Juneau

By a more than a 2-to-1 margin, voters in Juneau, Alaska, this month approved a plan to impose a fee of $5 per passenger on cruise ships visiting there. The ballot initiative, which local organizers said was similar to one that failed in 1996, was approved 5,516 to 2,380 in the town of about 30,000, which hosts about 600,000 cruise passengers a year.

The ghosts of seasons past are gone. Nobody can call the Washington Capitals chokers any more. For the first time in their 24-year history, they're in the Stanley Cup finals. Joe Juneau's goal 6:24 into overtime lifted the Capitals to a 3-2 victory over the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday night, wrapping up the Eastern Conference finals in six games. "Everybody wants to be a hero in a game like this," Juneau said. "I really believed our line was going to end up scoring the winning goal."

The Boeing 737 plunges down through a blanket of drizzle in search of the runway that lies below two high, tree-topped ridges. No luck. Passengers sigh as the captain guns the engines and circles around for another try. This time, bingo: a blanket of city lights pops into view, and the jet rolls into a low-level swoop toward the runway. Welcome to one of the most nerve-racking air approaches in the country.

Nestled at the foot of several mountain ranges and frequently engulfed in fog and blasted by chaotic winds, Juneau International Airport is being transformed from an intimidating place to land an aircraft into the nation's leading test bed for new airport technology.

Peter Bondra ended his slump with four goals, and Joe Juneau had four assists and the Washington Capitals beat the Colorado Avalanche, 6-3, Thursday at Landover, Md. Bondra had been scoreless in the past six games, but he became the first player this season to get a hat trick against the Avalanche and the first to score four goals against the team since November 1993. The Avalanche had won three in a row and nine of its last 11. New York Islanders 5, Boston 2--At Uniondale, N.Y.

Washington's Joe Juneau suffered a severe blood clot in his left shoulder in Wednesday's game against Hartford and is expected to be out at least 10 days. . . . Paul Coffey, who suffered a concussion after colliding with Philadelphia teammate Eric Lindros in Tuesday's game in Vancouver, will be out a week.

The front-page story told of a local hunter who'd shot and killed two charging brown bears in less than a minute--only to have his legs crushed when the second 1,000-pound beast fell on him. I had just arrived in Juneau, a Coast Guard officer starting a yearlong assignment in the Last Frontier. Glancing up from my newspaper at the drizzling skies and bleak little clapboard houses in bare, muddy yards, I couldn't help but wonder: "Why was I here? Why was anybody here?"

Nestled at the foot of majestic mountains along Alaska's famed inland waterway, Juneau was a great place to build a fishing community and tourist center. But as most Alaskans will tell you, it was a lousy place to build the capital. Nonetheless, this is where the seat of government is, much to the consternation of many of the state's half-million residents.

On Friday, the 13th of November, 1942, a rag-tag flotilla of battle-ravaged American warships was rocked by a single massive explosion. When the smoke cleared, one of the ships had simply disappeared. "Aside from the atomic bomb," writes Dan Kurzman in "Left to Die," "this was perhaps the greatest single explosion of the war."

The annual commute for Alaska legislators who insist on driving to the state capital is an Arctic wilderness adventure, two or three days of travel in subzero temperatures over icy, twisting roads. "I feel fortunate every time I make it down here," said state Rep. Ron Larson of Palmer. "You never know what could happen. You could drive into a ditch, you could get caught in snow in one of the passes."