Tourism

The single busiest spot in Juneau during the summer cruise ship season may be South Franklin Street in front of the Mount Roberts Tramway building. Up to five of the massive ships can be in town at once, each unloading and reloading thousands of crew and passengers in a few hours. There are buses, container trucks, float planes, and aerial tram cars all coming and going within a few hundred feet of each other.

And, it’s surprisingly orderly.

On Friday, there was also a ribbon cutting ceremony there attended by about 45 city and state officials, contractors and local business owners. They celebrated new pedestrian and parking improvements on the busy cruise ship waterfront.

The tourists footing much of the bill went about their sightseeing and shopping, while liberal thanks were paid to the officials and workers involved.

“As an engineer, I do really appreciate concrete, asphalt, curb and gutter,” said Juneau Rep. Sam Kito III. “I mean, the things that people might not necessarily appreciate have a lot of aesthetics to me. The efficiencies of moving pedestrians and moving vehicles is underappreciated. I’m enjoying being here, on concrete, near asphalt seeing this whole project work.”

It wasn’t always so orderly. Kirby Day remembers back in 1993, before much of this stuff was here.

“Looking out here, this was all just dirt. There was no tram, there was not much anything. And at that time when we lined buses up, we tried to lime the lines, and then it’d rain, and, you know, it disappeared. And then we put (out) barrels,” said Day, who is the director of shore operations for Princess Cruises and longtime point man for cruise ship relations in Juneau. “We’d come out at night and set the barrels up, and that’s where the buses were supposed to go, and then they’d come the next morning, and the operators really didn’t like it there, so they’d just move them. So, this will be a little bit better for all, I hope.”

The improvements are part of a long-term city plan to create a continuous, mile-and-a-half long seawalk from the Juneau-Douglas Bridge to the AJ Dock, the cruise ship berth farthest from downtown.

Patricia Stancil, visiting from Pensacola, Florida, was sitting on a bench nearby during the ceremony. She wasn’t sure what the ceremony was about, but was in the ballpark.

“It sounds he was trying to raise funds to improve the city or whatever it is,” Stancil said.

Stancil, and millions of other visitors like her over the years, have paid millions toward Juneau’s public waterfront infrastructure through cruise ship passenger fees the city and state collect.

Friday’s ribbon cutting specifically celebrated the completion of a $3 million contract for reconfiguring a bus and pedestrian staging area, and a nearly complete $3.4 million contract to extend the seawalk.

Update: Saturday, May 10:

It’s still unknown what caused three large waterfalls to emerge Friday evening near the west flank of the Mendenhall Glacier, but by Saturday evening all had disappeared.

The waterfalls prompted warnings Friday night from the U.S. Forest Service to expect increased calving and higher lake levels.

But by Saturday, Mendenhall Lake had risen only three inches and no new ice calves were reported.

Naturalist Laurie Craig says she issued the alert because “we don’t know how this affected the ice cave, the west glacier trail, any of the margins of the glacier where people are likely to hike or be putting kayaks in.”

The flow could have existed for days, instead it was only hours. She says it’s typical for warm spring weather.

“We have such warm temperatures, the water will just melt into a pool, a natural pool on the ice, and then something will give way and it lets loose and just goes away,” she says.

“In this case, it went “from a gusher to a goner,” she says.

Original story, Friday, May 9:

U.S. Forest Service officials are warning Mendenhall Glacier visitors to expect increased calving, which will result in waves on Mendenhall Lake, colder lake temperatures and higher water levels. Hikers and  kayakers should be especially cautious.

The alert was issued at 8 p.m. Friday. In a news release, naturalist Laurie Craig said an unusual event about 5 p.m. resulted in three large waterfalls discharging sediment-laden glacial water onto bare rock near the west flank of the glacier.  The site is near the ice cave.

Craig said waterfalls are cascading down a deglaciated ridge of Mount McGinnis adjacent to the glacier.

While the water appears to be flowing under the glacier, that may not be the case, and the effect on the glacier, lake and trails is unknown.  Craig said the glacier and ice cave may become unstable due to the flow of water.

Craig said a cause could be discharge from meltwater lakes that form along the margins of the glacier, increasing water volume.

Cruise ship season starts early in Juneau with the Volendam making an unexpected port of call Saturday.

According to Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska, the Holland America Line ship departed from Japan and was supposed to stop in Kodiak, but had to divert due to bad weather in the Gulf of Alaska. The Volendam is carrying 1,200 passengers.

Juneau’s first scheduled cruise ship is the Carnival Miracle on May 1.

Elizabeth Arnett is tourism marketing manager for the Juneau Convention and Visitors Bureau. She says the last minute port of call is catching the retail industry off guard.

“For the businesses downtown that are open year-round, it’s going to be a little extra boom for them that they weren’t expecting. But I imagine some of the retail merchants downtown that weren’t prepared to be open until next week may or may not be open,” Arnett says.

The Volendam will dock at the Alaska Steamship Wharf, near the downtown public library, from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday. Arnett says the visitor’s center kiosk will be open.

Ellen Lynch, director of shore excursions for Holland America Line, says many Juneau tour operators will be able to provide services on Saturday.

“I believe Era is operating, Wings up to Taku, and the glacier flightseeing that they do. Allen Marine is operating the whale tours. Some of the bus tours will go. The biking tour will go. Those are the only ones I know about. I’m sure there’s many more,” Lynch says.

The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center is closed for the month of April, but director John Neary says a few staff members will be available on the ground to answer questions.

The Mt. Roberts Tramway will run Saturday, but won’t officially open until May 1.

After Juneau, the Volendam will continue onto scheduled stops in Glacier Bay, Ketchikan and Vancouver.

(Editor’s note: A previous version of this story stated the Mt. Roberts Tramway will run Saturday for cruise passengers. The story has been updated to reflect the Mt. Roberts Tramway will be open for the general public.)

The U.S. Forest Service wants your input on improving three recreation sites in Juneau.

Public comment on projects at the Lena Beach Recreation Area, the West Glacier Spur Road and Treadwell Ditch Trail are due in a week.

Lena Beach improvements include rebuilding five shelters, upgrading outhouses, paving the road and making it one-way, and improving the fish passage up Picnic Creek.

Ed Grossman is the recreation manager for the Juneau Ranger District. He says the shelters at Lena Beach were built in the 1950s. Besides routine maintenance and repairs, the Forest Service has not done any major improvements in a long time.

“We consider it a very tired, old recreation site and there’s been no significant enhancements there in 20 years, at least,” Grossman says.

The Forest Service also wants to implement volunteers who live at the site, which Grossman hopes will reduce ongoing issues that occur at Lena Beach.

“Drug dealing, vandalism of shelters, burning of pallets which are not allowed there, dumping litter on the beach, dumping garbage, televisions, vehicles off the road – you name it and it probably happens there. Many people aren’t aware of it because it happens well after dark and we clean it up,” Grossman says.

On the West Glacier Spur Road, the Forest Service plans to extend the bike and pedestrian trail a half mile. Grossman says up to 30,000 tourists participate in activities, like bicycle and kayak tours, off the Spur Road.

“And what’s happening is all these people are pouring out into the roadway near the campground along with all the buses and vans and other vehicles servicing the industry, plus the locals,” Grossman says.

The Forest Service also wants to hear from the public on various improvements to the Treadwell Ditch Trail, including hardening the section above the Bonnie Brae subdivision.

Money for the projects comes from the Federal Lands Access Program through the Federal Highway Administration, with matching funds from the Forest Service.

Construction is expected to begin in 2015 and last up to two years.

Public comments are due April 18.

Emergency officials in Juneau are testing their response to a cruise ship security threat today.

Juneau Emergency Programs Manager Tom Mattice would only say that the drill involves a cruise ship and some type of large-scale security event. He declined to say what the exact scenario is.

“Because when you know what the event is ahead of time you come with your guns loaded to take care of a situation,” Mattice says. “What happens if a cruise ship crashes tomorrow? What are we going to do? We don’t spend 24 hours preparing for that. It just happens. That’s the way we exercise. It’s the way things happen in the real world.”

The exercise is part of the Alaska Shield 2014 statewide training program, sponsored by the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

The exercise will take place at the AJ Dock downtown between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. While there won’t be an actual cruise ship involved, about 40 volunteers will play the role of victims, who will be fake-rescued by real-life paramedics, firefighters and police. The Coast Guard and relief organizations like the American Red Cross will be involved in the scenario as well.

Mattice says the drill will test the communication of participants.

“When you get a large-scale event like this it’s much more than just the city working internally,” he says. “It’s the city working with its partners in response, whether that be the hospital or the Red Cross or other participants. So it’s not only how we individually coordinate, but how we coordinate and communicate together that’s really tested.”

Ensign Dwight Shaffer with Coast Guard Sector Juneau’s Response Division says anything from an oil spill to a mass rescue of a passenger boat can qualify as a maritime security threat. The agency has numerous response plans for different scenarios, and Shaffer says Coast Guard personnel are expected to know which plans to activate and when.

“They typically review them around four to five times a year, but it’s an ongoing cycle,” Shaffer says. “They’re constantly working them and making them better.”

Mattice says the city has its own Emergency Operations Plan, which gets reviewed and updated annually. While an earthquake or an avalanche might be more likely in Juneau, he says a cruise ship incident is still worth preparing for.

“We’re fairly fortunate in Juneau, it’s not number one on our radar, but we definitely don’t ignore it,” says Mattice.

Juneau gets about a million cruise ship visitors every summer. The first ship of the 2014 season is expected in less than a month. Cruise line officials declined to comment for this story.

Industry critic Chip Thoma with the group Responsible Cruising in Alaska agrees with Mattice that there’s not much to worry about. But he thinks any serious maritime security event would effectively end cruise ship activity in the state.

“Any serious incident would have a severe impact on the cruise ships, because there’s just no way that they would be able to guarantee the security coming out of Vancouver or Seattle,” Thoma says.

During the drill, at about 1:15 p.m., KTOO is expected to broadcast a test of the emergency alert system.