this year as part of an envisioned Alaska Long Trail network survived Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto pen.

Dunleavy’s vetoes left a bit over $1.1 million of the $3.7 million in Alaska Long Trail projects that lawmakers approved in their capital budget.

Steve Cleary, executive director of the nonprofit Alaska Trails, said the veto decisions left trail and outdoor recreation advocates far short of what they had hoped to get in the budget.

“We think these were a lot of projects that would be a good investment for Alaska, so we were disappointed. So were our partners,” Cleary said.

The Alaska Long Trail, an ambitious project being pursued by Alaska Trails and other groups, would be a network of connected trails spanning about 500 miles from Fairbanks to Seward.

At the start of the session, Alaska Trails sought about $20.3 million in state funding for 21 projects. The list was winnowed down to nine, all in the Municipality of Anchorage, when lawmakers finally passed the budget.

Despite the disappointment, Cleary said, “we’re grateful for the ones that were passed and are looking forward to working on them.”

Left intact are projects to improve trails at Chugach State Park’s 3,510-foot Flattop Mountain, the state’s most-climbed peak; develop an Indigenous gateway in downtown Anchorage at what is intended to be an intersection of trails; make improvements in Girdwood to a section of the Iditarod National Historic Trail; and start design and feasibility studies for expanded trailhead parking at Arctic Valley.

Also surviving the veto pen were several trail and outdoor recreation projects outside of the Alaska Long Trail plan. Those seven projects, totaling about $5.5 million, include support for the Iditarod Trail Committee, state park sanitation facility maintenance and repairs, winter trail grooming grants and money for the statewide trail program.

Additionally, the Dunleavy-approved budget includes $450,000 for parking and access improvements on the back side of Flattop Mountain, the alternative trailhead on Anchorage’s Canyon Road that is sometimes referred to as “Sunnyside.” That project was not among those pushed by Alaska Trails, Cleary said. Rather, it came out of requests from the neighbors who have coped with overcrowded parking there.

In his veto memo, Dunleavy cited the same reason for nixing the five Long Trail projects as was used for almost all of his vetoes: “Preserve general funds for savings and fiscal stability.”

A third proposed ballot initiative to limit cruise traffic in Sitka was denied by the city on Tuesday.

Organizers from the group Small Town SOUL submitted an application in June to put a cruise limit question out to voters in this year’s municipal election. The group wanted to set an annual limit of 300,000 cruise visitors, with a daily limit of 4500 passengers.

The city clerk’s office had ten working days to review the document and respond. It was also reviewed by attorneys from Jermain Dunnagan Owens law firm in Anchorage. The city is currently contracting with JDO to provide legal services in the absence of a full-time municipal attorney.

In a memo on July 2, attorneys Michael Gatti and Taylor McMahon said the ballot initiative is legally unenforceable for two reasons– it has “misleading, confusing and incomplete” terms, and the section requiring permits for cruise ships violates the “tonnage clause” of the United States Constitution, which prohibits charging vessels fees for using navigable waterways.

Gatti writes that states and cities can only charge fees if they’re providing a service to a vessel. On those grounds, the municipal clerk’s office denied Small Town SOUL’s application.

JDO’s legal opinion also references several letters from attorneys representing cruise lines– The Sitka Dock Company, Royal Caribbean and Allen Marine each submitted letters to the city opposing the application. Several argue that the initiative violates federal law, including the right to travel and the “commerce clause” in the US Constitution.

Gatti says it’s premature to consider those arguments at this stage.

The letters also call into question how many times organizers have submitted petitions to limit cruise traffic. City code states that when a petition is denied for any reason other than the signature count, the petitioners must wait a full year to resubmit the same petition. But so far, all attempts to generate a ballot initiative to limit cruise traffic have been denied at the application phase.

Gatti writes that the one year rule only applies to the petition itself, not the application for a petition.

KCAW has reached out to petition organizers for comment.

Read the full decision here.

Editor’s Note: This is a developing story and may be updated.

Meghan Tabacek stepped off the narrow path of the Black Bear Trail in Juneau and pointed to a U-shaped bend in Montana Creek where loose dirt and tree roots jut out over the water.

“If this all were to erode out and cut under the bank, then our whole trail could collapse,” she said. “At first glance, this looks pretty subtle and pretty far away from the trail. But give it like, three or four big storm cycles, and that could really get eaten away.”

Tabacek is the executive director of Trail Mix, Inc., a local non-profit that spends each summer clearing brush, downed trees and — occasionally — landslide debris, on trails managed by the City and Borough of Juneau, the state and the Forest Service.

But mostly, her crews work to strengthen trails against the rain that pummels Southeast Alaska. 

“We’re used to mud,” Tabacek said. “Mud is our bread and butter.” 

What they’re not used to is the intensity of the mud, the erosion and the wash-outs that are wreaking havoc on trails as human-caused climate change makes rainstorms more extreme. Typically, Tabacek says, trails have a lifespan of 10 to 20 years before they need major maintenance. But that’s changing now. 

“The time from when we build a trail or do a refurbishment of a trail to the time it needs touch-ups and fixings is shortening,” Tabacek said. “We’re having to do a lot of maintenance that isn’t technically planned.”

Warmer air holds more moisture. So as greenhouse gas pollution drives up global temperatures, rainy Southeast Alaska is becoming even rainier. According to Juneau’s Climate Change report, Juneau’s average annual precipitation has increased 20 inches in the last century. And a lot of that rain is coming down in atmospheric rivers — periods of heavy, prolonged rainfall that are often accompanied by high winds. 

An atmospheric river in December 2020 brought record-breaking rain that caused flooding and mudslides across Juneau. It also washed out local trails like the Blackerby Ridge Trail, which took weeks to clear and repair. 

Then another storm in 2021 blew down enormous trees that made some trails impassable, like the Herbert Glacier Trail. Tabacek recalls chainsawing and hauling out hundreds of downed trees. 

“Those trees would have dropped at some point anyway. But when we have these big storms and big wind events, then they’ll drop at once,” Tabacek said. “So we’ve been seeing some of these things that we have to react to more frequently.”

Storms may become more frequent over time, but Southeast Alaska’s trail system has always taken a beating. James King, who was the executive director when Trail Mix got started back in the 90s, says he remembers cleaning up frequent landslides on the city-owned Perseverance Trail. 

That trail was closed just this spring because of landslides.

Like a lot of trails in Alaska, Perseverance was created from an old mining road. Those routes were built to get to resources as fast as possible — not for longevity or climate resilience. 

“They go up narrow canyons. They’re going along creeks,” said King, referring to routes which make trails vulnerable to threats like landslides and erosion. “Some of these trails just aren’t in the right spot.”

Now King is the director of Recreations, Lands and Minerals for the Tongass and Chucagh National Forests. In the Tongass, the Forest Service manages nearly 1,000 miles of trails for nearly 3 million annual visitors.

Even without climate change, upkeep on some of these trails has been disrupted as federal funding fluctuated over the years. But right now the agency is relatively flush. And as they work on a new iteration of the Tongass forest plan, climate change and tourism are some of the most pressing priorities. 

“So rerouting, rethinking how we get people through these places and how we build infrastructure that’s more resilient, that reduces that long term maintenance? That’s a big goal of ours,” King said. 

Building trails with climate resilience in mind might mean putting in larger bridges that can handle larger floods. It might also mean laying down gravel paths to weigh down the soil and stop water from pooling or rerouting trails so they’re less vulnerable to erosion.

Those improvements tend to make trails more accessible for hikers of all abilities too. 

Just down the Black Bear Trail, crews are building up a new fortified abutment for a lopsided wooden bridge. The bridge itself is in good condition, but it falls short of one bank and slumps into the mud. Erosion caused it to collapse. 

“You see trail damage like this, and it’s just like a line of dollar signs floating down the water,” Tabacek said. 

On a sunny spring day, the creek below the bridge is running low and the forest undergrowth is full of fresh fans of Skunk Cabbage and Fiddlehead Ferns. 

“We get a couple weeks of rain and then it gets sunny for two days and everything goes ‘poof,’ she said.