A Hatcher Pass area road fix for the Arctic Winter Games could be on ice

A road fix required for busing 2024 Arctic Winter Games athletes and fans to the Hatcher Pass downhill ski area Skeetawk could be blocked from completion in time for the games due to a permitting process delay at Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources.

The Matanuska Borough is slated to host the Arctic Winter Games in mid-March of next year. Expected to be a major boom for the local sports and winter tourism economy, games officials anticipate the 20 sports will attract about 2,000 athletes, their support teams and about 6,000 spectators. And while some of those events, such as biathlon and speed skating, must be held out of the Valley due to a lack of facilities, the rest will be hosted here, said Amy Spargo, president of the MatSu’s Arctic Winter Games Host Society.

“What we love about being the Arctic Winter Games is that for once it's a project that everyone wants to say ‘yes’ to,:” she said. “It's exciting and fun, so we've had great support.”

But with that excitement comes a major infrastructure challenge as officials with host facilities like Skeetawk, which will be the site of the alpine events, navigate bureaucratic red tape to move through the permitting processes for their expansion. And for work that must be done over the summer construction season the clock is already ticking.

At Skeetawk that includes regrading the long driveway from Hatcher Pass Road into their parking lot, said Megan Justus, the area’s mountain manager. While the ski area’s current array of groomed slopes and parking are primarily on Borough-controlled property, the entrance is owned and managed by the Department of Natural Resource’s (DNR) mining, land and water section.

But with a 7% grade at its steepest point, the unpaved and often snowy road is currently too steep for safe bus use, Justus said, blocking it from access by local schools and other groups using mass transport. And unless the lease application is approved and the road is regraded this summer, those groups will include athletes, support staff and spectators who must be brought in for the games.

“We need a decision now because we have to line up contractors starting next month so that they don't get booked out for summer. We’re doing our full diligence to do this correctly, efficiently and everything that we need to do to get it done well,” she said. “It has been sitting on someone's desk at DNR and we have called, we have answered questions, I'm starting to push politicians on it because it's got to get done”:

State officials confirmed they’ve had the complete application from Skeetawk since July of last year but said they cannot predict a timeframe for its processing.

“DNR is aware of Skeetawk’s time constraints and has clearly communicated the statutory steps necessary in considering a disposal of interest in State lands managed on behalf of the public,” Lorraine Henry, a DNR spokesperson, said in an email. “We are unable to estimate a deadline at this time as the project has yet to go through the solicitation of the public’s comments, and we cannot speculate as to if this project will be approved or not.”

Henry said the department is short-staffed, with 62% of the positions in their southcentral mind, land and water division leasing section currently vacant. The office aims to process applications within a nine to 12-month timeframe, she said.

But depending on a variety of factors, some applications have been shown to take much longer. For example, a separate and unrelated DNR easement application for a trail project also at Skeetawk has been awaiting adjudication since 2018 and is on hold while a previous hydro project application overlapping the same section is processed. That hydro project application was first filed in 2006.

Skeetawk’s road problems won’t keep the games away entirely, officials said -- but they will make them more expensive and less efficient. For example, buses can drop athletes and visitors at the bottom of the road and they can be shuttled up to the parking area in vans. But busing gets expensive. Even without the additional shuttles needed for the Skeetawk road, busing athletes and support from the airport and to events is expected to cost upwards of $500,000, Sargo said.

While Spargo said local games officials have not yet coordinated with Skeetawk on working with DNR to process the application, they are willing to do so and plan to follow Skeetawk’s lead.

“Certainly we would be open to helping move this forward,” she said.