Haines bald eagle festival returns Nov. 7-9

An eagle lands in the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve on Jan. 28, 2024, near Haines. (Lex Treinen/Chilkat Valley News)

By Rashah McChesney

Chilkat Valley News

The 29th Alaska Bald Eagle Festival will draw raptor enthusiasts to Haines in early November, though it’s not clear how many people will show up as organizers say event registrations are slow. 

The Chilkat Valley is known as being home to one of North America’s largest congregations of bald eagles due to a late chum salmon run. Warm water in the Tsirku River flows into the Chilkat River, which prevents freezing and draws the fish to continue spawning long after most other rivers have frozen over. That winter food source draws eagles, and people, from all over. 

An annual festival celebrating the gathering will run Nov. 7-9, and requires coordination between many local organizations including Haines Visitor’s Center, Alaska Bald Eagle Foundation and the Chamber of Commerce. 

Here’s more on what they have planned: 

Visitor Center

The Haines Visitor Center has been working to expand winter tourism in the Chilkat Valley and working to coordinate the bald eagle festival has been a natural fit over the past few years. 

That coordination between community businesses and groups includes everything from the Haines Dolphins swim team pancake breakfast on Sunday morning to taking charge of transporting visitors to all of the weekend’s events. 

“Not everybody wants to drive or rent a car,” said tourism director Rebeccca Hylton. 

This year, visitors can buy a $100 pass that will get them access to two buses that will shuttle them around town, including a pickup at the ferry on Friday and drop off on Sunday. The pass includes taking visitors to the Bald Eagle Preserve and a visit to the Jilkaat Kwaan heritage center in Klukwan. 

“That’s a way to recoup some of the costs,” Hylton said. The rate to rent the busses is $150 an hour and the service cost about $4,000 in 2024.  “It doesn’t pay for what we shell out, but it helps offset the cost.” 

Hylton said Takshanuk Mountain Trail owner Barb Nettleton will do most of the driving, but there will be another driver on standby for the weekend if the second bus is needed. 

Additionally the visitors center is hosting an Eagle Fun Run on Saturday morning at 10 a.m., though racers could choose to walk or skip too. That race will start in its downtown parking lot. 

Finally, they’re also paying homage to locals who have done a lot for eagles in the Chilkat Valley. The first year it was Dave Olerud, who started the bald eagle foundation among other things. Last year, Dan Egolf was honored. This year, they’re celebrating Lani and Jones Hotch who will be celebrated at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday at the Haines library. 

Hylton and other festival coordinators said it’s unclear how many people are going to be attending this year’s festival, as registration for some events is down and there’s a lot of uncertainty in the country’s economy which tends to lead to fewer people traveling. 

But, there are bright spots. Hylton said the visitors center will be hosting a set of influencers from Anchorage who will help market the festival to fellow Alaskans. 

“The only compensation we’re doing is providing their hotel, so I feel like it’s a good trade,” she said. 

American Bald Eagle Foundation

The nonprofit American Bald Eagle Foundation is putting the finishing touches on a weekend of workshops, crafts, speakers and a banquet. 

The center is open each day from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and admission will be $15 on Friday and Saturday. Sunday is free. That’s a departure from recent years, but necessary to keep the foundation from losing money on the festival, said avian curator Kathy Benner.  

On Friday, the foundation will host an opening reception at 6 p.m. which will feature speakers Kevin White, a local mountain goat researcher, and Fred Sharpe, whose specialty is the whales of Southeast Alaska. 

On Saturday, speakers include Nick Szatkowski, who will focus on the biodiversity of the Chilkat Valley, and the Takshanuk Watershed Council’s Stacie Evans who will focus on the local bald eagle population. 

Also on Saturday, the center will host a wolf ethology workshop with Giselle Narváez Rivera, the curator of the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota. 

Also on Saturday, the center is hosting a “banquet for the eagles” that begins at 5 p.m. Space is limited to 50 people, includes a potato bar, a live dessert auction and guest speakers. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at www.baldeagles.org/events/

Benner, like Hylton, said she was nervous about the number of attendees this year. 

“We had more buzz last year,” she said. “We were almost booked out on our dinner by this time last year. It’s slow this year.”

The center is looking for volunteers to help with events over the weekend. Benner said she can be reached at director@baldeagles.org.  

A special edition of River Talk

Ordinarily, the Lynn Canal Community Players who organize Haines’ storytelling event River Talk would host one near the end of October. But after some prompting from the Visitor’s Center, Lorrie Dudzik said they decided to delay that event until the weekend of the festival. 

The special edition of River Talk is themed “The Bird is the Word.” 

Dudzik said they have a few people signed up already, including artist John Svenson and Mayor Tom Morphet. But she’s still got a few spots if people have bird-themed stories they’d like to share. 

Ultimately the event will host 7 speakers, speaking for 7 minutes. It costs $7 to get in the doors of the Chilkat Center. 

Hylton said she’s particularly looking forward to this event because it combines some of the best parts of Alaska for visitors to Haines. 

“Really, we’re talking about these people coming here with $10,000 lenses. They’re leading a different lifestyle,” she said. “But everyone is really drawn to Alaska because what we have is very special and the people are very unique here and to think about all of these people meeting in one place and talking story is pretty exciting.” 

Sheldon Museum

The Haines  Sheldon Museum is debuting a new exhibit “The American Bald Eagle: Identity and Symbol.” 

Designer Andrea Nelson said it’s built out around the idea that at the federal, state and local level there is some aspect of the eagle that is part of people’s identity. 

“On the national level, it’s on our emblem so you just see it all over government stuff and official logos. 

You see it in the military, you see it in our souvenirs, you see it on our money and it’s our national bird which is actually new as of last year,” Nelson said. “Locally, it’s through the Lingít moiety system.” 

That local art is one of the first things visitors to Elizabeth S. Hakkinen Gallery will see. It features pieces from the museum’s collection of Lingít artwork depicting the eagle. 

Continuing through, viewers will then see a section on the state’s use of eagle imagery, including more information on the state bounty which saw hunters shooting eagles for $2 each. According to some sources, more than 128,000 eagles were taken for their bounties between 1917 and 1953, with much of that hunting done near Haines. A few more steps takes a viewer into the federal section of the exhibit including post office boxes emblazoned with an eagle on each lock. 

Then, Nelson takes the viewer into global depictions of the omnipresent raptor, including art from the Philippines and a replica of a Kwakwaka’wakw-style transformation mask made by Bill Holm, whose work was famously imitated to create the Seattle Seahawks logo. 

There are also stands that include a bentwood box by Lingít artist Nathan Jackson and work by local artist Sharon Svenson alongside a collection of small totem poles. 

Currently, there’s a large hole in the gallery that Nelson is working around. The 9-foot space is reserved for a new virtual simulator on loan from the American Bald Eagle Foundation. 

She describes it as a screen where viewers get to fly like an eagle. 

“You stand in front of it, and you’re an eagle flying over a river. You need to fish and you’ve got some obstacles,” she said. “There are power lines, there’s lead in some of the fish you catch. It’s like a game, except you’re trying to live and your points are going up and down.” 

Nelson said one thing she enjoys about the exhibit is that it displays several pieces in the museum’s collection that are hard to bring out often. 

“Having the eagle as a theme has given a reason to display them, so the embroidery from the Philippines, the transportation mask  .. it just needed a theme to get them out on the floor,” she said. “People just don’t realize how much of a museum’s collection – and this is common – is in storage all the time.” 

On a deeper level, Nelson said she wants the viewer to take away a more complex reflection of the eagle. 

“On the national level, you know sometimes you have an icon that becomes cliché,” she said, using the example of seashells and Florida and – at some point reducing an object to being a kitschy souvenir. 

“The eagle, I hate to say, pushes that for me,” Nelson said. “It just makes you sort of numb out the real animal. I guess for me personally, working with these objects has made me feel like – even though this is an animal I see every day – I’m looking at it a little differently. I’m appreciating it a little more.” 

The new exhibit debuts the first day of the Alaska Bald Eagle Festival, on Friday at 4 p.m. It will be open through Christmas. 

• This article originally appeared in the Chilkat Valley News.