Glacier Point looms through the fog. (Berett Wilber)

Skagway-based tour company Alaska Excursions is requesting a new permit to run an ATV tour on their property in a remote area of the Haines Borough. But their effort is facing opposition, including a group of ex-employees who allege the company isn’t taking safety seriously.


Glacier Point is an area of wilderness on the Chilkat Inlet near Haines, where the Davidson Glacier calves into a lake. Alaska Excursions wants to expand their tourism operations in the area. That became contentious last week when a group of ex-employees testified at an Assembly meeting about the company’s safety precautions.  

Alaska Excursions runs about 15,000 tourists from Skagway to Glacier Point each summer by motorboat, before canoeing them to the face of the glacier. They’d like permission to double their capacity to 30,000 passengers and to start an ATV tour that would run on company owner Robert Murphy’s private land.

“We are not making a course where you’re going 60 miles per hour and ripping all over the place,” Murphy said. “It’s not going to be noise invasive because we absolutely do not want to disturb our other product out there.”

Environmental and safety concerns were brought up during the meeting.

Stacie Evans is a seabird biologist. She was one of many people who felt heavy motorized traffic would negatively affect the arctic tern colony at Glacier Point. She said it wasn’t just an environmental issue, but an economic one.

“Our tourism industry is unique, and it sets us apart from places like Skagway, because people find a more authentic wilderness experience,” Evans said. “The best thing about a sustainable resource like a healthy ecosystem is the less we mess with it, the more valuable it is.” 

But it was testimony from former employees of Alaska Excursions that motivated the Assembly to schedule a special meeting to discuss the permit, rather than move forward on it immediately.

 Jojo Goerner, who worked as a naturalist for Alaska Excursions.

“During my time at Alaska Excursions, I came to learn that safety is not a priority. It is profit, nearly at any cost,” she said.

She said management had been unresponsive when guides asked for medical equipment that might be necessary to save guests.

Murphy’s response was that beyond basics, it was more of a liability to have untrained guides administering medical care to tourists when professional assistance was minutes away by helicopter.

Boat captain Ray Staska worked for the company for three seasons and described drifting in 10-foot seas with a boat of tourists, after losing power in two of three engines while running from Skagway to Glacier Point. He called the company’s permit request “absurd,” because of what he feels is poor attention to boat and engine maintenance, and rough weather.

Ben Altman-Moore, who was one of about a dozen guides who lived at the Point full-time during the summer, also felt the company pushed their captains too far.

“I repeatedly experienced the Alaska Excursions office coerce captains into trying to make the run, even when wind readings at Eldred Rock exceeded the stated company policy for cancellations, which is small craft advisory.”

Sometimes, it became dangerous, Altman-Moore said, listing incidents in which wind and waves cracked boat windows, ripped off doors, sent water into the cabin, and temporarily stranded passengers.

Murphy said there is a set policy to judge weather, but unpredictable conditions mean that boat captains sometimes have to make calls to turn around when the office can’t.

Guides who lived at Glacier Point expressed concern that there wasn’t a reliable way back to Haines if there was an emergency when tours weren’t running. A 14- and 16-foot boat were available, but guides say they weren’t safe in anything but the calmest seas.

Murphy said those boats weren’t intended for true emergencies, just convenience.

None of the guides or captains spoke out publicly about their safety concerns when they worked for Alaska Excursions. They didn’t want to be fired, Goerner said.

Almost all the guides that are speaking out now found out earlier this fall that they would not be invited back to work next season.

“What you’re hearing from, almost exclusively, is staff that were not invited back to the company for various reasons,” Murphy said. 

He noted that the Glacier Point operation is inspected yearly by the Coast Guard, and cruise companies he contracts with also have the right to investigate any safety issues. He said Haines EMTs are welcome to assess the medical resources available at Glacier Point.

Luke Rauscher, the maintenance manager at Excursions, asked that the Assembly take an objective point of view.

“Realistically, we have a really strong track record when it comes to safety,” he said. “We haven’t had much an aspect of problems when it comes to running people back and forth, landing, and going up to the glacier itself.”

But Alaska Excursions has had some serious accidents, if unrelated to their canoe tour. One of their tour vehicles overturned last summer near Dyea, injuring more than twenty people.

Twenty-two people, many of them current employees of Alaska Excursions in Skagway, sent letters supporting the permit. According to Murphy, only a small proportion have ever been to the Glacier Point site. Six people wrote in opposing the permit.

Murphy said it would be inappropriate to try and address every claim leveled by former employees that had an “ax to grind with the company” at an Assembly Meeting.

Assembly member Tom Morphet wasn’t satisfied with that.

 “As convenient as it would be to not talk about some of these charges against your safety operation, I think we very much have to talk about them,” he said. “The reason that we permit tours is to make sure that those tours adhere to a certain standard.”

The rest of the Assembly voted to discuss the permit in more detail at a Committee of the Whole on Monday, March 5, at 6:30 p.m. in Assembly chambers.