The new net is 35 ft. tall. (Abbey Collins)
Last year, two rockslides came down right beside Skagway’s largest cruise ship dock. The slides drew attention to a potential safety issue, and motivated a local company to upgrade its infrastructure.
White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad official Tyler Rose is pointing to a large net, secured to a steep cliff adjacent Skagway’s railroad dock.
White Pass owns the dock that sits next to the slide-prone area.
In the summer, cruise ships pull up to the dock, and visitors walk from the boats into town.
“As you look up and down the entirety of the valley, there’s quite a few of these gullies and slides,” says Rose. “It’s just one of the risks within the area. But because there is exposure in the timeframe when people will be in this area, that’s why the original net was put into place and why we’ve now made the upgrades to put this into place, is because of the traffic and people through there.”
Last August, after a period of heavy rain, the mountainside slid. At the time, a smaller net, installed in the early 1990s, was in place. It did it’s job, though some debris made it onto the dock.
White Pass had the area assessed and the dock was determined safe for continued use.
The cliffside slid twice in 2017. (Abbey Collins)
But, after more rain, a second slide occurred in early September.
“With the fall on Sept. 5 it overcame the existing net that was there that was slightly lower and not nearly as large,” says Rose. “That net was about 6-7 ft. This is 35 ft. tall.”
After the September slide, White Pass had a geotechnical assessment done. They determined this new, much larger structure was the best way forward.
“The design behind it is so that it can take the shock of the rocks and then comes into the fence and drops down into the catchment basin below it,” says Rose.
Rose says, in his more than 15 years with White Pass, the September slide was the largest he’s seen in this particular area.
“The mass of material came all the way almost up to the dock,” says Rose. “So we had an excavator down here digging out and then had a crane lifting out the material and clearing it out of here so it broke free. And you can see over here on the pipe where the pipe was struck. And we’ll be replacing the rails, they’re being galvanized. Those were the two areas of the strike.”
In addition to the new net, the company installed survey markers, allowing the it to monitor movement on the mountainside.
