Tourism

COVID-positive travelers say they were not allowed to board their cruise ship in Skagway this week. Instead, they say that Holland America helped them book travel on a state ferry and then an Alaska Airlines flight out of Juneau — the day after their positive tests. 

Diana and Larry Lehrer were supposed to set sail from Skagway on Holland America’s Koningsdam after a bus tour through the Interior and Canada. But they tested positive for COVID-19 when they reached Skagway on Tuesday.

“The first test went fine and the second one didn’t,” said Diana Lehrer. 

The next day the couple was on the state ferry, sitting masked near the front windows. The MV LeConte was packed with passengers from Skagway and Haines headed to Juneau.

“They wouldn’t let us on the cruise ship because that’s asking for trouble, so they gave us the option of quarantining here in Skagway or going home,” Diana said.

Diana said she was aware when she booked the package that if she or her husband tested positive during the bus trip, they wouldn’t be allowed on the cruise ship.

“We knew it could happen, but we didn’t think it would happen to us,” she said.

She said Holland America took care of them after they tested positive. The company paid for their hotel and delivered meals to their room. 

“They walk you through everything,” she said. “They totally rebooked our travel back. They made it very easy.”

A Holland America spokesperson said that’s not the company’s policy. It will only help customers reschedule travel after they quarantine for five days.

But Mr. Lehrer later confirmed in an email that after one night in isolation in Skagway, a Holland employee did book their travel. He wrote: “We only had to make one phone call to Holland America’s scheduling phone number and they did their magic in less than ten minutes.” 

Skagway Mayor Andrew Cremata says ferry or plane travel out of Skagway for travelers with active COVID-19 cases is not part of the municipality’s port agreement with Holland America.

“I know that that happens,” said Cremata.

“There’ve been groups of people with COVID at the airport that have been sent home, and they’re trying to fly out, and then there’s groups of people that have been put on the ferry,” he said.

You don’t have to test negative to board one of the state’s ferries or Alaska Airlines flights, but they both have a policy that you should not travel if you are sick.

Laura Bronk and her husband were on the same tour as the Lehrers — then they were on the LeConte, too, after a positive test. Bronk said their tour guide recommended the ferry over a small plane out of town.

She says the cruise company offered them five nights in isolation in Skagway, but they decided to get on the ferry instead. She said Holland was going to reimburse them for the ferry ticket.

“Your vacation’s over, you might as well go home,” Bronk said.

As for the Lehrers, the couple plans to catch flights from Juneau home to the East Coast. They say their symptoms are mild — a runny nose and a little bit of a cold.

If you browse websites like Airbnb and Vrbo for overnight rentals in Juneau, there are dozens and dozens of listings. Many have only a handful of reviews or none at all, suggesting they only recently went on the market as vacation rentals.

City officials are concerned these listings may be eating into Juneau’s already very limited housing stock.

On Monday, the Juneau Assembly approved spending $20,000 to hire a third-party firm to collect data about this market.

“We think of those third-party services principally as reconnaissance,” City Finance Director Jeff Rogers said during an Assembly Finance Committee meeting last month. “They’re snooping, crawling the web, looking at rentals, trying to see how often those rentals are rented, what the approximate rates are. There’s some work that most of those companies do on the backend to line up a rental listing with a parcel and potentially with an owner.”

In the latest business climate survey commissioned by the Southeast Conference, business leaders in the region identified a lack of affordable housing as the top barrier to economic growth. It directly contributes to labor shortages.

The Assembly has also been considering mandating that operators of short-term rentals register their properties with the city. Together, these may be early steps the Assembly is taking toward limiting Airbnbs and similar rentals.

Assembly member Wade Bryson thinks the flurry of new short-term rental listings may be a temporary blip, caused by this weekend’s Ironman Alaska event.

“I think waiting till after Ironman will give us a better understanding of what the community is really going to be like,” he said. “Do people like this? Is it going to be a true problem that just continues to grow? Or do people really be like, ‘Oh my God, that wasn’t as great as I thought. It’s not awesome to bring a stranger into your personal home and let them use your stuff for a week.’”

Bryson urged patience.

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve started its own cruise ship monitoring program this July. Cruise companies are paying for independent inspectors to board ships unannounced and check on wastewater management, emissions, marine mammal protection and compliance documentation.

Glacier Bay used to rely on the state’s Ocean Ranger program for these inspections, but the program was defunded before the pandemic.

Park scientist Scott Gende said the Ocean Rangers were essential to the park’s tourism structure.

“We would not have an inspection program if the Ocean Ranger program didn’t exist,” he said. “We were really hopeful that the Ocean Ranger program would continue.”

Alaska voters started the Ocean Ranger program in 2006 to protect wildlife and waterways from pollution. Governor Mike Dunleavy defunded the program in 2019.

Rangers made sure the large cruise ships followed state and federal environmental rules, especially around the kind of wastewater discharged into Alaska waters. It was paid for through a per person passenger tax the state levied on cruise companies.

The program’s defunding put the park and cruise companies in a tight spot because they signed a decade-long contract that legally commits them to inspections.

“Glacier Bay has concessions contracts, which result in probably the highest standards in the world,” said park superintendent Philip Hooge. “And we work tightly in partnership, really good relationship, with the cruise industry, but we also need to have independent verification on all aspects of our contract.”

The park covers 3.3 million acres, and it’s considered one of the gems of Southeast Alaska. Coastal temperate rainforest is punctuated by deep, glacier-carved fjords and snow-covered peaks. About 650,000 people visit the park each year and more than 95% of them arrive by cruise ship. The National Park Service’s duty is to protect those resources while still making them available to the American public.

They do that through a unique contract system with cruise companies. Cruise companies compete for 10-year contracts to sail the park’s waters. They commit to a number of extra environmental safeguards, like a zero wastewater discharge policy, and random, independent inspections to prove they’re in compliance.

The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation still does port inspections on cruise ships, but Gende says they don’t go far enough. The park needs inspectors that are on the ships while they’re at sail and who arrive on cruise ships unannounced for random inspections. Their independent contractor checks those boxes, but Gende says he hopes it’s a temporary solution.

“We’d be thrilled to death if the state would integrate that into their Ocean Ranger program and we can get some Ocean Rangers back on board. But until then, this is  our approach, and we’re gonna continue forward with these third party inspectors,” he said.

Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, and Seabourn have signed a contract with third party inspectors. The park expects a contract between inspectors and Norwegian Cruise Line soon.

Correction: This article has been updated to clarify that the Ocean Rangers program still exists by statute but was defunded in 2019.

Many Ironman Alaska athletes are scrambling after Alaska Airlines notified them that bicycles shipped through them may not arrive in time for the triathlon in Juneau, which is less than two weeks away.

In an email to customers on Tuesday, Alaska Airlines said that applies to bikes checked as baggage or shipped by Alaska Air Cargo. The airline steered athletes to the Ironman organization to find other shipping options.

Suzanne Rinehart is a college administrator in the Chicago area who’s been doing Ironman races for a decade. Now 51, she said she was looking forward to doing her last, full-length Ironman in Alaska.

“I invested a lot of training — it’s a little frustrating to think of all the training I put in,” she said. “And now I’m this close, and then everything kind of raveled and fell apart at the last minute.”

After she got the email from Alaska Airlines, she looked into last-minute couriers. The options are limited and expensive. Some require disassembling the bike. Alaska Airlines offered her an earlier flight to Juneau to beat the rush, but that would mean spending a lot more on accommodations, taking more time off work, plus extra headaches coordinating with her travel companion.

So she decided to cancel her whole trip.

“The bike thing was the last straw for me,” she said.

Mike Arabia is still headed to the race from southern California. He said he got quotes to ship his bike into Juneau through UPS and FedEx for around $1,000. But he was able to get an assurance in writing from an Alaska Airlines agent that his bike would arrive by Aug. 5 — two days before the race.

“I’m going to have to cross my fingers and hope that this agent that I chatted with … is correct,” he said. “And that my bike makes it there before race day.”

Like Rinehart, Arabia’s unhappy about the last-minute communication for a foreseeable problem. It’s too late now, but affordable, third-party options for shipping bikes are available with more notice.

“Shame on Ironman. Shame on Alaska Airlines for not coordinating early,” he said.

Ironman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Alaska Airlines said they’ve been communicating with the Ironman organization for the last year with a goal of getting important travel information to athletes. The airline said its email to customers about bike capacity was a backstop, “in the event they had not heard from the Ironman organization.”

Other athletes do appear to be opting for some of those expensive shipping options. Ken Hill owns the shop Juneau Bike Doctor. He saw a thread about the bike issue  on Facebook and offered up his shop as a shipping destination and storage spot for athletes sending bikes ahead of their flights.

“The phone’s been going crazy and our Facebook messages as well,” he said. “I literally can’t step away from my computer without it piling up.”

Within 24 hours, he said 30 to 40 people took him up on the offer. He said he expects bikes to start showing up on Monday.

Travel Juneau, Juneau’s destination marketing organization, has been working closely with the race organizers. Executive Director Liz Perry said the race organizers and airline are working together to smooth things out.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Alaska Airlines did not respond to a request for comment. The reporter failed to make a request.

 

A floatplane heading to Katmai National Park and Preserve crashed Tuesday morning while departing Anchorage, injuring six of the seven people onboard, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Two were seriously injured, four suffered minor injuries and all six were taken to area hospitals, said Clint Johnson, head of the NTSB’s Alaska office. The seventh person was not injured, according to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport Police and Fire Department.

Johnson said the passengers were visitors from the Lower 48 flying with Regal Air, which offers flights to Katmai, famous for its bear viewing.

The de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver had just lifted off from Anchorage’s Lake Hood Seaplane Base when it crashed back into the water a little before 9:20 a.m. Tuesday, Johnson said.

“So it was during the initial climb phase, it crashed shortly after takeoff,” he said.

Beyond that, Johnson said he could not comment on any early indications as to what went wrong.

Airport Police and Fire Chief Aaron Danielson said the pilot reported a gust of wind struck the plane as it was taking off, and the pilot tried to correct its course. The pilot and passengers were able to exit the crashed plane on their own, and nearby good Samaritans jumped into the water to help them out, Danielson said.

The plane was partially submerged following the crash, and Regal Air was working with its insurer to remove it from the water, Johnson said. After that, investigators would examine the wreckage, he said.

Reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, Regal Air declined to comment.

A new report compiled by geotechnical engineers shows that Skagway’s busiest cruise ship dock is at significant risk for rockslides impacting the dock, moored ships, cruise ship passengers and workers.

Of one slide area, the report warns of “significant risk associated with complete failure” with catastrophic results, including “risks to life and property.” The study’s authors go on to say that the slope’s movement is speeding up, suggesting that “the failure event is approaching.”

At its latest meeting, the borough assembly asked the dock’s owners, White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad, to stop using the portion of the dock in the active slide area. But the next day, municipal officials agreed to instead rearrange passenger foot traffic to try to reduce the risk.

KHNS’ Mike Swasey spoke with Skagway Assemblyperson Reba Hylton about the report and the new pedestrian traffic flow agreement.

Listen:

This interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Mike Swasey: Assemblyperson Reba Hylton thanks for joining us. Let’s jump right into the big news coming from the rock slide area right above Skagway’s busiest cruise ship dock, the railroad dock. The municipality brought in scientists to study the slide area. They released a report this week. What did that report say?

Rebe Hylton: Here’s one quote that got everyone’s attention. “It is our opinion that the slope conditions observed during our site visit display significant hazards to people and structures below the slope.” That’s scary, right? I used to work down there. I have friends that work down there. I have a family member that works down there.

Mike Swasey: I work down there four or five days a week. And I look up at that giant rock that’s perched and has been moving at a couple of inches a year now ready to come down at any time. And I think, what’s my best escape route? That’s what I think when I’m down there. It’s incredibly frightening.

Reba Hylton: Absolutely. And when they first started monitoring this, you know, it was moving at the tune of one and one-and-a-half inches a year. And now this new report released said it’s moving to two-and-a-half inches per year. So historically, we don’t have more data than a few years old, unfortunately. But I mean, you hear those facts, and it’s pretty frightening.

Mike Swasey: Now White Pass is claiming that the rocks that could cause damage on the railroad dock are coming from municipal land. So they’re municipal property. How did the assembly respond to that?

Reba Hylton: Whew, man, it was hard. It was a four-hour meeting. This was the hot topic. Basically, everyone is liable. We all know what’s going on down there, and we are putting not only ourselves at risk, but we’re putting all of our guests that come into this port that are docked on that side in risk. And it’s unacceptable.

Mike Swasey: And so then the Assembly said, well, let’s ask White Pass to stop using the area next to the biggest slide. And then tender people from the aft position. You had a meeting with municipal officials and with White Pass on Friday morning. What sort of agreement did you come up with?

Reba Hylton: What we did is we looked where there’s most of the congestion, with people congregating in the most dangerous spots down there. That’s right below the rock slide where failure is going to happen at some point. So we’ve come up with a plan together to basically rearrange the flow of traffic down there. And it’s going to be hard for people to wrap their heads around it. It’s late in the season, but we have to make changes because we know the risk now. It’s on paper, and it’s eye-opening, and we had to do something about it.

Mike Swasey: And what are the changes going to look like?

Reba Hylton: The security area where people get back onto the ship will be moved further south. The whole area where the coffee shop is and where the shore excursion booths are, that will be moved — not the caboose itself, I believe the caboose will be closed down. M&M (tour sales) will be closed down. That circular turnaround will not be available to anyone but SMARTbus, but even SMARTbus will be loading further north — just north of the restrooms down there.

Mike Swasey: And when do these new developments go into effect?

Reba Hylton: Immediately.