[cossatot]

I was there doing some geology this May, and one of the AK geol. survey guys mentioned that the previous summer, some of his colleagues were working directly across the fjord on the hillside on a clear, sunny day. A snowstorm sprang up pretty suddenly and they got stranded for several days. IIRC one of them had a little deployable shelter but the other had to hide under some boulders.

As a side note, Whittier has a huge tsunami risk, not from typical undersea earthquakes but because the mountainside on the north side of Whittier Sound is unstable and some very big blocks of rock (100s of m) are slowly breaking off from the bedrock. If (when) these fall, they could create a pretty massive wave that could devastate the town. [1]

[1]: http://137.229.113.30/webpubs/dggs/ri/text/ri2011_007a.pdf

edit: added tsunami info