Fruit Trees for Haines, Skagway, Klukwan and the Chilkat Valley, Alaska

In the January 1996 cold snap, NOAA's Fraser Camp station, 2,851 feet up at the edge of this map, bottomed out at −54°F. Down on tidewater the Haines airport got to 0°F. That's the story of fruit trees for Haines, Skagway, Klukwan and the Chilkat Valley in two numbers: deep salt water keeps the shore mild, and hard interior cold sits just over the mountains.

The map covers the head of Lynn Canal in Southeast Alaska (Upper Lynn Canal, in the local forecasts): Haines, Fort Seward, Mud Bay and Lutak on the Chilkat Peninsula side, the Chilkat Valley up the Haines Highway to Klukwan, and Skagway and Dyea at the head of Taiya Inlet. Type your address in the box on the map to get the number for your own place, and the list of what we sell that has come through it.

How to read this map

Every spot gets a 30-year planning low, the number our cold hardiness calculator uses for that ground. It leans cold on purpose, a safe number to plan around. The MFTC zone is that number in half zones, the typical winter is an average year's coldest night there, and the spring layer shows how much warmer or colder a still, clear bloom night runs than Haines, our reference town.

Most of this map is mild country by our standards. The middle of the growing ground plans for −15°F, and half of it falls between −17°F and −13°F. On tidewater the warm end is the benches around Skagway at −10°F and the cold end the low ground around Haines and Port Chilkoot at −16°F (zone 5a). Haines plans for −15°F, MFTC zone 5b, with a typical winter around −4°F. Up the Chilkat it's another climate: Klukwan plans for −36°F (zone 3a), and the coldest twentieth of the map's growing ground −33°F or colder. On tidewater nearly everything we sell has come through far colder, so spring frost, snow, wet ground and bears matter more there than the winter low. Up the valley the winter number is back in charge.

Why the map looks the way it does

Start with the water. Lynn Canal, the northernmost fjord on the Inside Passage, is more than 2,000 feet deep and splits at its north end into Chilkat, Chilkoot and Taiya inlets. Deep salt water holds a lot of heat and moderates its shore. The Skagway airport station averages a winter low around 0°F and the Haines airport −5°F, while Moore Creek Bridge, 2,250 feet up in the mountains 10 miles from the Skagway airport, averages −16°F, and Fraser Camp averaged −36°F. That's why every named place on tidewater plans for −16°F or milder.

Cold also reaches the water on a wind. The Skagway and Taiya valleys are narrow slots running down from White Pass and Chilkoot Pass, and the upper Chilkat opens to the interior through Chilkat Pass. When cold air sits inland it comes down on a north wind, what the Weather Service in Juneau calls northerly outflow. In February 2021 Haines and Skagway were forecast at 0°F to −5°F while most of Southeast was forecast in the single digits and low teens. Wind mixes the air, so on an outflow night there's no inversion and no warm bench to hide on. Shelter from the north is what helps.

On a still, clear night it's the opposite: cold air slides downhill and pools. Haines sits on the Deshu Isthmus between Portage Cove and the Chilkat River mouth, with Mount Ripinski rising about 3,600 feet behind town, and cold air off the mountain drains through town to the flats and the water. In the January 10, 1983 cold snap the Haines Terminal station at 175 feet read −5°F while the Haines airport at 21 feet read −10°F, and in the December 31, 1984 snap it was −5°F against −12°F.

Snow splits the map too. Skagway sits in the rain shadow of the coast mountains, with 31.48 inches of precipitation and 44.9 inches of snow a year, against 47.40 inches and 163.9 inches at the Haines airport. Air over snow runs colder on a still night, and in the median year the Haines airport runs 4°F to 5°F colder than the Skagway stations (in the January 2024 cold snap, −11°F against −1°F at the Skagway airport). Up the Chilkat, away from salt water, the Haines 40NW station at 820 feet gets 245.1 inches of snow and averages nights about 7°F colder than the Haines airport, and on the map Klukwan plans about 21°F colder than Haines.

The spring layer draws the bloom picture. The Haines townsite, on its slope below Ripinski, has the best spring reading of any named place on the map. Mud Bay and Tanani run about 3°F colder, Port Chilkoot 5°F and Klukwan 6°F, while the narrow valleys and draws come out worst: Skagway's floor 8°F colder than Haines, and Lutak, Sturgill's Landing and the Dyea Flats 9°F, the coldest spring readings of any named place on the map. Those are small floors and creek bottoms under high walls, where the cold off the walls collects on a still night.

Haines, the townsite and Fort Seward

The Haines town point sits at 72 feet on a slope 80 feet above the local low ground, where cold air drains past instead of settling. It plans for −15°F (5b), with a typical winter around −4°F. Within 3 miles the floor plans for −16°F, the benches −13°F, the warmest tenth of the ground −12°F and the coldest tenth −17°F. The Haines airport station at 21 feet carries a 30-year number of −16°F, and Haines #2 at 98 feet −14°F.

The Chilkat Valley Orchard Project's grower's guide (Blythe Carter with Burl Sheldon, 2022) calls the townsite the best place for early apples and many cherries, and mentions an outdoor peach on Main Street that sometimes fruits. Carter's orchard on Comstock Road went to more than 100 trees in about seven years.

Fort William H. Seward (Port Chilkoot), finished in 1904 and the only Army post in Alaska before World War II, sits about half a mile south of the town center. The map's Port Chilkoot point, down at 15 feet at the foot of the slope where cold air off the hill collects, plans for −16°F (5a), with a typical winter around −5°F and spring nights 5°F colder than Haines. Tanani, a couple of miles north of town, plans for −14°F (5b), with spring nights 3°F to 4°F colder than Haines.

On the townsite the spring reading does the sorting. Put the early bloomers high on the slope: sweet cherries like Lapins, Black Gold and White Gold, plums like Mount Royal and Toka with Superior (Toka is a good pollenizer for Superior), and a Westcot apricot or Siberian C peach at the very top of the lot or against a south wall. Down on the flats and at Port Chilkoot, plant apples, crabapples, haskap and currants, and keep pears off the low ground.

Mud Bay and the south end of the Chilkat Peninsula

Mud Bay runs down the Chilkat Peninsula south of Haines, between Chilkoot Inlet and Chilkat Inlet, to Seduction Point, where the two inlets meet as Lynn Canal. With salt water on both sides, cold air off the slopes has an outlet either way. The map's Mud Bay point sits on a hillside 70 feet above its low ground and plans for −14°F (5b), with a typical winter around −3°F and spring nights about 3°F colder than Haines, second only to the townsite among the named places. Treat it like the townsite: early bloomers high, plums like Early Italian and Black Ice, and pears like Summercrisp and Ure on the slope.

Lutak, Chilkoot Inlet and Chilkoot Lake

Lutak Road runs about 10 miles along Chilkoot and Lutak inlets from Haines to the mouth of Chilkoot Lake. The lake, 3.6 miles long and about 300 feet deep, freezes all the way over at the peak of winter, so it does nothing for the shore in midwinter. The map's Lutak point sits 10 feet above the low ground in a cold-air drainage channel. It plans for −13°F (5b), with a typical winter around −2°F, but on a still bloom night it runs 9°F colder than Haines, because the draw brings cold down off the mountains and the lake valley. Put apples, crabapples, honeyberries (haskap), currants and tart cherries on the low ground, and save sweet cherries and plums for slope ground well up out of the draw.

Up the Chilkat: Klukwan and the Haines Highway

The Haines Highway runs 39.7 miles from the ferry terminal to the border at Dalton Cache, and people up the valley give their location by highway mile. Miles 12 to 18 are the viewing stretch of the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, where up to 4,000 eagles gather in the fall for a late salmon run in a reach of the Chilkat that a USGS study found stays open all winter on groundwater seeping out of the Tsirku River's alluvial fan. We haven't found any measurement showing that open water warms the ground nearby, and a river bottom is still low ground.

Klukwan, the Tlingit village whose name, Tlakw Aan, means roughly "forever village," sits on the north side of the Chilkat about 21 miles northwest of Haines; Covenant Life and Mosquito Lake sit just west of the map. The Klukwan point, a toe slope 20 feet above the floor, plans for −36°F (MFTC zone 3a), with a typical winter around −25°F and spring nights 6°F colder than Haines. Within 3 miles the floor plans for −36°F, the benches −31°F, the warmest tenth of the ground −29°F and the coldest tenth −37°F.

None of the map's modern stations sits up the valley, so that number leans on an old one: the Haines Highway station at 150 feet, which reported from 1947 to 1957 at the same spot NOAA gives for the old Klukwan station. In the 7 winters it overlapped the Haines airport (1947 to 1954) it ran a median 22°F colder, and 18°F to 25°F colder every winter. We carried its record forward on the airport's, which gives it a 30-year number of about −38°F and an average winter low around −27°F. The old Klukwan station, which ran from 1911 to 1918, agrees: its coldest reading was −36°F. Both are short, old records, so read the upper valley numbers as a sound estimate rather than a modern measurement. They fit the Chilkat Valley Orchard guide, which puts zone 4 from about 10 Mile up and a season near the border about a month shorter than in Haines.

So up the valley, plant for real cold (the list is below). Keep pears and plums up on the benches, both for bloom and because the benches plan about 5°F milder than the floor. Stake and tent young trees against the snow load, and taper water from mid-August so trees harden off before the first hard freeze.

Skagway and the Skagway River flats

Skagway sits at the head of Taiya Inlet where the Skagway River comes out of a narrow glaciated valley, with White Pass and Chilkoot Pass just to the north. The town is far drier than Haines and windy, and its name comes from a Tlingit idiom for the rough water the north winds raise in Taiya Inlet.

The Skagway town point sits on the valley floor at 43 feet and plans for −13°F (5b), with a typical winter around −1°F and spring nights 8°F colder than Haines. Within 3 miles the floor plans for −11°F and the benches −10°F. The two Skagway airport stations, near the river mouth, carry 30-year numbers of −11°F and haven't read colder than −9°F since 1995. The station NOAA calls simply Skagway, at 35 feet, carries −15°F. In the December 2025 cold snap it read −19°F while the airport stations read −2°F, and it gets a 140-day frost free season against 166 and 170 days at the airport. Eleven feet of height can't explain that; the numbers fit a sheltered pocket where still air settles against open flats the wind keeps stirred, but we haven't found where in town that station sits. If your yard is in a low, sheltered spot on the floor, plan like the Skagway station.

Skagway's the place on this map for a Chicago Hardy Fig, which has come through −10°F: worth a try against a south wall. Rainier cracks where it rains at ripening, so the dry valley suits it better than wetter Haines. Give cherries, plums and pears a slope or the open flats toward the river mouth, and keep them out of sheltered pockets.

Dyea, the Taiya River and the inlet shore

Dyea, at the mouth of the Taiya River about 3 miles northwest of Skagway, was the start of the Chilkoot Trail and emptied out after the railroad chose White Pass. It's part of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park now, with a few small homesteads in the valley. The Dyea Flats sit right on the valley floor and plan for −13°F (5b), with a typical winter around −2°F. Spring is the problem: the flats run 9°F colder than Haines on a still bloom night, tied with Lutak and Sturgill's Landing for the coldest spring reading of the named places. Plant apples, applecrabs like Kerr and Chestnut, haskap and currants, and push early bloomers up onto the valley side.

A couple of miles down Taiya Inlet from Skagway, Sturgill's Landing sits at 15 feet on a 23 percent slope in a drainage channel. Its winter number, about −10°F to −11°F, is the mildest of the named places, but the channel brings cold down to the shore and spring nights run 9°F colder than Haines. Plant to the side of the channel, not in it.

Spring frost and bloom at the head of Lynn Canal

Open blossoms of apple, pear, cherry, peach, apricot and plum all start dying at about 28°F (Michigan State's numbers), and on tidewater, where the winter low clears most of the list, those bloom nights decide the crop. At the Haines airport station the median last 32°F is April 25, the last 28°F April 7 and the first fall 32°F October 2, a 160-day frost free season, with the last 32°F around May 8 in a late year. The Skagway airport stations get the longest seasons of any station on the map, 166 and 170 days, with the last 32°F on April 24 and 26. The station called Skagway gets 140 days, with its last 32°F on May 10, close to Moore Creek Bridge, 2,250 feet up in the mountains, at 138 days.

Both towns have recorded frost in June, and the Haines airport's coldest May reading in NOAA's climate table is 26°F. We haven't found a documented spring freeze that wiped out a crop here. In 1990, after an early, warm spring, Haines had a record cherry year.

A 3°F to 4°F difference on a bloom night can separate no crop from a full one, by NC State's numbers, so site comes first: apricots, peaches and sweet cherries on the highest ground, plums and pears next, apples, haskap and bush fruit lower. Haskap's open flowers take 19°F, only about 15 percent of apple blossoms need to set for a crop, and sweet cherries can lose half their flowers and still make a full one. Bob Purvis likes an east-facing slope, since it warms quickly on a frosty spring morning. A hedge, fence or tree line across the slope backs cold air up into the trees above it, so keep the low side open.

Two cautions. The spring layer is a still-night pattern, and Skagway's prevailing wind from April through October is south; frost doesn't settle on a breezy night, which fits the long seasons at the airport stations. And a freeze on an outflow wind has no inversion, so the warm slope won't help. For bloom nights, frost cloth of 0.5, 0.9 and 1.5 ounces per square yard gains about 4°F, 6°F and 8°F, by Alabama Extension's figures. In fall, UAF Extension warns that brief autumns can keep trees from hardening off, so skip late nitrogen, heavy late watering and late-fall pruning.

What the weather records say

NOAA's records at the Skagway station go back to 1903, and its coldest reading is −21°F on January 23, 1906. The Skagway airport's coldest is −15°F on February 2, 1968, Moore Creek Bridge's is −26°F in January 2009, and Fraser Camp hit −54°F on January 14, 1996. In the median year Moore Creek Bridge runs 14°F to 16°F colder than the Skagway stations and 10°F to 11°F colder than the Haines stations.

At the Skagway airport and Moore Creek Bridge the planning number is a little colder than anything read there since 1995 (−11°F against −9°F, and −28°F against −26°F). The Skagway station went the other way last December, −19°F against its 30-year number of −15°F. That's why it's a planning number, not a floor.

The zone sources don't agree. The Haines airport's 1991 to 2020 average yearly low, about −4°F, sits in USDA's 6b range, UAF Extension puts most of Southeast Alaska in USDA zones 6 and 7, and the local guide plants by zone 5 (−10°F) on tidewater and zone 4 (−20°F) from about 10 Mile up. Ours is −15°F, MFTC zone 5b, at Haines and −36°F, zone 3a, at Klukwan, because we plan for the bad night, not the average one.

What you can grow here

On tidewater most of what we sell clears the winter, so the first three groups are sorted as much by the spring reading as the winter number; up the Chilkat the winter number sorts things again. Many plums and pears want a partner: Toka is a good pollenizer for Superior, and a crabapple in the yard is a good pollenizer for apples. Our pollination maps show what blooms with what.

The Haines townsite slope, Mud Bay and Tanani: −14°F to −15°F, the best spring readings

• Apples and crabs: Norland, Zestar!®, Honeycrisp, Wealthy, Rescue applecrab, Dolgo crabapple
• Cherries high on the slope: Lapins, Black Gold and White Gold sweet cherries, Montmorency tart
• Plums and pears: Mount Royal, Toka with Superior, Early Italian; Summercrisp, Ure and Cold Snap® pears on the slope
• At the top of the lot or on a south wall: Westcot and Debbie's Gold apricots, Siberian C peach
• Berries: AC Wendy strawberries, Polana raspberries, Red Lake currants

Skagway, the river flats and the Taiya shore: −10°F to −13°F

• Apples: any on our list, like Lodi, Goodland and Haralson
• Off the floor or on the open flats: Rainier, Lapins and Stella sweet cherries, La Crescent plum, Summercrisp pear
• For the floor: Meteor tart cherry, Romeo and Juliet dwarf cherries, Cold Climate Blueberry Bundle, Invicta gooseberries
• Worth a try on a south wall in town: Chicago Hardy Fig (−10°F)

The frosty floors and draws (the Haines flats, Port Chilkoot, Lutak, Dyea): −13°F to −17°F, spring 5°F to 9°F colder than Haines

• Apples and applecrabs: Carroll, Norkent, Wolf River, Kerr, Centennial, Trailman
• Tart and dwarf cherries: Evans Bali, Meteor, Romeo, Juliet
• Bush fruit: honeyberries (haskap), Montana Black Currant, Hinnomaki Red and Pixwell gooseberries, Nova raspberries, rhubarb
• No pears on this ground; they bloom early and the floor frosts.

Up the Chilkat to Klukwan: the floor −36°F to −37°F, the benches about −31°F

• Apples and crabs for the floor: Parkland (−60°F), Norland, Wealthy, Carroll and Kerr (−50°F), Rescue (−60°F), Trailman and Dolgo (−55°F)
• Cherries and bush fruit for the floor: Evans Bali and FE tart (−45°F), Nanking and Romeo (−50°F), honeyberries, Montana Black Currant, Boyne raspberries, Honeoye strawberries
• Pears and plums on the benches: Krasnobokaya pear (−50°F), Ure and Summercrisp (−45°F), Brookgold plum (−50°F), Mount Royal and Toka (−45°F), plus Superior plum and Montmorency tart cherry (−35°F)

Roots and snow. Roots are the weak link, and snow protects them. At Ed Schultz's farm in Gallatin Gateway, Montana, Bud 118 apple rootstock has seen near −50°F with no rootstock damage, under snow. Skagway, with about a quarter of Haines' snow, needs mulch over the roots. In Haines the problem is weight: the Chilkat Valley Orchard guide calls settling snow the number one cause of winter damage there, so stake young trees for 3 to 5 years, tent new ones, and clear limbs gently, since frozen branches are brittle.

Ground and sun. The guide describes shallow, recently glaciated soils running pH 5.5 to 6 near the coast and 6 or higher up the valley; it targets 6.3 to 6.7, raised slowly with dolomite or ground limestone, and warns that boron deficiency can mean no fruit set. Test drainage before you plant (dig 2 feet, fill it, let it drain, refill; under 10 hours is well drained), and plant on a mound where water stands. UAF Extension's rule for Alaska is a gentle south slope or the south side of a building, and it warns of sunscald from October to early May, so wrap or paint trunks for the first three winters.

Animals and disease. Bears are the most common cause of fruit tree loss in Haines; the guide calls for a 4 to 5 wire electric fence in August and September, July too for sweet cherries. For moose, a 4 to 5 foot fence works in town and 8 feet is better. For voles, use 1/4 inch hardware cloth cages at least 2 feet tall. Net sweet cherries against birds, and don't prune them in wet weather, since bacterial canker hits sweet cherry here.

Fruit history here

Charles Anway came north in the 1898 gold rush and homesteaded along the Chilkat River near Haines. His first commercial strawberry crop came in 1908. He shipped crates to Skagway and Juneau for about 25 years, won a certificate of honor at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle and became the Strawberry King of Alaska, and Haines held a Strawberry Festival in his honor for many years. Honeoye, AC Wendy and Annapolis strawberries clear every named place on this map.

Anway also set out Alaska's first commercial apple orchard and its first commercial sweet cherry orchard, and in 1915 the Skagway Horticultural Society gave him a special award for the first mature apple in Alaska. Apple trees he and Henry Vermiere planted in 1912 on standard rootstock still bear, and Yellow Transparent, known locally as the Anway apple, has grown in Haines since the 1910s (we carry Yellow Transparent seedlings). Bob Henderson, who wrote a book on Anway, reported Rescue applecrab ripe in Haines on August 16, 1990, Norland on August 24 and Wealthy in October. In 2020 the Chilkat Valley Historical Society started the Chilkat Valley Orchard Project with a USDA specialty crop grant of nearly $27,000 for workshops, the grower's guide and fencing grants. By then no Haines-grown apples or sweet cherries had been sold in more than 60 years.

Questions people ask

What growing zone is Haines, Alaska?

Haines plans for −15°F, MFTC zone 5b, and the low flats and Port Chilkoot −16°F (5a). The Haines airport's average yearly low over 1991 to 2020 is about −4°F, in the range USDA calls 6b, and UAF Extension puts most of Southeast Alaska in USDA zones 6 and 7. USDA's zone is based on an average winter; ours is set by the bad night we plan for.

What zone is Skagway?

The Skagway town point plans for −13°F, MFTC zone 5b, and the benches around town −10°F. The airport stations carry −11°F, but the station called Skagway read −19°F in the December 2025 cold snap, so sheltered spots on the floor can run a lot colder.

When is the last frost in Haines and Skagway?

At the Haines airport station the median last 32°F is April 25 and the first fall 32°F October 2, a 160-day frost free season. The Skagway airport stations run April 24 to 26 in spring and October 11 to 12 in fall, 166 to 170 days. The station called Skagway gets 140 days, with its last 32°F around May 10.

Can you grow apples in Haines, Alaska?

Yes. Charles Anway ran Alaska's first commercial apple orchard near Haines, and trees he planted in 1912 still bear. At −15°F every apple we sell clears the winter; fence for bears and moose and cage trunks against voles.

Do sweet cherries grow in Haines?

Yes. Anway ran Alaska's first commercial sweet cherry orchard, 1990 was a record cherry year in Haines, and a local orchardist says townsite sweet cherries can fruit within a year of planting. Lapins, Black Gold and White Gold have come through −35°F; plant them high on the townsite slope, net them and fence for bears.

What should I plant up the Haines Highway near Klukwan?

The map plans Klukwan for −36°F, MFTC zone 3a, and the benches around it about −31°F. That rests on short old records, and the old highway station once read −40°F, so on the floor pick things that have come through −40°F or colder, like Parkland and Norland apples, Rescue applecrab, haskap and Montana Black Currant, and put pears and plums like Brookgold and Mount Royal on the benches.

Warmer spots, colder spots

Here's the number to plan for at named places on the map, warmest first. Each one is the 1-in-30-year low for that spot: the cold hardiness calculator's number from the same weather stations, sharpened by our microclimate model for the ground right there. Zone is our MFTC zone, set by that one bad night, not by an average.

The weather stations behind it

These are the long-record stations in and around this map, with each one's own numbers since the winter of 1995-96. The last column is this map's 30-year number right at the station, which won't match the station exactly: it's a blend of the stations around it, the way the calculator works everywhere.

Source: NOAA records through ACIS, winters 1995-96 through 2025-26. What the "carried forward," "gaps filled" and AWOS rows mean is explained in how our microclimate maps work.