A view of the largest rock mass geotechnical engineers say will fall eventually, “Such failure will be catastrophic in nature with significant risks to life and property. ” (Mike Swasey photo)

A new report compiled by geotechnical engineers shows Skagway’s busiest cruise ship dock is at significant risk for rockslides impacting the dock, moored ships, cruise ship passengers, and workers. At its latest meeting, the borough assembly asked the dock’s owners, White Pass and Yukon Route, to stop using the portion of the dock in the active slide area. But, the next day municipal officials agreed to rearrange passenger foot traffic to try and reduce risk. KHNS’ Mike Swasey spoke with Skagway Assemblyperson Reba Hylton about the report and the new pedestrian traffic flow agreement.

SwaseyAssemblyperson 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?

The view of the rock mass from the north shows the scale of size. The movement of these rocks has accelerated from 1″ – 1.5″ per year to 2.5″ per year. (Mike Swasey photo)

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.

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.

Boulder arrangement north of the northernmost slide area. (Mike Swasey photo)

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 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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

This photo shows the northern active slide area. Hydro-scaling has been done to remove some hazards from lower on the mountainside creating the dirt shoot. Some equipment installed by WPYR geologists have been tracking movement since the 2017 slide. (Mike Swasey photo)

Swasey And what are the changes going to look like?

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. And so SMARTbus will be using the turnaround area but we’re going to make that turnaround area smaller because we’re going to open up to allow the flow of people to not bottleneck so much but just to get them out of that area. And everyone will be meeting further north of the restrooms that are down there on the pier. Which is also going to close off the parking lot to the small boat harbor just the one that actually lines the boardwalk there.

Swasey And when do these new developments go into effect? 

Hylton – Immediately. 

SwaseyAssemblyperson Rebecca Hilton, thank you for filling us in on the latest on what’s happening on the Railroad Dock. I appreciate it. 

Hylton – You betcha.