Tourism

Starting next summer, the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center in Juneau will increase its entry fee and start charging for use of nearby trails and amenities.

The U.S. Forest Service announced the change today after taking public comments on the proposal this winter.

Visitor center director John Neary says it’ll be the first increase since they first started charging fees 16 years ago. Back then, the center got about 200,000 visitors annually. This year, he says they expect to top 500,000.

“That’s really what it comes down to,” Neary says. “We don’t have an increasing budget scenario, yet we do have very much an increasing number of people who want to see the Mendenhall Glacier and the whole recreation area use has increased dramatically.”

The increase takes effect May 1, 2016. Fees are only charged during tourist season, May through September. For the rest of the year the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center and nearby facilities are free.

The fee to get into the center will go from $3 to $5 a day for people age 16 and older. That $5 also will cover the cost of using the pavilion between the parking lot and Mendenhall Lake, the Photo Point Trail, the Steep Creek trail, bus shelters, and bathrooms near the visitor center. Currently those facilities are free year-round.

Neary says the increase will be used to improve services for visitors. He says traffic congestion is a big issue both in the bus parking area and on trails near the visitor center.

“Which is great,” says Neary. “We really want to connect people to their national forests, right? But there’s lots of costs associated with the platforms themselves, the maintenance of our trails, the staffing to ensure good safety.”

The cost of a season pass also will go up next year, from $10 to $15. Neary recommends frequent visitors take advantage of the passes, as well as various National Park Service and Forest Service programs that cover access to the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center.

East Glacier Trail near the Mendenhall Glacier has reopened, but the U.S. Forest Service is warning users that a protective mother bear and her cubs are still in the area.

Officials closed the trail last week after a series of encounters with the sow, who started acting aggressively toward hikers, mountain bikers and off-leash dogs.

Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center Director John Neary says in a release that the bear and her cubs have been moving around the Dredge Lakes area.

“She remains protective of her cubs and should be given plenty of space,” he says.

The mama bear is known to wildlife officials as “Bear 103” because of the yellow tag on her ear that says “103.”

Craig Renkert and his wife Barb planned a three-week tour of Southeast Alaska for this summer.

They were looking forward to ferrying through the Inside Passage, celebrating the Fourth of July in Sitka and staying at bed-and-breakfasts along the way.

Then, the couple from Ohio got some bad news.

“When I got the email last Friday, I was very frustrated in that here they were, at the last minute, changing the ferry schedule. Because many of those places I made reservations have 60-day cancellation policies. Now, the trip is less than 60 days away.

Renkert spoke with a reservations agent and was able to change his itinerary, though he’s still juggling shore-side details.

He’d heard of ferry breakdowns and spending cuts affecting the schedule. But the agent didn’t give a reason for the change while rebooking.

“Just because the budget wasn’t planned further in advance seems to be utterly inconsiderate of the locals in the communities, their businesses and the tourists,” he says.

Legislative budget cuts were expected to deeply reduce sailings this summer, especially in Southeast.

Officials estimated the reductions would cancel reservations already booked by about 10,000 people.

But the Walker administration was able to shift $5.5 million in unused money from this year’s fuel fund to next year’s operating budget.

Alaska Marine Highway System spokesman Jeremy Woodrow says that allows other ferries to go ahead with scheduled service.

“The only ship that will be [affected] will be the Taku coming out. The other ships will be sailing as scheduled,” he says.

With the Taku out, sailings to and from Prince Rupert, British Columbia, will be cut from four to two a week. Those sailings also stop in Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Sitka, Kake and Juneau.

Before July, the Taku is filling in on routes of other ferries that need extra time for repairs.

Woodrow says the ship’s time off will be used, in part, for work that’s been delayed.

“Every ship is required to have an overhaul, which is where we do an inspection to make sure it gets its recertification so it’s safe for passenger service. So you have to do that annually. You can’t push it back several months,” he says.

He says reservations staffers are contacting those who booked travel on the Taku beginning in July.

Democratic Juneau Sen. Dennis Egan says cuts leading to the ship’s cancellation show bad budgeting by the Legislature’s Republican majority.

He says Alaskans make up almost a third of those sailing Taku routes. And visitors contribute revenue to the ferry system and port-city businesses.

“The ferry system is the highway for Southeast and coastal Alaska and passenger and vehicle fees are its lifeblood. Because we lack a completed budget, this decision will cost the State of Alaska more than $400,000 of revenue,” he says, in a press release.

Majority budget-writers have said the ferry system is too expensive and something the state cannot afford to maintain at its current service levels.

Renkert, who lived in Anchorage for 18 years, says he got a second notice rebooking his trip again, due to the Taku’s shutdown.

“I’m spending my money with local B&Bs, not with cruise ships, because I want a local experience. If it’s not available that’s going to make it much more difficult for me to do this trip again in the future and make it difficult for me to recommend it to others,” he says.

His trip is the sort promoted by the ferry system and port communities.

While most of the summer schedule will remain intact, other reductions are likely come October, the start of the winter schedule.

(Video courtesy Jos Bakker, USFS bear volunteer)

U.S. Forest Service officials are concerned about a stressed out mama bear near the Mendenhall Glacier.

John Neary, director of the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, says the bear is becoming more aggressive toward hikers, mountain bikers and off-leash dogs.

“She doesn’t move off. She’ll stand her ground on the trail. She’ll even approach hikers, wanting them to move back away from her,” Neary says.

He says the black bear and her three cubs have been seen most often on East Glacier Trail, which has been closed temporarily to give the animals some space. Neary says the cubs are a little more than a year old, and could strike off on their own soon.

In 2013, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game tagged the mother bear, called Bear 103 by wildlife officials.

“The radio collar data plus our own observations show her using much of this area – Dredge Lakes, the backside of the Steep Creek area, the Steep Creek Trail by the meadows, the Trail of Time. She could be sighted anywhere along this zone,” Neary says.

He says the Forest Service will look at reopening the East Glacier Trail in about a week. In the meantime, Neary says trail users should be extra cautious, and keep dogs leashed.

The state ferry Tustumena has already missed its first sailings in May as it undergoes repairs in shipyard. Now, it’s delayed again — but its first trip to the Aleutians isn’t set to change.

The ferry will spend five extra days off the water, making its first trip between Homer, Seldovia and Kodiak on May 17. It will still set out from Homer for the Aleutian Chain on May 19, as planned.

Department of Transportation spokesman Jeremy Woodrow says the Tustumena needs more repairs to one of its firefighting water pipes to meet Coast Guard standards.

But once it’s cleared, he says he doesn’t expect the ferry’s abbreviated summer schedule to be impacted any more by state budget cuts.

“The Tustumena is unique — it’s the only ferry that calls on numerous communities. Changing the Tustumena’s schedule would affect many communities that are serviced by that one vessel,” he says. “Therefore, we almost necessarily need to keep that vessel intact and its service unaltered.”

The state is contacting this month’s affected passengers to help them rebook their trips. The ferry is still set to make its first stop in Unalaska May 23.

The start of the cruise ship season brings a new excursion from one of the oldest tour outfits in Southeast. Allen Marine Tours is set to run hovercraft trips to the Taku Glacier starting this week.

It’s been about 20 years since Allen Marine last brought visitors to the Taku Glacier, located near Juneau at the head of Taku Inlet. John Dunlap is vice president of Allen Marine Tours. He says the company used to go to the glacier with a large catamaran back in the 1990s.

“We would get as close to the glacier as we could, which at a low tide was several miles away and at a higher tide, we could maybe get within a few miles of the face of the glacier,” Dunlap says. “So it was kind of a pretty variable experience.”

So variable that Allen Marine stopped doing it after a few years.

“But we always thought, ‘Gosh, if we had the right kind of vehicle, we’d like to come back up here and do this better,'” Dunlap says.

Allen Marine bought a hovercraft from a Washington company last year and started experimenting with it.

“It doesn’t matter whether the tide’s out or not. You can travel with equal ease over water or if you’ve got to pass over shallow water and sand bars, that’s fine, too,” Dunlap says.

The hovercraft will soon start carrying paying customers. The 4-hour tour includes more than an hour on the hovercraft. Tourists leave from downtown Juneau on a jet-powered catamaran to lower Taku Inlet, where Allen Marine will have a larger ship staged that serves as the hover base. There, tourists will transfer into an 8-person hovercraft which will take them close to the face of the glacier, where they disembark for 30 minutes.

The whole trip costs more than $300 per adult. Dunlap admits it’s quite a bit more than Allen Marine’s established whale watching tours and Tracy Arm trips.

“For us, it’s a little bit more like having a helicopter tour which tend to be fairly expensive tours because of the equipment involved than what we’ve traditionally done with boat tours that have higher capacity and are a little bit more efficient to run,” says Dunlap.

Hovercrafts travel on a trapped bubble of air. Dunlap describes it as a small barge that sits on an inflated rubber skirt. Allen Marine hopes to have three running this summer. It has one now and has ordered two more. Each one is 22 feet long and about 10 feet wide. Dunlap says they don’t make any more noise than a boat of similar size.

Ron Maas owns 150 acres on the Taku River. He says he bought the property about 20 years ago because of its direct view of the glacier. He’s not excited about the new Allen Marine tours.

“That puts a whole different light on that property of ours. We consider it something very special but, Jesus, if we have to listen to this all the time, it’s not going to be much fun. There’s so much traffic up there now that it’s a constant thing,” Maas says.

Maas acknowledges his role in the traffic and noise near the glacier. He’s the former owner of the Taku Glacier Lodge. Visitors to Juneau are brought there by float planes.

“I had 14 aircraft when I sold out and, of course, we made eight trips a day with each airplane, so I really can’t complain a lot about noise, but we tried to control the noise the best we could,” Maas says.

He also doesn’t like the idea of seeing people walk near the face of the glacier. Dunlap says Allen Marine has state and federal permits allowing people to walk in that area.

Juneau commercial fisherman Jim Becker is wondering if the hovercraft will affect juvenile salmon coming out of the Taku River. He’s been gillnetting for Taku River salmon for 40 years.

“The concern is we have outmigrating smolt coming out of the river and some fry, and I don’t know what the depth is in front of the glacier and what kind of water depth they’re going to be operating in, so I think that needs to be checked out,” Becker says.

Alaska Fish and Game biologist Leon Shaul doesn’t foresee any issues.

“In that area near Taku Glacier, I wouldn’t think it would have much impact,” Shaul says. “That’s a pretty open area and tidal influenced, so I wouldn’t imagine it’d be a lot different than a boat.”

Dunlap says Allen Marine will not be going up the river.

He says cruise ship passengers have already started signing up for the hovercraft tours. As interest grows, Dunlap expects Allen Marine to operate consistent tours within a few weeks.