KUAC - Fairbanks

A slumping section of the Denali National Park road dropped an unprecedented amount over the winter, underscoring the need for a planned bridge over the unstable stretch of road near Polychrome Pass.

The Pretty Rocks landslide is the result of movement — accelerated by climate change — of what’s known as a rock glacier underlying the road.

Denali National Park acting superintendent Brooke Merrell says crews clearing snow from the road earlier this month found significant new slumping at the site.   

“It was really sobering to arrive on scene and see that 40-foot cliff on that eastern side of the slump this year,” she said.          

Merrell says the drop is in line with the slide’s multi-year progression.

“Its just over twice as far as it slumped the year before, which is consistent. We’ve been watching it since about 2016, and each winter it sloughs about twice as far as the year before,” she said. 

Park crews have filled the slump with gravel for years to keep the road drivable. But last August, acceleration of the slide forced closure of the road and serious consideration of a permanent fix. 

The NPS conducted an environmental review of a proposal to span the slide area with a 400-foot bridge anchored on solid ground on either side. That plan was approved last month.

There’s $25 million in the federal infrastructure law to pay for the first part of the estimated 2-year project, which also includes some other Polychrome area road work.

“Our partners at Federal Highways are getting ready to issue a request for proposals for contractors to submit their design build proposals for this bridge,” Merrell said.     

Merrell says the timing should allow earthwork and site preparation to get underway this summer. Additional funds will be needed to construct the bridge, but how much depends on the selected contractor’s design. 

Until the bridge is completed, Merrell says park visitor buses will only be traveling to the East Fork River, at mile 43.

“We’ve been working on making a safe spot for both transit and tour buses to turn around at the site,” she said. 

Merrell says the only visitor access beyond mile 43 will be by air.

“You can fly to Kantishna. We’ve got several of our inholder lodges are operating as fly-in operations this year,” she said. 

Merrell says the Park Service will not be operating its Wonder Lake campground near the end of the Park Road, but visitors can still apply for backcountry permits. She notes that Denali visitation is forecast to rebound to pre-pandemic levels this summer.

“Indicators are that we’ll likely be as busy as we were in 2019, which was a record-setting year for us,” she said.        

Denali had over 6,000,000 visitors in 2019.   

Alaska has imported more wood bison from Canada as part of an effort to restore the animal’s population in the state. Some of the young animals will be added to a herd that the state established in Western Alaska in 2015.

The Department of Fish and Game and the Bureau of Land Management worked with Parks Canada to bring forty wood bison to Fairbanks last week.

State wood bison biologist Tom Seaton says the young animals were trucked to Fairbanks from Elk Island National Park in Alberta. He says the park has healthy bison available for Canadian conservation efforts, and this year they had enough to send some to Alaska.

“As far as bison standards go, they’re pretty small, but they’re about the same size as an adult female musk ox,” Seaton said.

Alaska’s new bison are 11 months old and weigh about 400 pounds each. Seaton says Parks Canada charged $16,000 for care and handling of the bison, which are now staying at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Large Animal Research Station.

“We’ve got to go through another 30 days of isolation of them here at LARS and then work toward plans of release,” he said.

Seaton says most of the young wood bison are likely destined to augment a group that was transplanted from Elk Island to the Lower Innoko-Yukon River region 7 years ago. That effort re-established the animals in Alaska, where they disappeared from the wild in the early 20th century.

Seaton says that in late June or early July, the new bison will likely get barged to an area along the Innoko River where the reintroduced herd gathers before the rut.

“It’s most likely that the wild animals will be very curious about these new young ones, and these new young ones are going to want to connect with those adults. We’ll also use some recorded sounds of bison interactions that might help draw in the wild ones,” he said.

Seaton says the young bison will be held in a pen until they connect with the wild herd, which has remained in the area where 130 of the animals were initially transplanted in 2015. They currently number about 105.

Fish and Game Interior and Eastern Arctic regional supervisor says some of the newly imported animals could eventually be used to re-establish more bison herds in Alaska in places “that have yet to be determined.”

Bruning says there’s broad support for wood bison restoration.

“So many members of the public and organizations, and government agencies, Native corporations and tribal entities and communities, all across Alaska and even beyond Alaska — it’s been an effort of great international interest,” he said.

Bruning and Seaton say the public can view the young wood bison at the University of Alaska Fairbanks LARS facility, but they caution people not to disturb the animals because they are still adjusting.

U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline sentenced 65-year-old Jay Allen Johnson to 32 months in federal prison and fined him $5,000 for threatening to kill U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan last year.

U.S. Attorney for Alaska John Kuhn says it’s a fair sentence that he hopes will address a growing threat to the nation’s elected officials.

“There’s been an enormous erosion of civility, respect and tolerance in our public and political discourse. And this has led to more acts of violence and threats of violence against our public officials,” Kuhn said in an interview Friday.

Johnson was arrested by FBI agents in October after an investigation identified him as the caller who left more than a dozen threatening and profanity-laced voicemails for both senators. In one directed at Murkowski, he asked if she knows what happens when a .50-caliber bullet strikes a human head. In another, he threatened to burn down her properties and demanded that she resign or die.

“For Democracy to work, our public officials must be able to operate without fear or threats against them,” Kuhn said. “And that’s why this prosecution was so important. And we were very pleased with the significant sentence that Mr. Johnson received.”

In November, Johnson pleaded not guilty to six charges related to his threats and being a felon in possession of firearms. But in January he changed his plea to guilty on two charges of threatening to kill the senators. As part of the plea deal, Johnson is prohibited from contacting either senator or their family or staff members. He was also required to forfeit seven firearms he and his wife kept at their home in Delta Junction. She was not charged.

Johnson has been held since his arrest at Fairbanks Correctional Center. Kuhn says the federal Bureau of Prisons will now determine when and where he’ll begin serving his sentence.

The state’s refugee coordinator has told local officials that refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine will begin arriving in Alaska over the next year or two, and some will be placed in communities where they have family ties.

Meanwhile, members of the Slavic community in Delta Junction say that a few have already arrived.

President Biden declared two weeks ago that the United States and its European allies will soon begin helping Ukrainian refugees find homes.

“Many Ukrainian refugees will wish to stay in Europe, closer to their home,” he said in a March 24 speech to NATO officials meeting in Brussels. “But we also will welcome 100,000 Ukrainians to the United States, with a focus on reuniting families.”

Last week, State Refugee Coordinator Issa Spatrisano began informing municipal officials that Alaska’s share of those refugees will be placed in some communities beginning next year.

Delta Junction was among the first places she contacted.

“We’re aware that in our state, there are a number of Ukrainians that live in the Delta area,” she said, “and they may have family members that will come join them.”

Refugees and immigrants from Ukraine and other Slavic-speaking nations in the former Soviet Union began to settle in the Delta area in the mid-1990s, after the USSR collapsed. They now make up an estimated 15% of the area’s population.

Some of those residents are already preparing to help their Ukrainian family members get settled in.

“If we do get refugees and we find accommodations for them, like housing and everything, I’m sure we’ll be able to help them with jobs,” said Igor Zaremba, a Delta Junction resident and member of the Word of Life church. “I mean, the construction season is just picking up.”

Zaremba sat in on Tuesday’s Delta City Council meeting. After the council reviewed the letter from Spatrisano, Zaremba told them about his church’s refugee assistance plans and asked if the city can help out “… to cover the bills, to cover food expenses and all that stuff until these refugees get on their feet and get a little more self-reliant.”

Mayor J.W. Musgrove said the city can’t offer any direct assistance but can help refer them to agencies that do.

Spatrisano says she’ll also inform Anchorage and Mat-Su officials about the refugees. Both municipalities also have sizable Ukrainian populations.

“If we’re aware of something that’s going to affect your local community through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, our goal is never to surprise people,” she said in an interview Tuesday.

Spatrisano works for Catholic Social Services, which oversees the U.S. State Department’s Refugee Resettlement Program in Alaska. She says the agency hasn’t yet advised her office on how many Ukrainian refugees Alaska might get through the program, or when they’ll begin arriving. But she says it’s likely take a while.

“This is not going to happen overnight,” she said. “The screening processes that are required for refugees take 18 to 24 months.”

Spatrisano says her program only handles Ukrainians who will come to Alaska through the refugee resettlement program. She says others who aren’t with that program may also come to Alaska.

Delta resident Vicky Shestopalov says that some are already here.

“We actually have a refugee family right now who is visiting us,” she said.

Shestopalov says they’re only temporarily staying with her parents, who are expecting another refugee family in the next couple of weeks.

“We do have a lot of Ukrainians here, with ties directly still in Ukraine, trying to move their families out,” she said in an interview Wednesday.

Shestopalov says local Ukrainian-Americans are organizing their own refugee assistance efforts because they’re increasingly alarmed at what they’re hearing from family and friends who are still in the war zone.

“When you talk with your friend first-hand, it’s shocking,” she said. “It’s devastating, you know, and it’s just scary what’s happening there right now.”

Shestopalov says she’s glad the federal government is offering refugee status to Ukrainians. But she and other members of the local Slavic community also hope the federal government will help other victims — including Russians

She says many Russians oppose the war, and many others don’t know much about it.

“I have friends here and all over the U.S. who’ve been trying to get their Russian family members out of Russia,” she said. “They’re telling them, ‘Hey! There’s this war in Ukraine that’s happening! Get out of there before you get recruited or whatever!”

A week after a large orb of light was seen moving across the early morning Alaska sky, scientists have offered an explanation.

Fairbanks photographer Leslie Smallwood captured video of the luminous sphere on automated aurora cameras before 5 a.m. on March 29.

“It seemed like it had something that was spinning inside it when I zoomed in on it,” he said. “And it’s a small tail — whitish tail.”    

Smallwood says the foggy ball of light was far larger than a full moon and moved through the sky from the northeast to the southwest over a few minutes.

“It’s not like it shot across the sky,” he said. “It was like, taking its time.”

University of Alaska Fairbanks physics professor Mark Conde says the orb was also recorded by a UAF all-sky camera in Gakona. Speaking last week, Conde said he wasn’t sure what to attribute the phenomenon to, but he noted that the orb appeared gaseous.

“A glowing cloud of gas that was sunlit would look like that,” he said.  

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Boston, Massachusetts, says sightings of the orb in Alaska correspond with the flight of a Chinese satellite deployment rocket.

“I am very confident that what people saw was the dumping of fuel from a Chinese rocket stage,” he said. “This rocket — the Longmarch 6A or Chang Zheng 6A — was launched early on March 29 from China, placed 2 satellites in orbit and, calculating its orbital path, it passed over the Yukon area about 350 miles up at exactly the time that this glow was seen in the Alaskan sky.”  

McDowell says leftover rocket fuel was likely released into space where it froze, spread out and reflected sunlight.

“This cloud is probably hundreds of miles across, that’s why it looks so big,” he said.

As to why rotating movement and a tail were observed, McDowell says that to maintain a rocket’s orbit during the release of fuel, the space craft is put into a tumble. 

“End over end while spewing out this fuel like a garden hose, and so you’ll get this sort of moving pattern,” he said.  

McDowell says rocket fuel dumps resulting in visible spheres of light occur fairly regularly in the lower 48 and elsewhere in the world. He says a similar glowing orb viewed over a large area of northern Siberia in 2017 was attributed to exhaust from ballistic missiles during test firings.

On his show last Sunday, comedian John Oliver called the Nenana Ice Classic “the single greatest ice-melting contest in the world.”

“Every year, the people in the small Alaskan town of Nenana put a giant wooden tripod on a frozen river,” he said on HBO’s Last Week Tonight, “and place bets on exactly when the ice will melt enough to break up, and the tripod floats downstream.”

Oliver riffed on the history of the Ice Classic, then declared he’s participating in this year’s event.

“We decided to place exactly one bet on this year’s competition, for April 26, 2022, at exactly 2:17 p.m. Why? I just have a really good feeling about it,” he said

He then launched into a story of Marshmallow the Polar Bear, a guy in ridiculous costume who travels from New York to Nenana to submit Oliver’s guess for when tripod will fall.

That’s the part of the segment that was filmed on location. And it’s why Oliver’s producer called Ice Classic Manager Cherrie Forness a couple of weeks ago to talk about the segment.

“They told us what they were doing and what they wanted me to do, and all this,” she said in an interview Wednesday. “And so it’s like, ‘OK, let’s do it.’”

Forness says a crew from the show spent a couple of days shooting video in downtown Nenana, including a scene in the Ice Classic office, where she delivered her only line.

“And with his bet placed,” a narrator says, “a kind stranger said the nicest words anyone had ever said to Marshmallow”

“Thanks, Marshmallow,” Forness says, “Good luck to you.”

The story of Marshmallow ends in a climactic scene where the bear journeys to the tripod.

“And suddenly,” the narrator says, “there it was — the mighty tripod on the Tanana River!”

Forness says she wasn’t exactly sure how the segment would turn out until she saw it Sunday on television.

“I thought it was hilarious! I thought they did a really good job,” she said. “They were a great group to work with. We just had fun!”

Nenana Mayor Josh Verhagen also enjoyed it. But he said Wednesday that he had no idea about the segment until a couple of friends contacted him Monday after they’d seen it.

“I got a friend from England,” he said, “who messaged me and said he watched it and asked whether or not he could buy tickets over in England.”

Verhagen says the segment will provide a lot of great publicity for Ice Classic and Nenana.

“I think people will be really curious about this tradition, which is a major part of who we are in Nenana.”

Forness says she thinks the segment is already generating that kind of curiosity. She suspects that’s why her office got more than 100 calls for tickets on Tuesday, triple the number of calls they got on Monday. But the town and Ice Classic weren’t the only beneficiaries.

“When we win,” Oliver said near the end of the segment, “I’m proud to announce that we will donate our entire prize to the Food Bank of Alaska. And if for some weird reason we don’t win, we’re going to donate $10,000 to them anyway!”

Jenny Di Grappa, a spokesperson for the food bank, said promise was a surprise

“We haven’t gotten any communication from their show,” she said.

Di Grappa says the organization hasn’t yet gotten confirmation of Oliver’s offer, but she says he’s always made good on other charitable donations he’s promised during his programs. And she says donations are badly needed because food banks around the country are scrambling, largely because of the pandemic.

“That would be a major gift for our organization,” she said. “Every dollar donated to Food Bank of Alaska helps us provide three meals. And so that is equivalent to 30,000 meals.”

Spokespersons for WarnerMedia, HBO’s parent company, didn’t respond to a query Wednesday about the donation.

Ice Classic tickets are available through Tuesday, April 5.