On a clear day in September, Kevin Forster made his way across a sheer rock wall that towers over the Lynn Canal.
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Forster is a lifelong climber, but that day he had some extra help. He was traveling across the slope using cables and rungs he had installed there himself.
“I was up here a lot with a drill,” he said.
The Haines local spent much of the last two summers dangling from rock faces, power tools in hand. Day after day, he hoisted himself up and drilled metal rungs and other fixtures into the mountainside. He was building an assisted climbing route that soon will become the community’s newest attraction.
This type of protected route is known as a via ferrata, which is Italian for “iron way.” They’re common in Europe and increasingly popular in the U.S. But there’s just one in Alaska. It’s in the Tordrillo Range, west of Anchorage, and you can only get there by helicopter.
Until now. Forster and his family have been building out their own via ferrata in a remote cove about halfway between Haines and Skagway.
It’s called the Halutu Skywalk. Starting next Spring, they hope to provide something different from existing tours in the Upper Lynn Canal, which mostly revolve around large-scale cruise recreation.
“How can we come up with something that is a little bit more intimate, is a little bit more grounded in: What is the wilderness of this place? And what is the connection with the land here?” Forster said.
Forster said he used to think a via ferrata was just a “cute, playground version” of rock climbing. But his perspective shifted as he built the course and noticed how the metal rungs and cables let climbers experience more of the landscape and move in ways that they otherwise couldn’t.
“In some ways it’s almost cooler,” he said. “With via ferrata, you set off on this voyage, and you get to move through the landscape in a way that feels a little bit more explorative, adventurous.”
All summer, Forster and his wife, Jess Kayser Forster, brought locals along to practice the tour so they could smooth out any wrinkles. Taking the trip means boarding a boat in Haines and cruising to a remote, protected cove.
As one group of five clambered ashore earlier this month, Kayser Forster offered a word of caution.
“Okay, there are loose rocks, uneven footing. We encourage people not to run or jump,” she said.
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Everyone put on harnesses and listened to a safety briefing. Each person gets two carabiners they must use to stay secured to the route. Forster told them that the golden rule of via ferrata is that at least one carabiner must be attached to a cable or rung at all times.
“There’s only one thing that you can really screw up today, and that’s to unclip yourself completely from the system,” he said.
After a practice round, the group set off on one of the three routes in the cove. The route is called the Whale Rider because humpbacks often feed underneath it.
The first stretch is pretty exposed. U-shaped rungs drilled into the rock are the only things between climbers’ feet and the fjord below. The rest is less challenging physically and mentally; the slope isn’t as steep, and there’s some earth beneath the climbers instead of just the cold Alaska ocean.
Later in the day, Forster asked if anyone wanted to try the hardest route. It’s called the Leviathan. This reporter was the only one to take him up on it.
Mid-climb and several stories above the ground, Forster said his favorite part of via ferrata is that it offers an entry point to climbing, hiking and the outdoors.
“Some of the people who come and do this will be like, ‘I could never imagine myself doing anything like this, and I can’t believe that I did that,’” he said. “I think it’s rad, because it exposes people to this type of environment.”
Forster acknowledged that any type of outdoor tour can be risky, especially when the climbers themselves are ultimately responsible for staying secured to the route. But he’s confident in the operation, which he said is guided and built to via ferrata standards. They received their official stamp of approval from an engineer days before the last test run.
Haines tourism director Reba Hylton tagged along for the day. She wasn’t sure she’d do the climb – but ultimately went for it.
Hylton said it was exhilarating, largely because it pushed her boundaries physically and mentally. She thinks the tour will be a perfect addition to Haines.
“We are branded the adventure capital of Alaska,” she said. “And I think this is just the epitome of that.”
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