How the Other Half Does Glacier Tourism

            I got into Christchurch a little after midnight – six hours late, thanks to a delay at LAX - and got through customs and immigration in about fifteen minutes, which is possibly the fastest I’ve ever gone through immigration, anywhere.   I got into the hostel, where a sleepy manager pointed me in a direction of my shared room, mentioning that I had to go through the back garden to get there.   Unfortunately, there were about three different doors leading off of the back garden, and no lights out there, so I couldn’t read any numbers or signs.   All of the doors led to what appeared to be separate buildings, and as I tried the doors, I was a little afraid that I was actually attempting to break into someone’s house.   I went back into the main building, not soon enough to catch the manager before he went back to bed, and grabbed a girl who’d just come out of the shower and asked her if she knew where room twelve was.   She came down with me, but if anything she could see even less in the dark than I could because she didn’t have her glasses with her.   Fortunately, she had a better idea of which adjacent building was actually part of the hostel– so I didn’t have to try breaking in to all three adjoining buildings to find out which one would actually accept my key.   

            I woke up vaguely refreshed at around six thirty, and spent most of the day walking around the city park and botanic gardens, with a slight detour to a big mall a mile away to buy a local mobile phone.   The weather was pretty darn close to perfect – sunny and warm, with a bit of wind to keep it from feeling too hot.    The park was very nice – at some point in the past it had engulfed a golf course, and there were lots of signs along the path warning of flying golf balls.   How knowing about the golf balls might help me avoid being hit by one, I’m not really sure, but I appreciate the effort.   There were also two small stands of huge maritime pine trees, with a sign saying they had been planted in the 1870s.    Most of the trees in the park were pretty incredible – big, rambling numbers with knotty bark.   The botanic gardens were also really nice – there was a small stand of native forest that had been allowed to run wild so to speak, with ferns cropping up all over the understory.   There was also a formal rose garden, a heather garden that looked withering in the heat, and a bunch of hedges and rhododendrons and azaleas.   The rhododendrons seemed to be a tourist attraction in their own right – I saw a bunch of people with tripods, large lenses and polarizers very soberly setting up angles and taking pictures of the flowers.   Ducks were all over the place – mostly mallards, interspersed with a few European and native species, all happily hybridizing away.   There were some punting boats running up and down the small river than ran through the park, as well as a few canoes, manned by people who looked like they knew what they were doing, and a few paddlewheel boats, manned by people who looked like they didn’t.   

            I caught a bus out of Christchurch in the afternoon, and rode for four hours across the width of the island to the west coast.   The mountains were pretty spectacular, the foliage changing from a sheep-dominated grass and heather environment on the dry eastern side, and getting progressively more green and forested (or maybe here the correct term is ‘ferned’) as we got to the west.   The drive was slightly terrifying, less to do with the condition of the road as with the speed of the driver.   Obviously, he was still driving slower than the locals, because the bus was passed at regular intervals by other vehicles.   They seemed to be operating on the Alaskan principle that since there is so little traffic on the road, the odds of meeting an oncoming car while passing on a blind curve are low enough to make this tactic an acceptable risk.   Also, all of the bridges here are one lane, with signs indicating which direction has the right of way.   I’ve been told that the roads are built this way because it’s cheaper to replace them when they get washed out.   On a few of the bridges, the one lane of pavement also overlapped a row of train rails.   I am assuming that in those instances, the train gets the right of way – though this wasn’t specifically stated in the sign.   

            Easily, the most impressive part of the drive was the two or three miles of road immediately after the town of Arthur’s Pass.   Basically, they built the road down the middle of an avalanche chute.   In a few places, there is actually a roof built over the road to catch the rockfall that would otherwise be tumbling right onto the pavement.   Another such arch channels a waterfall, sluicing it over the road and letting it plummet to the bottom on the far side.   

            I left Greymouth early the next morning, and drove down the west coast, where the landscape had changed from a sheep-dominant ecosystem to a cow-dominant one.   I’ve also seen highland cattle, alpacas, and deer (of the farmed variety) since I’ve been here.   After three hours of driving through progressively wet and ferny foliage, I arrived in Franz Josef, where I was to interview for a job the next day.   

            My basic impression of Franz Josef is that it’s the New Zealand version of the Denali National Park entrance area –the locals refer to it as Glitter Gulch.   The gulch resembles a small town that exists entirely to sell t-shirts, accommodation, food, espresso coffee, and adventure activities to the passing hordes of  out-of-state tourists.   Glitter Gulch exists entirely because of Denali National Park; I feel like Franz Josef has the same relationship with its namesake glacier further up the valley.  There are glacier hikes, glacier ice climbing, glacier valley walks, glacier helicopter rides, glacier hot pools (that sounds like an oxymoron; though if I had the money I think they would be fun to try out)…   In fact, the town seems to be so synonymous with the glacier that the non-glacier stuff in the town didn’t even rate a mention in my guidebook.   There is apparently a kiwi breeding center here – I’m taking a tour on Wednesday, and there are, supposedly, glowworms in a few places nearby.   I hiked up to the glowworm tunnels earlier today, but I didn’t bring a flashlight, so I didn’t go very far in.   The tunnel is a 1500 foot long water diversion, which was initially dug to transport water for gold sluicing operations around 1900.    The tunnel is still open, which is interesting because in the US, the whole tunnel would have either been sealed off, or the entrances buried, to keep people from wandering in and getting into trouble.    Here, the entrance is wide open, and there’s a sign telling you to watch your head.   I didn’t go in more than fifty feet, because the only light I had was the flashlight function on my cell phone.  I didn’t know how fast the torch would drain the phone’s battery – and didn’t particularly want to find out when half-way down a pitch black water diversion tunnel two miles from town.   There was about three inches of water in the tunnel, but the footing was decent.   I also saw several tui on the walk out there; this is a native bird with an enlarged white patch on the throat, kind of like a goiter.  

            I did my interview with the glacier guiding company in Franz the next day.   There were three of us interviewees, and we went up on the ice with one of the senior guides for most of the morning.   It was raining fairly steadily; around 7am when I got up, there were some short deluges – the kind of rain that is so loud and intense that everyone in the room glances at the windows and immediately looks a tiny bit more dissatisfied with their lot in life.   The rain had dropped back to a slower, persistent drenching when we left the main building to head out to the glacier.   We walked for a half an hour to get to the fence keeping out the people who weren’t on guided tours, and from there hiked up a tall gravel moraine to an entry point to the ice partway up the glacier.   

            The sheer amount of logistics that come into play to keep the glacier accessible to these large numbers of tourists is really pretty impressive – I had no idea that keeping the ice trails in such good shape was so labor-intensive.   When we got there, there were maybe four or five people dotted up the face of the glacier all swinging ice axes and gouging out steps.   Apparently the steps all have to be recut, or at least, touched up, every day, and the whole trail network is checked for hazards.   The walking was a little tricky with the crampons at first, but thanks to all of this hard work, the footing was generally good.  The sizes of the groups that go up here are, by my usual standards, enormous – eleven guests per guide on the ice, and something like twenty-seven guests per guide on the level walking portion.    We walked back with a guest group to get back to the bus (AJ was staying on the ice to meet a half-day trip in the afternoon) and the length of the line of people straggling behind us as we were walking out felt a little ridiculous.   At least the glacier tour clients are easy to spot – they’re all wearing bright blue guest rain jackets and red crampon bags.   

            The job, if I get it, will be tough, and I am somewhat concerned that the sheer amount of logistics work and safety concerns inherent in these tours will run roughshod over most of the parts of guiding that I enjoy  the most – talking to people, and sharing with them the things that are interesting about an area.   This came up a little bit in my interview – I don’t particularly want a job that’s all tough labor in the rain without any of the upsides of being able to share a place with people.   With the increased logistics work, and the larger group sizes, I am a little unsure how this sort of guiding might turn out.   

            I ‘ve also been in contact with a boat company in on the east coast, and left a message, but haven’t heard back yet.   This is the same place that was supposed to get back to me last week about a date for an interview, but didn’t, which is partly why I came out to Franz Josef first.   However, if they are as disorganized in person as they appear to be over email, there’s always a chance that they might not have finished their seasonal hiring.   I might bus my way over there later this week.   (I have two more nights booked at the hostel here in Franz, but I haven’t quite figured out where I’m going next.   I might also head up to Abel Tasman and the Marlborough area and see what things look like up there.   I feel like I would really enjoy spending time in the warmer, more ocean-ish parts of New Zealand.   Another undeniable downside of a job at the glacier is that I would be spending my whole time in the country in a place that’s cold, wet, glaciated, and looks like Alaska , but with tree ferns.   I didn’t realize until I got here that actually travelling, and, dare I say it, being a tourist, would in any way appeal to me.   I’m a little worried that since I’ve been staying in hostels, and have been exclusively hanging out with other foreign travellers, that the drinking-in-as-many-cities-as-possible mentality is unduly influencing my own ideas of how I’m going to spend the next six months of my life.   (Though I will note that for the record, I am not in on the drinking scene at all.   Not worth the expense.    Plus, tea at the hostels is generally free, and caffeine is more my drug of choice anyway.)   One thing I took away from my two days on a bus to get down here from Christchurch is that the vegetation and landscapes really do change about every three hours of travelling.   I’ve never lived anywhere else where it was this easy to get from climate zone to another.   Plus, there is the undeniable fact that the weather will be better in almost any other corner of the country that I care to visit.   I’ve said before that the only reason that I can work in Alaska every summer and get soaked, and wet, and grow mold on my clothing, and still stay cheerful about it is that after four months, the lodge closes and I have to do something else.   

            Tomorrow, I have another short meeting in town, and then I’m visiting the kiwi center.   (I plan on asking if there is any possibility that they will be hiring anyone for the busy season, although I feel like it’s kind of a long shot.)   A friend from the aquarium once told me that when he visited New Zealand, one thing that struck him was the noticeable lack of any interpretation in their national parks – at least, not on the scale which it is practiced in national parks in the US.   There were all of these wonderful, fascinating, beautiful scenic areas, but there were very little guided walks or interpretive contact.   Today in the interview, one of the managers mentioned something that seems very telling about New Zealand tourism.   Basically, to make a sweeping generalization about the clientele that tend to come here, they are (according to him) twenty-year-olds on a gap year who are drinking their way around the world, and want to walk around on a glacier before heading off to Queenstown to drink some more, and possibly bungee-jump off of bridges.   This, according to him, is more or less what New Zealand tourism is known for, and a percentage of this sort of clientele just isn’t interested in how glaciers form, or their effect on the landscape, or plastic flow, or how crevasses form, or any of it.   From what I’ve seen, this seems pretty true.   Of course, one can easily make such sweeping generalizations about Alaska tourism as well – newly wed, overfed and nearly dead, is the expression about the folks who visit the state on cruise ships.   But the one thing that I most enjoyed about the clients I worked with at both the aquarium and the lodge is how interested they were about learning things while they were there.   

            One thing  I’ve taken away form this is how lucky I am to have ended up guiding for such a boutique operation as the Iceberg Lodge.   Our clients are interested in the natural history, they’re not (usually) on a booze cruise program, and they’re present in small enough numbers, and for a long enough duration of time that I have a decent stab at learning all of their names.  

If you don't like our government, maybe you shouldn't be running it...

            I usually don’t open emails from Shelley Capito, the current senator of my former congressional district, and only partially from reasons of geography.   This time, the title of her email seemed fairly innocuous – a congratulations to West Virginia University, for becoming a member of the Big 12, (even over the objections of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who apparently thinks that somewhere in his job description is a paragraph that explains how it’s OK to mandate how sports team conferences are organized).   Though I did not attend WVU, I have some half a dozen family members who are alumni or current students, and my grandfather is enough of a fan that he bought my parents a Mountaineer lawn gnome as a Christmas present.   (If I had a lawn, I’m sure I would have gotten one, too.)   So keeping vaguely informed about the trials and tribulations of WVU sports teams can be very helpful in making small talk with my relatives back east.

            Unfortunately, the title of Senator Shelley’s email was the electronic version of a bait and switch.   After one sentence saying that she thought it was great that West Virginia had made the Big 12, she jumped right into the sort of subjects that make me consider unsubscribing from her email list.   I’ll quote a few sentences from the press release included in the email.

            “Today, Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., released a new video inviting local businesses to share with Members of Congress how government regulations are holding them back through American Job Creators. The initiative is part of an ongoing effort by Republicans to encourage our nation’s job creators to share their stories about how government impacts job creation.”

            I tried going to the site hyper-linked above, but the AJC share-the-stories form had so many mandatory fields that patently didn’t apply to a normal, non-company-owning person that I couldn’t figure out a way to express an opinion through the site.   I then decided to email Senator Shelley, only to be confronted with a form that required my full ten-digit zip code before I could send anything.   I do, in fact, know my ten-digit zip code, but the site refused to recognize it as a valid US address.   (Funny, the postal service in Seward seems to like it just fine.)   Finally, after a few google searchers, I was able to look up the ten digit zip code for my parent’s address in West Virginia, which I entered, and finally was able to gain access to the heavily defended internet fortification that is Senator Shelley’s online comment form.    Considering that a senator is, at least theoretically, supposed to at least appear to care what her constituents think, she is making it pretty difficult for constituents to even register an opinion.   Unless you’re a business owner – you guys have a whole website set up to solicit your opinions.

            The following is a slightly edited version of the comment I (finally) submitted to Senator Capito through her online form.

            Dear Senator Shelley, I just received your newsletter, inviting business owners to share, and I quote, 'how government regulations are holding them back'.  

            If your idea is to actually get information from business owners on what’s preventing them from hiring new employees- why not actually ask them, instead if blatantly implying that government regulations is responsible for what's happened to our economy in the past three years?    

            For example, I work seasonally as a guide for a private lodge in Alaska.   I don’t own the lodge by any means, but I have worked at the company for long enough that I have a layman’s understanding of how our business model works.   The lodge’s small private acreage is completely surrounded by a huge parcel of land that is federally-owned, and completely off-limits to any sort of commercial development.   Clients patronizing our lodge often do so specifically because it is a base from which to explore this onerously regulated parcel of federal land, which is otherwise known as Kenai Fjords National Park.   Without the government regulations limiting exploitative use of this natural area - as well as the increased visibility and visitation the lodge gets due to our proximity to a national park - we likely would not have a large enough client base to make this lodge a viable business.  

            Because we operate in and near a national park, the lodge I work for must also comply with KFNP’s rules and regulations.     Doing so isn’t, as far as I know, any sort of logistical or financial hindrance, and helps to ensure that all of the various commercial enterprises that operate in the park are all basically following the same rules.   For example, we are only allowed to take a maximum number of twelve clients at a time into certain areas of the park. Some days, keeping our tours within this limit can be a real hassle, but in turn, it helps to assure that all of the other commercial guides are following the same limits.   Basically, it means that my clients and I aren’t going to hike up to our lunch spot one day and find the place overrun with fifty teenagers from an Outward Bound course.   It’s in everybody’s best interests to follow the regulations that KFNP (i.e, the government) has set up, that helps to preserve the wilderness environment that my clients have come to Alaska to see.   

            In addition, KFNP (i.e., the government) has rangers based near the lodge, who keep a periodic eye on what the various private operators in the park are actually doing.   If I decide to take twenty-seven people out to the glacier overlook, instead of the twelve that my permit allows, they are the folks who will be issuing a citation.   Also, as a guide, if I am handing my group in a way that is patently unsafe (walking my clients under an unstable ice ledge, for example) the rangers are the folks who will dropping by to have a word with my boss.   I don’t pretend to claim that my clients have a clear awareness of the park ranger’s role in monitoring what us guides are doing – but I am very sure that every client I have worked with would be happy with the idea that someone in authority is intermittently monitoring the decisions that I make while in the field. 

            So, in our business model, government regulations are an indispensable part of why my employer is able to turn a profit, and continue issuing me a paycheck.   I am sure that many West Virginia tourism companies near the New River National Scenic Area, and around the Monongahela National Forest, have a similar reliance on the fact that the government does, in fact, have regulations on the books that preserves the natural areas from which the state’s tourism companies derive their income.

            Also, if you are really so interested in improving the job situation for West Virginians, why the heck haven't you worked to pass any of the jobs legislation that's come before Congress in the past couple of weeks?   Do firefighters and teachers and police officers not matter as much because they aren't business owners?   Is it because those occupations work within government regulations, (in the case, of police officers, enforcing government regulations in some cases) instead of (apparently) seeing these regulations as some sort of onerous burden, as your email implies of business owners in West Virginia?     

            So, as a constituent, the next time you want my opinion on government regulations, Senator, you can ask for it - instead of implying you've already decided what that opinion ought to be.

Bring on the Kiwi Birds!

            First of all, it’s official – I am going to be spending the winter in New Zealand.   Doing what, I’m still not sure - I’m hoping to find work for at least a few months of the time – but one thing I will definitely  be doing is enjoying warmer weather than will be found up here in Alaska.   I am leaving in a little over two weeks, and I am hoping to be able to sneak out of the Icebox before I have to do any shoveling, snowblowing, or chipping ice off of my car.  

            I originally thought I was going to be staying in Alaska for another winter; unfortunately, the job I had thought I had lined up with a former employer fell through.   Oh well.   However, the longer I think about it, the happier I am that I won't be spending another winter up here battling the elements and staving off cabin fever.   (Which was one of the reasons I started writing a blog in the first place.)   So, I figured as long as I was leaving Alaska for the winter, why not go to a warm-weather vacation spot - as opposed to the glacially-refrigerated rainforest I live in now.   Also, New Zealand has been on the list of places I’d like to visit for several years – ever since I took advantage of a similar temporary working visa arrangement in the UK back in 2006.   The organization that sponsored that program (the British Universities North America Club) also had a similar program in New Zealand (among other places – New Zealand piqued my interest mainly because they speak English, and they have kiwi birds.)   What I didn’t know until a few months ago is that if you just apply for the visa through the New Zealand immigration bureau directly, you don’t have to pay the agency a $500 fee.

            In fact, applying for the work visa was ridiculously straightforward.   Also, it was free.   As in, the New Zealand government is letting me come and live in their country for six months, and the only thing I had to do was to fill out a form saying that I’ve (a) never been convicted of a crime, and (b) do not have tuberculosis.  I filled out the whole form online in about thirty minutes, and they processed it in about three days.   (In comparison, for a New Zealand person to get a similar visa for the United States, it would cost a little under a thousand dollars in visa and agency fees alone – and you have to be in college, or have graduated within twelve months.   Lady Liberty, I think you’re hiding the welcome mat…)   

            Perhaps because it’s free, the visa is a little less spectacular than the ones I’ve got from the UK.   Getting a visa for Britain involved a whole process of sending my passport to a consulate somewhere and then getting it back with a huge embossed sticker and a lot of fine print in a tiny serif font, which the immigration people would minutely examine with a lens and some sort of blacklight pen every time I arrived in London.   

            In contrast, the New Zealand immigration people sent me an email with a number on it.   That's the visa.   All I needed to do was print out the page.   No serif fonts, security codes, or weird hidden passport microchips.   

            Something else I’ve been getting in order is various forms of travel insurance.   I’m changing my medical insurance to a company that will cover me both in the US and abroad.   What’s interesting about this is that I am paying the same premium as I did under my US plan – but I get a $2000 deductible, instead of a $10,000 deductible.   This is just one indication that health insurance costs over here are insanely overpriced compared to the rest of the civilized world.   Want another example?   I was advised by my doctor to bring a three-month supply of my birth control medication with me to New Zealand.   Which sounded like a great idea, except that my (current) insurance won’t approve me getting that much in advance.   Paying for it without their negotiated ‘discount’ would be $90, as opposed to the $45 that I’m usually charged.   However, buying the same amount of the same drug (even without insurance) in New Zealand comes to... about $18.   I ran into this situation in the UK as well – the sticker price of most prescription drugs in other civilized countries is usually well below the ‘discount’ price that my US insurance says that they are negotiating for me.   

        And this is why my friends in Texas stock up on pharmaceuticals every time they visit Mexico…

The End of the Summer

            We wrapped up another season at the lodge about three weeks ago, and Aialik Bay sent us off with three days of nonstop, pouring rain for our shutdown.   Due to bad weather in the Gulf of Alaska, we had to get everybody out a day early, which meant that not only were we cold and wet – we were cold, wet and in a hurry.   Everybody was just trying to buckle down and get everything done.   For my particular department, that meant a lot of time spent sponging a summer’s worth of glacial silt out of our kayak cockpits.   We never really clean them during the season – we just let it pile up over the season, until we get a boat that’s so embarrassingly dirty that we have to clean the worst spots before give it to a client.    Currently, most of our boats are sitting under the lodge building – and getting them under there can be a huge chore, as the things are approximately the same size and weight as an orca whale.   Or at least, they seem that way when you have to carry fifteen of them across camp.   

            The weather at the end of the season was tough.   June was amazing, July was even better, August was rough, September was worse.   And it wasn’t just the rain, either – we had some unseasonably huge storms moving through the Gulf of Alaska.   One or two big storms would have been bad enough, but towards the end it seemed like we were getting them about once a week.   They say that the ocean is always a lady, but sometimes, she’s a bitch.   That’s the side we were seeing for most of the end of the season.   The Iceberg Lodge usually average six days out of a summer where the boats can’t make it out mostly due to weather.  This year we got seven days where the boats didn’t come.   Not seven days total - seven days in a row.   The total number of boat-free days this summer was around a dozen – most (but not all) of which affected guests, and therefore, income.   It also affected my bottom line personally, because I wasn’t working for most of the week of weather – though considering how astonishingly heavy it was raining, I wasn’t complaining much at the time.   Theoretically, I could have done trail work – but the trail that most needed the attention was so muddy that carrying power tools up there would have been downright dangerous anyway.   This was monsoon-style rain – an inch an hour, at times.   Where I grew up in West Virginia, if it rained that hard, you could pretty much guarantee that it would stop in about five minutes – the cloudburst would run out of steam.   In Alaska, it can keep raining like that for three days.  There was so much freshwater pouring into the lagoon that it was even affecting the currents – the tides flooding into our lagoon weren’t strong enough to push against the massive amount of fresh water that was trying to flood out.

            The first week I was back in civilization (or what passes for civilization in a place where the nearest stoplight is over a hundred miles away) became the Iceberg Lodge reunion tour.   It started out with driving up to Cooper Landing right after getting off of the boat to see one of our boat captains playing music at the Kingfisher.   It seemed like everyone in the Alaska tourism industry who was still in the state two weeks after Labor Day (a smaller number than you might suppose) was at that bar.   It felt very, very strange to be around so many people I didn’t know.   After a summer in the wilderness, I think my brain forgets how to look at people and not know who they are.   At the bar that night, I would see a girl with her hair in a ponytail, and automatically think – that’s one of our hospitality girls.   It wasn’t, of course, and the two people didn’t even look much alike, but that was who my brain insisted that it was.    I think that since for four months I was around such a limited number of people – especially younger people, because our clientele is mostly older folks – that my brain basically rewired itself for the smaller number of people it was seeing.  Anyone who vaguely looked like Amber must be Amber, because out at the Lodge, there were very few other choices.   So my brain was matching up strangers with their most probable Iceberg Lodge counterpart – even if the resemblance was as sketchy as the right gender and approximate hair color.   It was a little like seeing ghosts out of the corner of your eye – you know that you saw someone right there, but as soon as you turn to look at them properly, they vanish.   Thankfully, the effect didn’t last for more than a few days.   Leaving a place like that after a season is always a little bit like losing a family; it felt better when I wasn’t constantly being reminded of people who weren’t around anymore.

            Granted, I was seeing quite a few Lodge people in real life as well.   The rest of the week, it felt like I was travelling all over the Kenai, visiting people and taking part in several end-of-the-tourist-season-and-now-we-get-our-state-back celebratory events.   It felt like it was the first time in close to two years that I’d been able to be a tourist in my own state.   I camped out in Hope, Alaska (population 137)  for the Seaview Bar’s last night of the summer (which really is the last official gasp of the Alaska tourist season).   I listened to the Denali Cooks do some good Beatles covers, and then hung out in the middle of the road, dancing in my Xtra Tuffs to keep warm after my friend was thrown out of the bar for trying to bring in beer she’d bought somewhere else.   I woke up the next morning to beautiful weather and hiked out to Gull Rock.   The trail has great views across Turnagain Arm, and I saw some of the Cook Inlet beluga whales (a bona fide endangered species) as I was walking back.   I actually heard the belugas before I could see them – whales are world-class heavy breathers.  I didn’t see them from very close - the trail was a few hundred feet above the water, but I was looking almost straight down at them.   I could see their Moby Dick silhouette in the water as they came up for air, big tails and tiny front fins.   It was very different from the side view of whales I normally see from the boats.   They passed through in about five minutes, maybe twenty of them in all, just cruising along about fifty yards from the shore.   I’ve heard that it’s more common to see the beluga whales in fall, when they follow salmon runs further into the Cook Inlet.

            This is just one example of why the month of September is possibly one of the best-kept secrets in Alaska tourism.   Not because the weather is necessarily better – and in the interior, it can already be snowing this time of year – but because the nice days (when they show up) can be some of the best in the entire year.   For one thing, anywhere you go on a nice day in September, there is a good chance that you will have the place to yourself, as opposed to sharing the spot with flocks of tour buses and rental RVs. Also, rates for motels are often cheaper, and most gift shops are discounting their remaining inventory in a desperate bid to sell off as much of their stock as possible before the last out-of-state wallets depart for the season.   

            Plus, in September, snow is still doing what snow ought to do – hanging out at the higher elevations and looking beautiful.   In most places I’ve lived, during the winter you either had snow on the ground, or you didn’t.   Where I am in Alaska, the mountains are tall enough that the higher elevations start getting snow literally months before we start to see any here at sea level.   From my window (thirty feet above sea level) I can see Mount Alice (4800 feet) – its summit has been getting pummeled with the white stuff for close to a month now, while here at sea level some of my neighbors are still pulling carrots out of their garden.   The snow on the mountains looks beautiful, especially when the trees lower down are still yellow and orange.   Right now, most of the leaves have already fallen, but the snow is still staying put at around 2000 feet.   And over the next month, we all get to watch the snow on the mountains come closer and closer to town.

When Cabin Heaters Go Down in Flames

            A group of guests that I’ll refer to as the Flambé party came to us requesting to extend their stay at the Iceberg Lodge by one night.   Since more people staying in cabins means more revenue for the Lodge, we were happy to book them for a second night.   If we had known that by this point the Flambés had already set their original cabin on fire, we might not have been so eager to let them stay a second night.

            The guest cabins are all heated with propane heaters.   We're in coastal Alaska, and even in summer, it can get pretty cold here.   One of the perks of staying here is that our heaters can really crank out the BTUs on those cold, damp, rainforest mornings.   But when the cabin heaters are turned up all the way, the heater unit itself gets pretty hot.   After an incident in our first season involving a smoldering pair of socks, we put signs above all the heaters warning guests not to put things on top of the heater, as their stuff will catch fire.   We also repeat this in the orientation we give new guests, along with other crucial information, such as what time the lunch buffet is set out, and how to avoid being eaten by a bear.   

            Shortly after dinner, Mrs. Flambé finishes her drink, signs up her family for their kayak tour, and leaves the main lodge building to go back to her cabin.   About thirty seconds later, she sprints back to the bar, collars the manager, and tells him her cabin is on fire.   Armed with a fire extinguisher, our hero manager dashes to the cabin, and opens the door.   Billowing smoke pours out; the only thing visible through the smoke is the flames themselves, which are covering the wall above the heater, and beginning to lick at the rafters.   Geoff crawls through the smoke, and sprays the flaming wall until he’s choking.   He lunges towards his nearest exit –a closed sliding-glass door - and smacks into it like a bird hitting a picture window.    Eventually he gets out, and grabs another, larger fire extinguisher that had been rushed over from the lodge.   Geoff nails the fire again, and the flames disappear under a barrage of chemical goo.   

            What we were left with was a cabin filled with smoke, with portion of the south exterior wall burned completely through, water and fire-extinguisher-juice all over the carpets and the remnants of the south wall.   

            It turns out, Mr. Flambé took a shower right before dinner, and thought it would be a great idea to dry out his bath towel by draping it across the top of the heater.   We could still see a portion of the towel that had burnt itself onto the metal, complete with its little washing instructions tag.   

            The next hour was spent airing our the cabin, and pulling out all of the furnishings that could potentially be soaking up the smoke odor – bedding, pillows, mattresses, curtains, shower curtains, towels (the surviving ones), and lampshades.   In between carting things out of the room, we were all coughing like we had contracted the plague.   Aside from the fact that the cabin was filled with smoke, the stuff that they treat cabin logs with to make them weatherproof isn’t something you want to burn and then go around breathing, apparently.   

            The Flambé party showed rather less remorse than one might anticipate.   They didn’t seem particularly upset that they’d burnt out a wall of their cabin – in fact, one of the Flambés was recording the fire on her camera and cackling with laughter while we were still working to put the blaze out. 

            Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the cabin is still structurally sound.   Unfortunately, we had to chainsaw out a two-foot by eight-foot section of the cabin, and replace it with a 2x4 and plywood frame, which was put up the day after the fire, and hurriedly stained the next day.   (Did I mention that we needed to house clients in this cabin four days after the fire?)    We also disassembled and carried out the bed frames, and all the furniture,  and ordered a rug cleaning machine and ten new pillows from Seward, all the lumber needed to fix the hole in the wall.   Our maintenance man replaced the burned-out heater (which still works, but looks a little too crispy to put back in the cabin.)   Our Hospitality staff have been frantically washing the affected bed linens to try and get the smoke smell out.   The shower curtain has been sitting in a vat of bleach water in a corner of the kitchen; the mattresses are airing out in an unoccupied staff room.   Additionally, all other construction projects in camp have come to a grinding halt while we work to triage the burnt-out cabin back into a livable space.  

          The fire's been a reminder about how fast problems can arise out here.   As isolated as we are here, if things go wrong, all we have to rely on is the skills of the staff, a duffel bag of medical gear, and big shed full of tools and leftover construction debris.  Thankfully, this time it was enough.

            If we ever name our guest cabins (as has been done at one of our sister lodges), we're unanimously calling this one the Campfire Cabin.   And its not because its close to the fire ring, although that’s the excuse we’ll use if the occupants mention a smoke smell...   

            We did end up letting the Flambé party stay their second night.   Through some unfortunate quirk of the lodge work schedule, I ended up being their guide on all of the tours they took over the next two days.   I tried my best to be suave, polite, and professionally congenial - and not think of them as the idiot arsonists who almost burned down my home.    

            Strangely, the Flambés had a really good time during their visit.   Just for the record, if I ever visit a fancy lodge and then accidentally set fire to my room, I will probably be too busy wallowing in mortification to actually enjoy the rest of my stay.   This was apparently not an issue for them.   The final straw was when the Flambés finally left, the whole group (five people, two-night stay) tipped us exactly $12.    Just to clarify, $12 for five people would be considered a bad tip even for a dinner at the pizza restaurant in Seward.   

            Also, since the Campfire cabin incident occurred, the hospitality team has already saved a pair of wet socks left on a heater, preventing a similar blaze from erupting in another cabin.   One of the reasons I love working here is that our guests, by and large, are great people.   Other guests amuse and terrify me by turns...