Chichagof Island

 The view from the gondola window this morning.

The itinerary lists this location as Icy Straight Point. The locals refer to it as Hoonah, the iPhone locates it as Chichagog Island and, as our tour guide also referred to it as such, I will too. It seems to me that this place has not yet found its identity or its feet as a tourist destination.

It’s remote, only 800 permanent residents and clearly newly started on capitalising on this. Give it another five to ten years and it might give Sitka and Skagway a run for their money if they can settle on a few key decisions. How to provide food where the people are, adventure or wildlife preserve, access to the views. 

Initially, I think maybe they were going for ski resort? But the only access to the top of the hill was bus, not ideal. Gondolas to both the top of the mountain and a few shops - there doesn’t seem to be a town to visit - are a recent addition. The free gondola to the shops is a neat innovation on the ubiquitous shuttle bus, someone was thinking with their branding brain there, and the costly gondola to the top of the hill offers better views than you get once you arrive. You can just see it amongst the trees here.

At the top there’s a ‘work in progress’ tourist area offering several tours that you must have purchased tickets at the bottom of the hill for, wouldn’t THAT be annoying, and a zip line. The zip line looked terrifyingly high - sort of ran parallel to the gondola and at about the same height. It was temporarily closed due to bear activity. The guide said “it’s like a sushi train for them”. They think they can hang out near the trees and swipe themselves some fresh meat. 

We rode up, looked at the look out, realised there was nothing to do up there until our ride through the forest & turned around pretty much straight back down. Fortunately the ticket is an all you can ride affair, otherwise … annoying & expensive.

We rode the free gondola to the Heritage centre, not much there either except a bazillionty cruise ship people. Two ships in port so that’s 8,000 people looking around for what to do just like us. I went to the ‘museum’ but it was actually a standard souvenir shop with a few ‘history notes’. There were a few places to eat, jam-packed & there were a lot of Dad’s skimming stones at the water’s edge to occupy bored kiddos.

We were also hot and carrying the many jackets we had been shedding as the day warmed up. During our forest tram ride (back at the top of the hill) the guide noted the warm-for-them day, 17° heat wave, although they had some extraordinary heat last year up to 40° for which they are just not prepared at all. 

 

The ride was an extremely dusty in an open trailer down a dirt path, not as advertised, but some pretty scenery and the air coming off the snow finally made it cool enough to put at least one layer back on.

This place has potential if they can overcome their identity crisis, but I wouldn’t put it on your bucket list for about a decade.