Outdoors

The Eaglecrest Board of Directors has selected a new general manager for the ski area.

On Wednesday, the board announced Craig Cimmons accepted the position and will begin his new role in early October. He was one of two finalists chosen from a pool of 17 applicants. 

Cimmons is currently based in Vermont and is the director of the Ski & Ride School at Jay Peak Resort. He’s held the position since 2012. According to the city, he’s also held various roles related to ski and snowboarding education, environmental education and adventure recreation. 

During a public meeting earlier this month, Cimmons said his focus as general manager would be navigating Juneau’s skiing and snowboarding community through ongoing changes like the gondola project. 

“Community is at the heart of everything I do — everything I’ve done,” Cimmons said. “It’s the most important part.”

He said if he was selected as manager, building strong communication with staff would be a key priority for him. 

“Communication is probably the most important aspect of any management structure. Not only communication but timely, accurate and honest communication,” he said. “Setting up that structure is important.”

He’ll take over the position from interim general manager Erin Lupro. She temporarily held the role during the hiring process after the ski area’s previous manager of seven years was abruptly asked to resign by the board in late May.

In an interview following his resignation, former manager Dave Scanlan said he didn’t want to leave his job. Despite public backlash to the decision, the board has not publicly shared why they asked for his resignation. 

Juneau’s Eaglecrest Ski Area has some big plans underway, and they’re looking for a new leader to help bring them across the finish line. 

On Friday, the Eaglecrest Board of Directors will hold a public meeting at City Hall to interview two finalists for general manager. And on Saturday, skiers will get a chance to chat with the candidates at a meet and greet at the Eaglecrest Lodge.

This comes after the ski area’s previous manager of seven years was abruptly asked to resign by the board in late May.

Both finalists are from out of state. According to the city’s human resources director Dallas Hargrave, the city received 17 applications for the position. 

Craig Cimmons is the director of the Ski & Ride School at Jay Peak Resort in Vermont. He’s held the position since 2012. According to the city, he’s also held various roles related to ski and snowboarding education, environmental education and adventure recreation. 

Cimmons holds a Bachelor of Adventure Recreation from Green Mountain College.

Julie Jackson Piper is the recreation manager for the City of Richland, Washington. She’s been in that role since 2018. Before then, she was the aquatics manager for the City and Borough of Juneau, and the youth and community outreach coordinator and snow sports school supervisor at Eaglecrest. 

Piper holds a Bachelor of Science in Ski Area Business Management from Northern Michigan University.

The interviews on Friday will be held in the Assembly Chambers. The first one will start at 1:30 p.m. and the second at 3:30 p.m. The board will head into executive session with each candidate during a portion of the interviews.

Saturday’s meet and greet is from 10 a.m. to noon. And, on Monday, the board will also hold a special meeting at 5:30 p.m. at the lodge to consider the finalists in executive session.

The public can submit comments about what they think of the finalists to eaglecrestboard@juneau.gov. 

With all the rain this past week, fear of landslides and flooding has been at the forefront of many minds in Juneau. But what about the gardens? How does one respond to too much water permeating plant roots and garden beds? Master Gardener Ed Buyarski spoke with KTOO’s Chloe Pleznac about potential problems to look for, which plants may be ready to harvest and even shares his anti-slug elixir (it’s ammonia and water).

Listen:

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Chloe Pleznac: With all the rain this week, should gardeners be concerned for their garden beds? I imagine with all the moisture building up, it can destabilize uncovered — and perhaps even covered — gardens. 

Ed Buyarski: Yes. And I’ve certainly gotten calls about what do I do? Do I need to pull out my garlic? I’m worried about my potatoes rotting in the ground. Again, this pushes us to go outside to see that our soil is draining well or that we may need to work on digging ditches. That’s assuming that you have a place to drain the water off safely, without draining it onto your neighbor’s property, which gets ugly. But looking at your own, you may need to add some more sand to your garden soil compost mixture. You may need to put up some hoops in plastic to keep things warmer and drier. All that helps. 

Chloe Pleznac: Concerning root rot or other symptoms of all of this wetness, what kind of things should gardeners be looking for? 

Ed Buyarski: Yes, so certainly just I mean, mold and mildew are always with us. Last summer in July, it was nice and dry. It was wonderful. Things were big, beautiful, healthy. And this year, I mean, rain has beaten down the plants. There’s some of that extra fungus and mold and mildew happening. We need to be aware of that. Depending on the plants, I mean, lettuce does not take this heavy rain very well, though the slugs like it a lot. So what we can do, is raise beds and create raised boxes, that is important for warming our soil and drying out our soil. Again, making sure there’s enough good drainage is good, you don’t have pools out there, or you don’t have your plants in your garden in a low spot in your yard. So again, making some ground higher or if you can move — I mean, literally move — your beds.

Chloe Pleznac: Aside from the weather, it’s now mid-July. What plants are you beginning to harvest in your own garden and for maybe the less experienced gardener — perhaps this is their first year — how can you tell when certain veggies are ready to harvest? 

Ed Buyarski: Garlic has several indicators of when it is ready to be harvested, I’ve already harvested our scapes. So, the scapes curl when they first come out and then they uncurl and when the tips are pointing straight up, that’s one indicator that the bulbs are mature enough. I’d also like to see four green leaves still on the top of the plant, the lower leaves will start to turn yellow and or, if we’re lucky dry off or turn brown. But with four green leaves on top. That means there are at least two layers of skin covering the garlic bulb underground, which we want for long-term storage when we carefully dig them up. Don’t pull them up by hand as if your garlic is well anchored, you may break them off at the soil level. Use a garden fork to loosen them. Pull them up gently, brush the soil off, and find a dry, hopefully warm, spot. I’ve used a dehumidifier to help dry out the garlic so that it will store properly for weeks or months or longer. I’ve got one or two bulbs left from last year. With potatoes, looking at the plant again will tell us. Right now, mine are flowering which means little potatoes are forming underground. And because they’ve grown rather well and the rain has hit them, they’ve kind of flopped down on the garden boxes and beds. That’s okay. They’ll keep growing sometimes you’ll get three to four to five-foot-long potato vines. But when the potato vines and leaves start to turn yellow, most likely in September, maybe late August, and maybe even later than that depending on when you planted yours. Or, if we get a frost, the frost will usually kill off the potato plants. And so that is time to know after that to harvest. 

Oh! And get out there with the ammonia and water spray and start thinning out the herds of slugs, which are just dancing in the streets or, in this case, the gardens.

Joel Bos is a local master gardener who divides his time between his business, working as a naturalist with Discovery Southeast, and serving on the board of directors for Juneau Community Garden.

For this week’s Garden Talk, Bos spoke with KTOO’s Chloe Pleznac about outdoor programs for kids — and about how anyone can get involved in community gardening.

Much of Bos’s work is centered around the Juneau Community Garden in the Mendenhall Valley — work he describes as standing on the shoulders of Juneau’s gardening giants.

“The folks who laid the foundation and are still working on the board and are still maintaining the gardens are just heroes in our community,” he said. “If you haven’t been out to the Montana Creek Road community garden, you should check it out. It’s the closest thing we have to a farm here in town.”

Bos also works to introduce children to gardening through Discovery Southeast’s free and payment-optional programs. 

“They’ll get to explore the gardens, they’ll get to see everything that’s growing, they’ll get to taste, they’ll get to help weed and maintain the plots,” Bos said. “Sometimes they get to harvest and we donate the produce to charity.”

This summer’s camp openings have already filled, but interested youth can get involved through after-school programming this fall or next summer’s camps.  

For Bos, watching Discovery Southeast campers get settled and comfortable in these natural settings is rewarding. 

“Every once in a while you can get this moment where every kid is working and every kid is quiet and every kid is silently weeding or looking at an insect or just touching a flower pedal,” he said. “It’s just kind of this magical moment.”

You can join the Juneau Community Garden plot waitlist online at juneaucommunitygarden.org. Bos says it usually takes about a year for the waitlist to turn over. You can learn more about Discovery Southeast’s year-round youth outdoor program offerings on their website, discoverysoutheast.org. 

Bos suggests that people interested in getting involved with Juneau Community Garden come out for the 29th Harvest Faire on Aug. 24, where they can buy locally grown produce for a good cause, meet other gardeners, and explore the three-acre garden.

Correction: This episode previously gave the wrong date for this year’s Harvest Faire. 

Only four of nine projects that the Legislature funded this year as part of an envisioned Alaska Long Trail network survived Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto pen.

Dunleavy’s vetoes left a bit over $1.1 million of the $3.7 million in Alaska Long Trail projects that lawmakers approved in their capital budget.

Steve Cleary, executive director of the nonprofit Alaska Trails, said the veto decisions left trail and outdoor recreation advocates far short of what they had hoped to get in the budget.

“We think these were a lot of projects that would be a good investment for Alaska, so we were disappointed. So were our partners,” Cleary said.

The Alaska Long Trail, an ambitious project being pursued by Alaska Trails and other groups, would be a network of connected trails spanning about 500 miles from Fairbanks to Seward.

At the start of the session, Alaska Trails sought about $20.3 million in state funding for 21 projects. The list was winnowed down to nine, all in the Municipality of Anchorage, when lawmakers finally passed the budget.

Despite the disappointment, Cleary said, “we’re grateful for the ones that were passed and are looking forward to working on them.”

Left intact are projects to improve trails at Chugach State Park’s 3,510-foot Flattop Mountain, the state’s most-climbed peak; develop an Indigenous gateway in downtown Anchorage at what is intended to be an intersection of trails; make improvements in Girdwood to a section of the Iditarod National Historic Trail; and start design and feasibility studies for expanded trailhead parking at Arctic Valley.

Also surviving the veto pen were several trail and outdoor recreation projects outside of the Alaska Long Trail plan. Those seven projects, totaling about $5.5 million, include support for the Iditarod Trail Committee, state park sanitation facility maintenance and repairs, winter trail grooming grants and money for the statewide trail program.

Additionally, the Dunleavy-approved budget includes $450,000 for parking and access improvements on the back side of Flattop Mountain, the alternative trailhead on Anchorage’s Canyon Road that is sometimes referred to as “Sunnyside.” That project was not among those pushed by Alaska Trails, Cleary said. Rather, it came out of requests from the neighbors who have coped with overcrowded parking there.

In his veto memo, Dunleavy cited the same reason for nixing the five Long Trail projects as was used for almost all of his vetoes: “Preserve general funds for savings and fiscal stability.”

If you’ve listened to Garden Talk before, you’ve heard the term “master gardener.” It’s the title we stick in front of Garden Talk regular Ed Buyarski’s name. This week, KTOO’s Chloe Pleznac decided to finally ask Buyarski just what a master gardener is — and if listeners and readers can become one, too.  

This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Chloe Pleznac: I’ve heard the term master gardener used both in referring to you and to others within the community. I’m curious if you could explain to me exactly what a master gardener is and how someone can go about becoming one.

Ed Buyarski: Sure. The master gardener program started in Oregon Cooperative Extension Service as a teaching tool, I guess — and also I guess a community service tool. So that here, the Alaska Cooperative Extension Service offers classes every year or every other year depending on demand. And so that’s how people sign up for the classes.

There’s roughly 40 hours of classes and workshops involved, and there is a fee for that. But at least locally, some of the master garden organizations actually offer scholarships for that, for people taking the classes.

There is supposed to be some experience of people who want to become official master gardeners — should have a couple of years of gardening experience beforehand. And then that gives them kind of a foundation or reason to ask more questions about what they’re learning.

And in return, you go through the class and there’s usually a project of some sort — might be a research project or otherwise to do. And folks are also then asked to volunteer back to their communities, 40 hours of community service. And whether that is answering questions from other gardeners who don’t know, What kind of a pest are we looking at? Or, how do I deal with these weeds, or how do I improve my soil — and other things to make their gardens grow better.

So I’ve enjoyed learning — started the first class in Petersburg back in 80s and finished it in the early 90s — took the test, finally, and became a master gardener. I’ve got the pen and had the t-shirt. It’s worn out.

Chloe Pleznac: That’s awesome. That sounds like a really interesting process. Do you know off the top of your head who people can reach out to here in Juneau if they want to become involved?

Ed Buyarski: Yes. The Alaska Cooperative Extension Service has an office downtown, and that’s the way — you can look that up online to call. I just helped finish teaching a series of classes this winter and spring. And I know at least our local extension agent, Darren Snyder, usually offers that class every other year and it is both in person and online and virtual. So folks around Southeast and others can participate in the classes.

And then in the alternate years he has more of a, I guess, a beginning gardeners class. A little definitely less formal. And I suppose if folks are interested can go from that one and then sign up for the next master gardener class to follow.

Chloe Pleznac: Is there anything else you want to add about the topic of master gardening or people being interested in that?

Ed Buyarski: Certainly helped educate me. You know, it starts out with basic botany stuff, which I did in college. I’ve got a biology degree, but it has led into lots more, especially, experimental stuff. 

I mean, every year is a new experiment, between our weather being different from one year to the other, new varieties of plants — seeds are always available. And so I’m always trying new stuff and learning truly from other people. 

And if I go to somebody’s garden to visit, seeing them growing something I haven’t or haven’t thought of. Seeing, “Wow, you’ve got a new pest that I haven’t seen before.” So we need to identify this because things are coming in, pests and diseases are coming in, unfortunately, with plants we import from down south. 

So it’s really a great program to help local gardeners.

To find out more about becoming a Southeast Alaska Master Gardener you can email Juneau District Agriculture/Horticulture Agent, Darren Snyder at darren.snyder@alaska.edu.

Disclosure: Darren Snyder is married to Cheryl Snyder, KTOO’s Vice President & General Manager, Music & Arts.