Pilgrim Hot Springs finishes off busy season
Last Friday, October 2, Pilgrim Hot Springs closed their gates to visitors for the winter. With new staff and a myriad of construction projects, the site has witnessed a complete transformation over the last few months, and those involved hope that this year’s improvements are just a taste of what’s to come.
Amanda Toerdal, the hot springs’ new manager working for Kawerak, said the ball really got rolling after the seven-mile road connecting the site to the Kougarok Road was repaired in late July, allowing regular vehicles to access the site.
Not long afterwards the site’s two new caretakers, Marisa and John Niell, moved into a small cabin near the springs.
“They’ve been there keeping track of visitors, checking permits, and also really hitting the ground running with projects,” Toerdal said. “We’re just really lucky that our caretaker John Niell has so much experience with construction and running a lodge in Alaska.”
The Niells were starting a relaxing retirement on Lake Louise in southcentral Alaska when Marisa heard about the opening for a Pilgrim caretaker while she was visiting their son in Nome.
They had reservations at first, since just two years ago they had sold off the guest lodge that they had run for decades, but they ultimately decided to apply, and are happy they took the leap.
Since the Niells arrived they’ve built a double outhouse near the pools and cleared out a huge amount of wood and metal debris from various locations around the site. They also helped move in three new guest cabins, which they plan to open up to overnight visitors next summer.
“They’ve also been dealing with beavers,” Toerdal said. After years of abandonment, the industrious critters have moved back into Pilgrim in full force, damming up waterways and causing lots of flooding.
“There’s the biggest beaver lodge I’ve ever seen in my life – it’s about the size of this cabin, it’s huge,” caretaker John said one Sunday morning, the last one before they closed up for the season. “There’s one small dam we can get to, and every morning we go over there and tear it out.”
“We’ve been battling with them every day for a couple weeks now,” Marisa added, smiling and holding up a broken ski pole they had pulled out of the dam that day.
Beavers aren’t the only animals to make Pilgrim their home, either. When the Niells were cleaning debris out of the overgrown church and orphanage buildings, they were surprised to find one of the buildings full of bird droppings and rabbit carcasses. An owl had made the rundown building its home.
“They’re really wreaking havoc in there, so we’re going to try to get all that closed up for the winter,” Marisa said. Even just taking an inventory of everything sitting in and around the hot springs has been a major task over the last few months.
One of their favorite parts of the job has been digging up relics of Pilgrim’s past. John recounted finding a wood-fired pressure cooker taller than a person, a horse-drawn plow and a hand-cranked butter churn, among other historical treasures.
Marisa said the old church and surrounding buildings may one day become a museum, offering a glimpse into how people there lived more than one hundred years ago. “It’s a super interesting place,” she said. “I can’t wait to see what they end up doing over there.”
But she said the best part, for her, has been the people who come to enjoy the springs, especially the children.
She and John marked down more than 700 people visiting between August 3 and October 2. Their busiest day, the Sunday before Labor Day, saw a record 53 visitors, many of them families.
“The kids are the greatest part of this whole job. It just makes you cry to think about,” she said. “They get here and they’ve got their little rubber toys and their blow-up ducks, and they’re so excited.”
“And most all of the parents have one heck of a time getting the kids out of the pool,” John added, laughing. “They just don’t want to leave.”
Because the COVID-19 pandemic has shut down most pleasure travel, the vast majority of visitors have been Nome locals.
“We haven’t really advertised a lot because I don’t want that flood of people coming in, just because of how things are in the world right now,” she said. “In a lot of ways, it’s allowed us to have a slower start, which has been good.”
There are lots of plans for the site going forward, including a museum, agricultural fields, a geothermal energy plant and an event space. But not much is set in stone just yet. During the winter the front gates will be closed, although the site will still be open for people to come in by snowmachine, if they contact Kawerak for a permit.
Next spring, Toerdal said they might fly in the Niells by helicopter so they can do some construction before the Kougarok Road opens. By then, the overnight cabins will hopefully be up and running and the site will be ready to welcome a new wave of summer visitors.
John and Marisa said they’ll be spending the winter at their cabin near Talkeetna, but that they’re excited to come back to Pilgrim next season.
“It’s been a great summer,” John said. “It’s been an awesome, awesome experience,” said Marisa. Toerdal echoed their sentiment, thankful that so many people had come together to help make the site better, and excited about what lies in store.