Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Work under a $1 million U.S. Forest Service contract to rebuild the observation deck and shelter at one of the prime spots to view bears in Southeast Alaska is finished and the site ready to reopen for the permit season next week – assuming a contractor can get there to pump out the 750-gallon holding tank at the public toilets.

“We are having complications with getting our toilets pumped,” Tory Houser, program manager with the Forest Service in Wrangell, said of the Anan Wildlife Observatory, about 30 miles southeast of Wrangell.

“It is really, really challenging because they have to put a pumper truck onto a boat big enough to bring a big truck, then bring it up here on the high tide and have a tube big enough to (pump) a 750-gallon tank,” she said last week.

A contractor has been ready to make the one-hour, 15-minute trek from Wrangell, but the business needs to change its address with the federal government before it can go to work. Houser said the contractor has been trying to make the change for months but hasn’t succeeded.

“We want people to know we’re trying really hard to have it (pumped) by opening,” scheduled for July 5, she said. “You know, getting the deck done was a piece of cake compared to getting the toilets pumped.”

The new observatory was completed in less than four months. As soon as the snow melted off, Rainforest Contracting out of Petersburg began demolition of the old observatory and started the new build.

“The biggest challenge was being prepared, being ready,” said Jesse West, president of Rainforest. “It could have gone wrong for us, but it went pretty well. We had planned ahead well. We had built the trusses and shaped posts, then broke it down and brought it over in pieces.”

Each of those pieces was flown in by helicopter, then set into place by the work crew.

Houser said the idea to replace the old observatory deck and shelter came around 2017 when various fixes were being done. A contractor at the time said the old deck needed to be stabilized. She said the Forest Service worked with a design service in Juneau, then the design was vetted by Forest Service engineers as well as outside engineers.

The new deck is 18 inches higher than the previous one and goes out an additional eight feet over the creek. The shelter was moved back, since the old one tended to block views. Small solar panels are installed that will help power cameras and viewing screens that will add to the visitor experience, though those will not be installed until next year. There are cameras installed at the upper falls and underwater cameras will be installed below the observatory.

With raising the deck 18 inches, a thoroughfare of sorts is created for bears to pass underneath the structure.

“It will be interesting to see how the bears utilize under the deck because on the old deck with it being 18 inches shorter, there was a lot of areas that were hidey holes that the bears would crawl under,” said Kayleigh McCarthy, a biological technician with the Forest Service and Anan staffer for the season. “There was one habituated resident black bear that would take naps under the deck. You’d see his paws sticking out.”

McCarthy said since underneath is now less cave-like, she anticipates the bears using it as a passageway to get to the creek. “I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of fish scraps underneath at the end of the season.”