The rockslide mitigation above Skagway’s cruise ship dock entered an important new phase this week (2/24). And officials hope to have the dock ready for the start of the season in April.

Skagway is gearing up for tourism season, and a full cruise ship schedule. Securing the Railroad dock will be pivotal to a successful season. The dock can berth two cruise ships, and it was shut down by emergency order last July after a series of rockslides made it unsafe. 

The municipality of Skagway moved quickly to fix the problem. Crews pushed down the loose rock earlier this winter, and this week they started staging the nets that are used to control falling rocks.

On Wednesday, Skagway Mayor Andrew Cremata watched as helicopters flew pieces of netting and brought the material up the slope. 

Cremata: “It’s a big success story for Skagway, using our municipal funds to protect the private dock and protect our entire industry and the business owners in town. It shows how highly responsive the assembly and staff have been in dealing with this issue.”

With the possibility of visitors being injured by falling rocks, the focus is on safety.

Cremata: “We are trying to meet our highway standard. So we are going to be driving busloads of cruise ship passengers beneath the slide area, so we need to know that it meets the same standards as if you were driving on the highway or any other road that has mountains next to it, so that we’ve maximized safety and can feel safe bringing people under the slide under that scenario.”

Cremata says many experts are watching the process

Cremata: “There are multiple companies, so we have the people we’ve hired, engineers, rock experts, geologists, White Pass (and Yukon Route Railroad) has as well, and Holland America has hired their own experts. So there’s a lot of eyes looking at it, it’s going to be the absolute safest it can be.”

The mitigation measures will include a drape mesh and two attenuators. According to the Federal Highway Administration , a drape mesh is a strong net spread over a slope to control the descent of falling rocks and restrict them to a catchment area.

Attenuators are flexible barriers not attached at the bottom. They are similar to a fence, and have a loose section of material laying on the slope below them. This slows the rocks and prevents them from launching off the slope and towards the dock. 

Cremata says there is a real risk of that happening.

Cremata: “A little above the center of the slide area, there is a hump there. And that hump causes rocks that come down to kind of launch off of the slope. So that’s one of the big problematic areas because when they launch off and there is nothing to impede them, they become a force of nature.”

As a final measure, along the dock there are concrete blocks stacked up with a net on top. This is meant to stop any rock from reaching the dock.

The dock operator is taking additional precautions. Tyler Rose is the director of planning at White Pass and Yukon Route. He says passengers will take a shuttle bus or boat from the ship instead of walking off.

Rose: “With the assessment and mitigation measures in place, as far as moving people on the dock it was determined that we didn’t want to have passenger traffic walking across the dock.”

Because there is limited space on the dock, passengers will be bussed from the aft berth. When a boat is docked at the forward berth, its passengers will be tendered to shore using a small boat.

Kyle Brennan is a geotechnical engineer with Shannon & Wilson, the Seattle-based firm in charge of the mitigation. He says it has been an interesting project.

Brennan: “As an engineer sometimes we deal with run of the mill stuff that’s kind of boring, and sometimes we get to work on really interesting projects that are technically challenging and logistically challenging, and this is one of them. It’s a project that’s exciting to me, it’s been fun to work on.”

Brennan says the rockslide mitigation system offers an appropriate level of protection.

Brennan: “We have selected a safety profile that we believe is consistent with a sensitive infrastructure facility like this dock.”

The work on the slope should continue into March. By early April the crews will test the system, just in time for the beginning of the tourist season. The first cruise ship scheduled to berth at the railroad dock will arrive on April 18th.