Tourism

Skagway has been awarded a $19.9 million dollar grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for rockslide mitigation above the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad dock. Rockslides from the mountain beside the dock have disrupted the community’s last two cruise seasons.

“Success is always welcome,” Mayor Andrew Cremata said. “This is huge for Skagway, this is huge for the cruise industry.”

A year ago, the rockslides forced Cremata to declare a state of emergency, limit dockings, and forgo much tourism revenue.

Cremata says the municipality has spent $4 million this year on rockslide mitigation and monitoring. Crews strung nets across the hazardous zone, but that fix is temporary.

Cremata says the grant brings a more permanent solution in sight, but he says the project will be complex.

“It’s not just bringing down a rock,” he said. “One of the key parts of the project is protecting the infrastructure below the rock. There is a dock down there that we need to protect, there is our small boat harbor, there are fuel tanks, public restrooms, so hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure that need to be protected. So it’s a little bit more of a delicate job than simply blasting a rock.”

Delicate, and very costly. The nearly $20 million grant will cover three quarters of the cost. Cremata says the municipality is working to find the rest.

The FEMA website indicates that the money will go toward everything from rock excavation and hauling to traffic control and environmental protection.

Skagway Borough Manager Brad Ryan gives a more detailed description.

“The basis of that work is to pin back where the mountains is unraveling behind the primary slide there, so that’s drilling some long holes up there, and putting some long sections of rebar in there, grout and pin it back so it’s stabilized,” he said. “And then we start removing rock that’s up there that’s going to slide, and that’s about 30,000 yards of material. And then putting attenuation measures that would prevent minor rockslides from coming down and being a problem.”

Ryan says the aim is to allow foot traffic on the dock again, instead of the costly shuttling of crowds by bus and boats to avoid the danger zone.

Cremata says obtaining the grant is the reward of a substantial lobbying effort the municipality engaged in. Back in October, he and the town’s lobbyist took a trip to Washington, D.C.

“I remember going to Sen. Sullivan’s office, and talking to his staff, and showing them a video, and they thought it was just one rock slide. They didn’t realize that this had been an ongoing issue last year and had threatened life, limb and property,” he said. “So familiarizing them with the magnitude of this issue and what it was going to take to solve it was very important.”

Cremata says the cruise ship industry lobbied as well. He says there are a few more hoops to jump through, but that the grant has essentially been awarded.

As Sitka heads toward a record cruise season, with over half-a-million visitors, some obvious things are up — like sales tax revenue and traffic.

But some less obvious metrics are on the rise, too. Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium health educator Amanda Roberts saw one change in particular coming as far back as 2018, when Alaska passed its smoke-free workplace law.

“I went and engaged with these businesses that were going to be going smoke-free, and talked to concerns: What were some worries that were coming down the line with this change, which was going to be a big change for the community?” said Roberts. “And one of the things that was expressed was concerns of increased cigarette butt litter.”

Roberts decided to be proactive over concerns about cigarette butts, and organized a monthly cleanup focused on downtown Sitka. Since 2018, what started as a community service has become a legitimate scientific study.

Roberts says the record cruise season correlates to a staggering increase in cigarette litter.

“And it’s prevalent, I just want to say,” Roberts said. “We can have, within an hour-and-a-half to two-hour span,1 over 2,000 cigarette butts. We count every single cigarette butt. We track this data.”

Roberts is a former smoker, about to celebrate her fourteenth anniversary since quitting. And while she’s professionally motivated to help others quit for the sake of their good health, Roberts is continuing the butt cleanup for the sake of everyone else.

“Cigarette butts are the number-one littered item in the world,” Roberts said. “And they are not biodegradable. They are extremely toxic for the environment and anything that picks them up or touches them. So we definitely don’t use our hands. But there are concerns about having these things littered on the ground, and in the waterways in the environment.”

The transect Robert’s team follows on its cleanup begins at Sitka’s community playground, follows the Seawalk along the Crescent Harbor park strip, and then moves into downtown which, on busy days, is made into a traffic-free pedestrian mall. Roberts hopes that one day Sitka would consider a policy to make the park and playground areas tobacco-free. She believes it would significantly help the effort to keep kids from taking up smoking.

“One thing we’re super-focused on in the work that I do is reducing youth initiation to these products,” she said, “and I think the more we create those environments, the more we’re creating the kind of that norm where tobacco use is not even visible.”

And fewer smokers, Roberts believes, is the key to reducing cigarette litter. Roberts says any Alaskan resident is eligible to enroll in a free cessation program, the Alaska Quit Line, which is still available at its phone number 1-800-QUIT-NOW, or online at alaskaquitline.com.

Trail advocates gathered on Tuesday morning at Eklutna Lake, a glacier-fed, turquoise, oblong body of water nestled in the mountains of Chugach State Park, to celebrate a legislative victory.

Lawmakers in May approved $234,000 in state funding to fix the 13-mile trail that runs along the lake, repairing and shoring up the numerous spots that have eroded and become difficult to travel.

Those fixes will help make the trails around Alaska’s largest city more attractive to visitors and to locals, said advocates at the Eklutna Lake Trail “Golden Shovel” celebration organized by the nonprofit group Alaska Trails.

“People who come to Alaska want to see real Alaska,” said Matt Worden, owner of Lifetime Adventures, a company that offers kayak tours and rentals at Eklutna Lake, and one of the trail supporters speaking at the event. “When I see people put out that Anchorage isn’t a good spot and they got to go, they have to go somewhere else in the state to see real Alaska, it’s not true.”

The Eklutna trail-improvement project is one of three within Chugach State Park that were approved this year by lawmakers. They are all part of a broader plan, now called the Alaska Traverse, that would establish a connected trail system running about 500 miles from Fairbanks to the southern tip of the Kenai Peninsula. The plan had until recently been known as the Alaska Long Trail.

The other projects approved are a $1.1 million rerouting of the 5-mile Indian Valley Trail, which is part of a longer route linking Turnagain Arm to Arctic Valley, and $100,000 for a study on ways to restore access to a high alpine destination north of Eagle River called Ram Valley.

Altogether, the $1.4 million for trails approved by the Legislature was far less than the $9.5 million, 14-project Alaska Trails wish list prepared earlier this year. But none of the trail items approved this year by lawmakers were vetoed. That contrasts with last year, when Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed $10.5 million of the $14.75 million in trail projects that lawmakers had approved.

The three trail projects put into this year’s capital budget were chosen through careful compromise and strategic targeting, said Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, one of the legislative champions of the Alaska Traverse concept.

“We worked really hard with the governor and got a lot of people writing in to support them,” said Wielechowski, who was among the public officials at Tuesday’s trailside celebration.

The $1.4 million was a relatively modest sum and part of a modest capital budget, but it represents progress toward the ultimate goal of a Fairbanks-to-Kenai Peninsula trail system, he said. “Every year we’re getting a little bit more,” he said. “We’re getting there.”

The new Alaska Traverse name was chosen earlier this month by Alaska Trails officials and their partners at the end of a deliberative process that started last year. The Alaska Long Trail name had been a placeholder while public input was gathered, said Mariyam Medovaya, the organization’s Alaska Traverse project manager.

Alaska Traverse emerged as the winner for multiple reasons, she said. There is a nice acronym, AKT, she said. The new name does not conflict with another name in the Lower 48, Vermont’s Long Trail, she said.

Perhaps most importantly, the new name is more reflective of the envisioned trail system or network, which is more than a point-to-point route, she said.

The Eklutna Lakeside Trail fits into that network concept. From the soon-to-be-fortified trail, hikers can reach a route allowing them to ascend Bold Ridge Overlook and, if they are ambitious, continue on to 7,522-foot Bold Peak. Even more ambitious travelers could work their way north to Pioneer Peak Ridge in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

“It’s possible for people who want more adventure,” she said.

It is no coincidence that the three projects funded this year are clustered in Anchorage, Wielechowski said.

Among the trail projects that were vetoed last year were those in the Fairbanks area and in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, he said. Although governments at the borough and city level and numerous business groups have supported the connected-trail concepts, there was pushback from certain other groups in the Fairbanks and Matanuska-Susitna areas, he said.

That skepticism or opposition appeared to be at least in part about concerns that motorized trail use or uses like hunting would be curtailed, Wielechowski said. But those concerns are misplaced, he said.

The Alaska Traverse is not strictly about non-motorized travel, he said. The Eklutna Lakeside Trail project is an example, he said, as some of the improvements will benefit the section of trail designated for all-terrain-vehicle travel. And hunters and trappers are likely to benefit as well from trail expansions, he said.

“If you build the trails, they’re going to allow more access for everybody,” he said.

As much as they want to extend the work beyond Anchorage, Wielechowski said, he and other lawmakers will be reluctant to fund projects in areas where there might be opposition and “if the governor’s just going to veto it.”

Nonetheless, preliminary work is proceeding on one project that would connect Anchorage trails to those in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Among the projects that did win funding last year is a $300,000 study of how to create an 8-mile connection from Edmonds Lake, a scenic spot near Chugiak, to the community of Palmer, said Beth Nordlund, executive director of the Anchorage Park Foundation, the organization that received the money.

The foundation has a contractor to do the study, though any connection that would be created would likely be done by the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, said Nordlund, who was also at Tuesday’s Eklutna Lake celebration.

“It’s not going to be the Anchorage Park Foundation that builds this connection. It’s just to get the ball rolling,” she said. “If you don’t have the study, you can’t have the first step.”

This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.

Correction: Matt Worden’s name was misspelled in the initial version of this article. 

Two weekends ago, a canoe from a Haines guiding company took on water at Chilkoot lake. Its seven passengers and two guides spent a substantial amount of time in the lake’s cold water as they swam to shore before being rescued. We spoke with Haines Fire Chief Brian Clay about the incident, and the department’s response.

The accident happened on a windy Sunday afternoon at the far end of Chilkoot lake. The group was on a canoe tour with Haines guiding company Alaska Mountain Guides.

It was blowing probably 15, gusts to 25 up there,” said Haines Fire Chief Brian Clay, who was at the lake fishing with his granddaughter. “My understanding is they started taking on water and as it swamped, they couldn’t bail fast enough and it just swamped itself.”

As the canoe took on water, seven elderly passengers and two guides found themselves swimming for shore. All reportedly were wearing floatation devices, but they spent about half and hour in the glacier-fed lake before reaching shore.

Another boat front the guiding company reportedly picked them up from the beach and brought them to the parking lot, where Chief Clay met them.

“They all had hypothermia, and three were critical,” he said. “Three were walking, or green as we say in our business.”

The three critical patients were sent by private vehicles to meet with ambulances on their way from town. The other four were escorted to the clinic in fire and police department vehicles.

At least five of the patients were later medevaced, according to Clay, and ambulance volunteers were busy late into the night shuttling those patients between the clinic and the airport.

Clay says once activated, the emergency response went smoothly. But the first call to 911 was directed to the wrong dispatcher.

“I believe the initial 911 call went to Fairbanks regional office for the sat phones, and they didn’t know where Chilkoot Lake was,” Clay said.

KHNS could not check directly on the health of the patients. Alaska Mountain Guide owner Sean Gaffney did not respond to multiple requests for comments.

A new report says visitors to Alaska’s national parks and preserves spent $1.2 billion in nearby communities last year.

That spending, the report says, produced almost 16,500 jobs in Alaska. The peer-reviewed research was conducted by National Park Service economists.

“It’s really good for economic reports like this to come out every now and then,” said Jim Stratton, a former director of Alaska state parks who has advocated for conservation of national parks. “Because it reminds us that the wilds of Alaska have more value than just to extract them and turn them into, you know, gold bars or gasoline, and that Alaska makes a lot of money off the natural resources in place.”

Resource extraction is generally off-limits in national parks. On other federal lands, Alaska’s congressional delegation often advocates for mining and oil drilling. They say the state needs the jobs and the country needs the minerals and fuel.

About 2 million people went to Alaska areas managed by the National Park Service last year. Their spending is down from the pre-pandemic high of $1.5 billion.

Glacier Bay National Park saw more than half a million visitors last year, making it the most visited of all the Park Service areas in Alaska. But most of the travelers were on cruise ships, and the report authors found they spent less than $500 apiece on things like lodging and recreation associated with their Glacier Bay visit. Denali saw slightly fewer visitors but they spent twice as much.

At the other end of the Alaska national park spectrum, Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, is recorded as having just 179 visitors, with each one spending almost $2,000 on average. (The report actually counts “recreation visits” rather than individuals.)

The report shows Alaska is in sixth place for park visitor spending, tied with Arizona. The study, though, relied on different methodologies for Alaska.

“Most visitors are on extended trips to Alaska, making it difficult to allocate expenses to a specific park visit,” the report says.

A tour bus in Ketchikan ended up in Ketchikan Creek on Wednesday after it lost power, rolled backward and went over a guardrail. There were no passengers on the Alaska Coach Tours bus, and the driver wasn’t hurt.

Deputy Police Chief Eric Mattson says the crash happened as the vehicle was heading to the Cape Fox Lodge.

“The vehicle was driving up Venetia Ave. towards Cape Fox Lodge when it lost power,” he said. “It went backwards down Venetia, crossed over Park Avenue over the sidewalk railing and crashed, rear end first, into the creek where it laid to rest.”

Mattson says the next step is getting the bus out of the creek.

“We contacted the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Detachment about the vehicle in the creek,” he said. “Obviously worried about any type of fuel or other type of lubricant entering the waters.”

According to Lt. Allen Vorholt with the U.S. Coast Guard, crews did not see a visible sheen or find any evidence of oil or gas leaks. Ketchikan Creek is an anadromous fish stream, and salmon are currently heading upstream to spawn.

Vorholt says the Marine Safety Detachment will continue to monitor the area. He said that if anyone does see signs of oil in the water, they should call the National Response Center at 1-800-424-8802.

Advisories were issued to avoid Park Avenue, which is busy with pedestrians – mostly tourists – and cars and buses heading up to the Cape Fox restaurant and Ted Ferry Civic Center. Though traffic was delayed for a while, Mattson says the road is open.

“They were trying to get as many vehicles through, but still have that safety corridor for removal of the driver and just to make sure that the area was safe. So those that needed to transit quickly were given that opportunity,” he said.

A barrier was placed across the broken railing. A section of Park Avenue will be closed Thursday morning for the bus to be removed.