Hatcher Pass opens to snowmachines

PALMER — This season saw the issue get so contentious as to spark organized protests but, as of Friday, Hatcher Pass is open to snowmachines.

“I am glad to report that due to snowfall last night, and it is continuing to snow, Superintendent Wayne Biessel, with concurrence from the Hatcher Pass Ranger, are opening the area to snowmobiling effective immediately,” reads an email from Alaska State Parks Director Ben Ellis that Sen. Mike Dunleavy’s office forwarded to the snowmachine-riding community.

“Praise the lord our prayers have been answered,” reads the subject line of an email from R. Dean Nelson announcing the opening.

Nelson has been one of many snowmachine enthusiasts questioning the snow-measuring methods state parks officials use to determine whether snowmachines would be allowed.

The issue of snow depth came to a head this winter when a group of snowmachine riders — who say they were out gathering their own snow depth data to compare to parks data — were ticketed coming out of the pass. Many were issued trespassing orders that they not return for an indefinite period of time.

Parks officials like Alaska Park Ranger Damon Hampel say that the issue of whether to open the pass or not is tricky. The state is obliged to follow the Hatcher Pass Management Plan, which limits snowmachine usage to when snow cover is adequate.

Hampel said on a trip to measure snow depths Thursday that the state can’t make exceptions to the rules even in years like this when snow is so sparse. Exceptions create a precedence that erodes the rules.

“There’s just things you have to do whether you agree with it or not,” he said.

Thursday he pointed to trail markers along the snowmachine trails and noted that they take days to set out, and late openings make that effort seem wasted.

On that same trip, Hampel ran into David Hendrickson, who has the contract to groom the snowmachine trails in the pass.

“So far this year we’ve only been doing the ski trails,” he said, though Hampel noted that if the trails were opened, as they were on Friday, Hendrickson’s marching orders would be to get them groomed.

Hendrickson said it’s not unheard of, but far from normal, to have so little snow in the pass. He pointed to trees and rocks that are usually buried by now.

“This is not very typical,” he said. “We have one of these every once in awhile.”

He said the snowpack is unpredictable but whatever the cause, there seems to be a trend.

“We’ve been having later and later cold weather,” Hendrickson said.

But snowmachine riders say they feel pushed out. At a protest last week, some compared park rangers to Nazis and referred to them as “freedom snatchers.”

Nelson pointed to weeks of data showing snow depths well above 30 inches at various weather stations in the pass and said that the business of measuring snow should be left up to the weather experts rather than the rangers.

Hampel said that the weather stations are among the data parks officials consider but none are at the spots that tend to get most abused — the access points off of the parking lots. Snow cover there on his Thursday trip was the shallowest of the spots he checked.

Meanwhile, at a legislative town hall meeting Saturday, Mat-Su Ski Club President Ed Strabel offered the perspective of another user group in the pass, mentioning a group of riders ticketed as they went out to, in their words, gather their own snow depth data.

“What these individuals have been apprehended for has been going on for some time,” Strabel said.

Ski trails in a borough-maintained area of the pass — the first few kilometers of Archangel Road, which is completely non-motorized except for one narrow crossing — have been torn up by snowmachines running on them, leaving ruts. Strabel said the ruts left by what parks officials and others refer to as snowmachine “poachers” have injured skiers.

“State parks is trying to do the best they can with the conditions they’re given,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.