Meghan Tabacek stepped off the narrow path of the Black Bear Trail in Juneau and pointed to a U-shaped bend in Montana Creek where loose dirt and tree roots jut out over the water.

“If this all were to erode out and cut under the bank, then our whole trail could collapse,” she said. “At first glance, this looks pretty subtle and pretty far away from the trail. But give it like, three or four big storm cycles, and that could really get eaten away.”

Tabacek is the executive director of Trail Mix, Inc., a local non-profit that spends each summer clearing brush, downed trees and — occasionally — landslide debris, on trails managed by the City and Borough of Juneau, the state and the Forest Service.

But mostly, her crews work to strengthen trails against the rain that pummels Southeast Alaska. 

“We’re used to mud,” Tabacek said. “Mud is our bread and butter.” 

What they’re not used to is the intensity of the mud, the erosion and the wash-outs that are wreaking havoc on trails as human-caused climate change makes rainstorms more extreme. Typically, Tabacek says, trails have a lifespan of 10 to 20 years before they need major maintenance. But that’s changing now. 

“The time from when we build a trail or do a refurbishment of a trail to the time it needs touch-ups and fixings is shortening,” Tabacek said. “We’re having to do a lot of maintenance that isn’t technically planned.”

Warmer air holds more moisture. So as greenhouse gas pollution drives up global temperatures, rainy Southeast Alaska is becoming even rainier. According to Juneau’s Climate Change report, Juneau’s average annual precipitation has increased 20 inches in the last century. And a lot of that rain is coming down in atmospheric rivers — periods of heavy, prolonged rainfall that are often accompanied by high winds. 

An atmospheric river in December 2020 brought record-breaking rain that caused flooding and mudslides across Juneau. It also washed out local trails like the Blackerby Ridge Trail, which took weeks to clear and repair. 

Then another storm in 2021 blew down enormous trees that made some trails impassable, like the Herbert Glacier Trail. Tabacek recalls chainsawing and hauling out hundreds of downed trees. 

“Those trees would have dropped at some point anyway. But when we have these big storms and big wind events, then they’ll drop at once,” Tabacek said. “So we’ve been seeing some of these things that we have to react to more frequently.”

Storms may become more frequent over time, but Southeast Alaska’s trail system has always taken a beating. James King, who was the executive director when Trail Mix got started back in the 1990s, says he remembers cleaning up frequent landslides on the city-owned Perseverance Trail. 

That trail was closed just this spring because of landslides.

Like a lot of trails in Alaska, Perseverance was created from an old mining road. Those routes were built to get to resources as fast as possible — not for longevity or climate resilience. 

“They go up narrow canyons. They’re going along creeks,” said King, referring to routes which make trails vulnerable to threats like landslides and erosion. “Some of these trails just aren’t in the right spot.”

Now King is the director of Recreations, Lands and Minerals for the Tongass and Chucagh National Forests. In the Tongass, the Forest Service manages nearly 1,000 miles of trails for nearly 3 million annual visitors.

Even without climate change, upkeep on some of these trails has been disrupted as federal funding fluctuated over the years. But right now the agency is relatively flush. And as they work on a new iteration of the Tongass forest plan, climate change and tourism are some of the most pressing priorities. 

“So rerouting, rethinking how we get people through these places and how we build infrastructure that’s more resilient, that reduces that long term maintenance? That’s a big goal of ours,” King said. 

Building trails with climate resilience in mind might mean putting in larger bridges that can handle larger floods. It might also mean laying down gravel paths to weigh down the soil and stop water from pooling or rerouting trails so they’re less vulnerable to erosion.

Those improvements tend to make trails more accessible for hikers of all abilities too. 

Just down the Black Bear Trail, crews are building up a new fortified abutment for a lopsided wooden bridge. The bridge itself is in good condition, but it falls short of one bank and slumps into the mud. Erosion caused it to collapse. 

“You see trail damage like this, and it’s just like a line of dollar signs floating down the water,” Tabacek said. 

On a sunny spring day, the creek below the bridge is running low and the forest undergrowth is full of fresh fans of Skunk Cabbage and Fiddlehead Ferns. 

“We get a couple weeks of rain and then it gets sunny for two days and everything goes ‘poof,’ she said.

On Thursday, a group of Sitka residents submitted a proposed cruise-ship-limiting ballot measure to city officials for legal review.

On the same day in Juneau, a different group of Alaskans submitted the last batch of signatures needed to put a different limit on the local ballot this fall.

With as many as 1.6 million cruise ship tourists expected to visit Southeast Alaska this year, a growing number of the region’s residents are seeking to put hard limits on the industry. 

That comes even as Juneau prepares for a softer, voluntary limit that would be the first of its kind in Alaska.

In Sitka, it’s the third time that local residents have tried to put a limit on the ballot. Two prior attempts were rejected by the city’s attorney. 

After those failures, organizers created a nonprofit, raised money, hired an attorney of their own, and are trying again with a new draft.

Klaudia Leccese is president of Small Town SOUL, the new nonprofit. She believes Sitka residents are fed up with overcrowding. 

“I’m generally not much of a rabble-rouser. I’m a retired social worker,” she said.

This year, as many as 9,300 cruise ship passengers will visit Sitka on its busiest days, more than the town’s population of about 8,400. On 75 days, the number of tourists will be greater than half the population. 

Sitka has only 14 miles of paved roads, and Leccese said the traffic caused by tour boats and tour buses has gotten out of hand. Lincoln Street, at the heart of downtown, is sometimes closed because the crowds are too large. 

Tour buses run from one end of the town’s road network to the other, shuttling between the cruise ship dock and Fortress of the Bear, where animals live in captivity.

She said she and her husband frequently take their small boat down the coast for a getaway, but even there, they’re awoken by the wakes of passing tour boats.

“You go, wow, I think these wildlife and fishing charters are just a few too many,” she said.

The newly drafted Sitka proposal would limit the number of cruise ship passengers to 300,000 per year, with no more than 4,500 per day. Sitka is expected to see about 600,000 cruise tourists this year.

Small ships — those with fewer than 250 passengers — wouldn’t be included in the limit. That would protect locally run companies, including Alaskan Dream Cruises, which is based in Sitka.

Large ships wouldn’t be allowed before May 1 or after Sept. 30, and the city Assembly could shrink that window.

“Some businesses are uncomfortable with cruise ships starting in April,” Leccese said, because high school and college students — who make up much of the seasonal workforce — aren’t yet available.

Sitka officials are reviewing the proposed measure for legality and will respond by July 2, the city clerk’s office said. If the measure passes legal muster, backers would need to gather 334 signatures to place it on the local October ballot. To call a special election, 556 signatures would be needed.

In Juneau, a proposed ballot measure would install “ship-free Saturdays,” forbidding large ships from landing on that day.

Karla Hart, one of the measure’s backers, said supporters had needed 290 more signatures on their petitions after a preliminary review, and on Thursday, she drove to city hall to drop off 427 more.

If the signatures are certified, the initiative will be on Juneau’s Oct. 1 municipal ballot. 

“We should be good to go,” Hart said.