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Newest road-accessible cabin bearing Lingít name opens to public
- Ellie Ruel
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Sítʼ Yá Hítʼs first reservation is Saturday night
By Ellie Ruel
Juneau Independent
The first U.S. Forest Service public-use cabin in the Tongass National Forest with electricity and a Lingít name was officially unveiled to the public on Wednesday afternoon with a ceremonial ribbon cutting.
Sítʼ Yá Hítʼ, which translates to “Face of the Glacier House,” is a half-mile walk from the Mendenhall Campground parking lot. Its fire pit area and picnic table below it are a few paces from the shore of Mendenhall Lake, and the Mendenhall Glacier looms across the water.
Jacqueline Pata, first vice president of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, said she is glad to see the Lingít language being used and understood more frequently.
“These kinds of cabins and other access ways happen to what we would call the cathedrals of our world,” Pata said. “And from a Native perspective, there's not a more beautiful cathedral than the one that we live in in our own Tongass. And I'm just grateful every day when you wake up, and you look outside, and you see where we are, how it just swells within your body and your soul, and how much we want other people to feel that way and to share that way.”
The 16-by-20-foot cabin can sleep six to 10 people and has a yellow cedar exterior, a large covered porch with ramp and stair access, and two floors. It’s also equipped with “minimal electricity” that powers indoor and outdoor lighting and a cove heater.
“This is easily our most accessible. All of our other cabins, you have to either boat or hike to, we do not have a drive-up cabin,” said Pete Schneider, a USFS recreation service specialist. “We wanted to get a cabin that hit a mark we didn’t already have.”
Sítʼ Yá Hítʼs construction marked the first of multiple planned cabins in Juneau through the Alaska Cabins Project initiative. The six-year National Forest Foundation program is meant to make “outdoor recreation more accessible, while boosting local economies and supporting sustainable recreation.”
The cabin also received support from partners such as the National Forest Foundation, the Rasmuson Foundation, the Ford Bronco Wild Fund, Coeur Alaska, Juneau Community Foundation and the family of Lynn Wegner. One of those proposed sites at Herbert Glacier was struck down earlier this month due to possible conflicts with mining activity.
“That was part of the same funding, the same effort. So now we're turning our attention towards the others that we're hoping don't have controversy,” Schneider said. “I mean, you always get feedback from the public. Not everyone is in favor of everything we're doing or how we're planning to do it.”
Schneider said that the next cabin would likely be a second at Mendenhall Lake, similar in design to Sítʼ Yá Hítʼ. A cabin project on the Treadwell Ditch Trail is also in the works.
Many of the approximately 25 spectators gathered at the cabin speculated the site would be the most popular one in town, surpassing the 300-night-per-year occupancy rate of cabins like Windfall Lake and Dan Moller. Schneider said he sees the space being used for community and family gatherings, and to give visitors an opportunity to appreciate the Tongass.
“Imagine maybe coming here for the first time, never being into Alaska, but you've been able to somehow secure this reservation,” Schneider said. “I can't imagine anyone not being just absolutely blown away.”
Standing on the shore, Mark Sams looked up at the cabin he helped design.
“This is the first real cabin project I've actually been able to come back out to,” said Sams, a principal engineer with PND Engineers. “Which is fun to kind of see your own work thing, put together, and we were always like, ‘Oh, maybe I can do it a little differently next time,’ or, ‘Oh, that was really good. I'm glad I thought about that.’ That sort of thing.”
It’s not his first cabin design, though. Sams also worked on the Anan Bay Cabin south of Wrangell, which he said shares design features with Sítʼ Yá Hítʼs pan-abode style of construction. His favorite aspect of the cabin is the timber framing and he said he’d like to stay with his family there in the future.
Due to its susceptibility to glacial lake outburst floods, the cabin is built on piers and all the electrical features are raised. Since all the interior wood is treated lumber and there’s no insulation, the cabin itself won’t be damaged even if water gets inside.
Schneider said he hopes the cabin will be able to last for generations. Builders elevated the cabin to a few feet above the water level a 20-foot flood would produce.
“There's no carpet. So the floor could get wet and it wouldn't really be a disaster,” Schneider said. “We made it to be as durable as possible.”
James King retired from the Forest Service a year ago. The celebration let him return to a project he’d helped to coordinate in its infancy.
“We went through an interesting process with the design team of looking at cabins across the Tongass and the Chugach and trying to find the best features of each,” King said. “To marry it all together, that's a challenging process with a lot of opinions, but some of the things you look at, like the huge covered porch, is a big deal that we debated a lot, and decided it was worth it because of where we live. The huge overhangs, building a structure that doesn't take much maintenance long term.”
He said using labor and materials local to Southeast Alaska proved somewhat expensive, but he said he was excited to see interest from the community.
“There are so many of us who live in places that don't have a view like this,” he said. “So, giving that opportunity to people was really exciting and fun to see.”
Sítʼ Yá Hítʼ is available for reservations online. As of Thursday evening, the next open reservation is late December.
• Contact Ellie Ruel at ellie.ruel@juneauindependent.com.
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