Outdoors

In March, Goldbelt, Inc. offered to invest in the gondola system the City and Borough of Juneau bought from Austria for Eaglecrest Ski Area. At an assembly meeting this week, Goldbelt and the assembly hashed out what that deal would look like.

What they’re working on is a revenue sharing agreement. The city has spent over $2 million so far. Goldbelt will contribute $10 million to the project and would get between 10-25% of gross revenue the gondola makes. 

The deal lasts 25 years, and Goldbelt will take a share of the profits of ticket sales over that time, with a goal of getting $20 million back from their investment. If that takes longer than 25 years, the city and Goldbelt can extend the agreement. 

The agreement says the opening day for the gondola will be May 31, 2027. If that doesn’t happen, Goldbelt can back out.

The proposal aims to have 75,000 visitors to the gondola in the first year. That’s about 750 tourists a day during the summer months. Juneau city manager Rorie Watt said he thinks having a partnership with Goldbelt would help reach that number.

“If it was CBJ going it alone, I would not be very comfortable,” he said.

He referenced Goldbelt’s experience operating the tram and said, “I think [it’s] quite plausible, and small, really, in the context of the number of visitors that come.”

McHugh Pierre, Goldbelt’s president and CEO, said the gondola at Eaglecrest offers future visitors something the current Mt. Roberts tram does not: more access to outdoor sports.

“We’re not going to have mountain bikes on Mount Roberts. Goldbelt Tram is never going to authorize that,” Pierre said. “But we could see in the future where you might be riding a mountain bike down Eaglecrest. And so those are some of the things that we’re excited about.”

Pierre said he believes this partnership will pan out.

“We think this is a really great opportunity to participate,” he said. “And we believe 75,000 visitors in the first year is acceptable and doable.”

Pierre predicts tickets will cost around $100.

The next step on the gondola project is to formally introduce an ordinance to the assembly on Dec. 12, followed by public commentary in January.

Searchers recovered the body of an overdue hiker from Sitka’s Mt. Verstovia on Friday evening.

76-year old Mike Motti was a veteran of Sitka’s Mountain Rescue team. He regularly climbed above treeline to a knoll overlooking Sitka, known locally as Picnic Rock, to celebrate his birthday.

Troopers were notified around 5 p.m. that Motti was overdue from his annual trek up the mountain. A ground team was deployed along with a helicopter from Air Station Sitka.

Searcher’s found Motti’s body about two hours later by the trail, just below Picnic Rock. He had apparently died of natural causes.

Motti was a fixture in emergency medical services in the region. Over his career, he helped organize and lead an emergency medevac department for the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium before the advent of commercial medevac services. He was a wilderness medical associates instructor who taught many wilderness EMT courses for a variety of first-response agencies.

Don Kluting, who was Motti’s colleague for many years on Sitka Search and Rescue, says he had an understated approach to training. On Kluting’s very first day on the team, Motti harnessed him to ropes and sent him down a 100-foot cliff.

“My knees were shaking I’m sure as I went over the edge,” said Kluting, describing his first hour in training. “I’ve never rappelled before, I’d never been lowered over a rock face before or anything. And here I am being introduced to this gentleman that I’ve never met before. And you know, he’s in charge. And he’s tied this rope off to a tree. And they’re talking about, ‘Yeah, we’re just going to lower you over this edge and down to the bottom.’”

Kluting would eventually become captain of Sitka Search and Rescue and serve alongside Motti for 29 years.

Motti joined the organization in March of 1983 and was still an active volunteer when he died. Sitka Search and Rescue captain Matt Hunter says Motti was the team’s “most active member,” working as search dog handler, medic, and most recently, leading the incident management team.

Don Kluting doesn’t know how many lives Motti can be credited with saving, but he believes the way his life ended will resonate with the people who are dedicated to this line of work.

“How fitting is this, that he gets his last helicopter ride, and it’s a beautiful night, the moon’s out,” said Kluting, “And he died with his back against the tree looking at the most beautiful view ever.”

Memorial services for Mike Motti are pending.

Alaska Air National Guard crews out of Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson rescued six snowmachiners Monday who were stranded on a glacier in the Eastern Alaska Range near Isabel Pass, just north of Paxson. The Air Guard crew then medevaced one of the snowmachiners to an Anchorage hospital for treatment of injuries.

Alaska State Troopers launched the rescue operation after they got a report at around 7:15 p.m. on Monday that a group of six people on snowmachines were stranded in the mountains east of milepost 200 of the Richardson Highway. That’s about 75 miles south of Delta Junction.

According to a Trooper report, the SOS message from the snowmachiners said they were out of fuel and not dressed for the weather and that one of them was going into hypothermic shock.

Troopers then contacted the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson, which dispatched an HC-130 plane and HH-60 helicopter to rescue the group.

“The conditions up in that area were relatively clear, so good for flying. Except there was no natural illumination — there was no moon,” says Alaska Air National Guard spokesperson Alan Brown.

He said when they got to the remote area, the C-130 crew fired an illumination flare so they could get a better look around. He said then they spotted the snowmachiners on the College Glacier, about four miles east of the Richardson Highway.

“They were able to hoist the injured one up immediately,” Brown said, “and then our pararescuemen were able to guide the remaining five snowmachiners to a safer spot on the glacier, where the HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter was able to land and pick them all up.”

The Trooper report says the helicopter brought the five uninjured snowmachiners to the turnout off the Richardson Highway at milepost 197. Brown says the helicopter then took the injured member of the group to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage for treatment.

Troopers were unable to provide the names of the rescued snowmachiners.

Brown said Guard members from the 176th Wing’s 210th, 211th and 212th Rescue Squadrons participated in the rescue.

Juneau’s public use cabin system is beloved — and often booked far in advance. Now, more cabins may be available soon for overnight stays.

The U.S. Forest Service just received $20 million for public cabins, said Regional Director of Recreation, Land and Minerals James King. 

“Alaska did very, very well,” he said. “We’ve got $14.4 million of that $20 million to go towards either repairing, restoring or constructing new cabins. 

The money is part of the federal infrastructure bill that passed last year. 

There are currently about a dozen public cabins accessible from Juneau’s road system. Some are owned and maintained by the state, some by the Forest Service and others by the City and Borough of Juneau.

Now, the Forest Service is proposing several new cabins in Juneau, out of 50 proposed cabins statewide. 

Most of the existing cabins are found along trails that take several miles to hike to, and King said a goal is to build cabins that are more accessible for people who can’t necessarily hike out to one. 

“A big emphasis of this money for us with the new ones is to put these cabins where the demand exists,” King said. “For a lot of that, it’s near communities.”

The new proposals vary in purpose: some are right by the Mendenhall Glacier and would be accessible by car; another along Montana Creek creates a cabin “thru-hike” opportunity, where folks can hike from cabin to cabin to traverse a longer trail in Juneau.

These ideas are getting a lot of feedback.

“We’re really happy with the response,” he said said. “We’ve received over 500 comments on cabin locations.”

Ryan O’Shaughnessy leads Juneau’s trail maintenance nonprofit, Trail Mix, Inc. He says that part of their partnership with the city is to support new cabin projects. 

“We really like to think of ourselves as a tool in the toolbox for land managers for recreation projects, so we’re super happy to help build cabins or happy to help build trails to cabins, clearing land for cabins, any and all,” O’Shaughnessy said. “We’re very supportive of these projects.”

Proposition 2 on Juneau’s local ballot will also help fund more cabins, O’Shaughnessy said. That measure is poised to pass once the city certifies election results later this week.

All the cabin proposal projects can be explored on an interactive map, and comments for the new Forest Service cabins can be made until Oct. 31. King said some plans were already in the works prior to the new federal funding, which means new cabins could be available as soon as next summer. He hopes others will be constructed in the next four years. 

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated that the U.S. Forest Service Alaska Region had received $20 million for new public use cabins. In fact, the U.S. Forest Service as a whole received that money. 

A father and son from Switzerland paddled ashore at Lomack Beach in Bethel last week. They had kayaked around 700 miles down the Kuskokwim to get there from Lake Minchumina, but Thomas and Tomi Isenschmid’s journey got off to a rocky start.

Their first challenge was to carry all of their gear, kayak, tent, food and supplies, 10 miles from their starting point at Lake Minchumina to the North Fork of the Kuskokwim. They had to carry 350 pounds of gear across the tundra, Tomi said.

It took him and his father, Thomas, a week of walking back and forth from their camp to their starting point on the river. Their hiking boots got soaking wet trudging through the soggy tundra.

At first they couldn’t even find their entrance point to the Kuskokwim, the river they’d traveled from Switzerland to paddle down.

“The first day we made a terrible mistake, you know. We went more or less in a circle. We worked for six or seven hours, completely frustrated,” Thomas said. “We were doubting whether we could do it.”

A trapper in Lake Minchumina helped them with directions. They’d been looking on the left, but the way out was on the right.

“And then the next morning we made it to the North Fork,” Thomas said. “And that was really highlight: when you see the water of the North Fork for the first time. That was really great.”

The Isenschmids said that once they started paddling down the river it got easier. It felt more like the adventure Thomas had planned to do with his son. In a year off from work, he did a trip with each of his three adult children.

Thomas estimated that only four parties have paddled that far down the Kuskokwim, at least in the past 30 years.

Getting onto the river didn’t mean their challenges were over. Their first day paddling, a black bear with two cubs stood up behind their tent and smashed it down. Thomas was able to scare her away with bear spray, and there was no damage to their tent. But when they got back to their boat they found it ransacked: parts broken, supplies pulled out.

“That was the second moment where we thought ‘this is the end.’ First day on the river. This is the end,” Thomas said.

But they were able to fix what they needed to to get back on the water. There’s still a small chunk ripped out of one of their Klepper foldable kayak’s seats. The kayak is a German design inspired by traditional Yup’ik kayaks, Thomas said proudly.

“You’re very busy, and you’re busy with really the basics,” Thomas said. “How can I stay warm? How can I get food?”

The Isenschmids did a 100 mile, week-long kayak trip to prepare in Switzerland. But it’s a different experience in Alaska in that you’re far away from help if there’s an emergency.

“When you think: ‘Is this it? Is this the end?’ You start feeling the heat rising in your body and you start thinking there is nowhere you can go,” Thomas said. “There is no immediate help, not even within a day or two. And this is really a special feeling. But it’s also a good feeling. Because you can see you can really do it.”

After two weeks of paddling, they reached McGrath. From then on they started to encounter more people as they traveled down the river.

In Akiak, people brought them food, coffee, and dried fish when they camped by the village for two nights. One night, they went into town to play bingo and they won the $228 jackpot.

They said that many locals they encountered also gave them advice, like the best fishing spots or which channels to take.

“Some people were telling us how it was like 50 or 60 years ago,” Thomas said. “How they camp and how it has changed. It’s interesting to hear and exchange, and people are really very nice.”

The Isenschmids aren’t the only ones to complete challenging paddling trips in the area this summer. Thomas Dyment and Luke Wenger paddled 850 miles from Fairbanks to Bethel.

Now is the time to get flower bulbs in the ground before it freezes. For an impressive display of blooms in the spring, plant a lot of them.

Master Gardener Ed Buyarski recommends planting flower bulbs such as crocuses, daffodils, and tulips in a location with good drainage. They don’t need to be in full sun all year long, just in the spring.

“So we can plant them at the edge underneath deciduous trees, which will leaf out in late May and June,” Buyarski says.

Buyarski plants bulbs by the bucketful in the fall. He digs large six-inch deep holes or trenches that wind around his raised beds, scratches in fertilizer, and places bulbs in groups of five to ten. “The mantra is pointy-end up,” he says.

Buyarski suggests packing them in and planning for just one season of blooms.

“With tulips, we’re often treating them like annuals, just because the second year they don’t come back very well. And the third year just leaves.” he says. “You can plant them just about touching, four- or five-hundred bulbs, a spectacular show of color.”

If the goal is a spring cutting garden, productivity of bulbs can be extended by strategically planting mid-season and late-season blooming daffodils and tulips varieties in the fall.

“You can have six weeks of cut flowers from that little patch of ground in front of your house.” Buyarski says.

After the daffodil and tulip bulbs are in the ground, he covers them up halfway. “So now you’ve got a three-inch-deep hole,” he says. “You can plant some short bulbs, like crocus and snowdrops and Blue Scylla.”

Although spring is half a year away, planting bulbs now is not only easier before the ground freezes, it also gives gardeners something to look forward to.

“You know, at this time we’re dreaming. We’re hoping and we’re planning all this stuff for six months from now.” Buyarski says. “And you know, we gardeners are an optimistic bunch.”