Local News

As my editor Tom at the Chilkat Valley News reminds me, news is when things don’t  go the way they are supposed to.Haines has been making news lately. We are all still waiting word from the radio station on the fate of Aaron Karitis, a 31 year-old Oregon based heliski guide for SEABA who was buried in an avalanche on Saturday and is in critical condition in an Anchorage hospital.  (Powder Magazine has this report.)In the meantime, one of the most popular statewide stories of the week is about Hannah Bochart and the wolf. The sweet, level-headed puppeteer was involved in a rare, weird, daylight wolf attack while walking the dogs near her family’s upper valley home. Last night’s ferry was so full– and it was the one of the big boats, the Matanuska– that Tim Maust almost couldn’t get his mother Evelyn, 94, on board. She died Saturday morning early, and is to be cremated in Juneau, but no planes were flying what with the snow, and the ferry was packed because of spring break and the Gold Medal basketball tournament. Luckily, he was able to squeeze his car on at the last minute. (There will  be a memorial service Sunday at 11 at the farm church.) Evelyn is immortalized in Larry Kaniut’s “Cheating Death,”  Alaska survival stories. She and another woman, both in their late 50s, survived a mountain-side small plane crash near Point Couverden in 1976 which killed the pilot and Evelyn’s husband. Three days later the pair, who had hiked down to the coast, miraculously flagged down a lone boat of hunters and were rescued. The ladies, both devout Christians, gave God all the credit. The best quote in the most recent Chilkat Valley  News is from fire chief Scott Bradford, concerning a fireworks display last Monday night around ten at the Fort Seward Lodge.  Kelsey Harrell wanted to celebrate her birthday with a boom and a flash. Sleepy residents were wakened or startled, but since it only lasted ten minutes, by the time they called the police it was over.  When Scott was asked why he approved this on a weeknight, he replied, “Thank God somebody in this town wants to have fun.”