Lone Wolf: Court loss won’t end fight over historic trail

PALMER — Charles Lone Wolf may have lost his legal battle with the state over public access to a historic trail that crosses his property, but he says the war is still on.

More than a month removed from Superior Court Judge Kari Kristiansen’s order granting the state’s request for an injunction against Lone Wolf from blocking or interfering with the portion of East Chickaloon Road on his land, Lone Wolf said he doesn’t regret taking his case to court.

“Well, it didn’t go well,” he said about the outcome, adding that he was able to get some important information on the record that will be helpful in the future.

Lone Wolf was accused of blocking the road earlier this year with downed trees and detouring traffic through his driveway. State Division of Natural Resources crews removed the trees July 12, but the blockage was back the next day, along with nails placed in the roadway between the entrances of Lone Wolf’s driveway.

While Lone Wolf admits he hired someone to place the trees across the road the first time, he has denied involvement in putting the roadblock back or scattering a large number of nails in the road. During arguments in the injunction hearing, he hypothesized other motives people may have for blocking the road, including access to a controversial coal lease near Castle Mountain.

“That was the only factor,” he said of the coal link. “We’re not talking about a 70-mile or more right of way from Knik all the way to Nilchina. This is a 2-mile piece of road that connects Fish Lake subdivision to Castle Mountain. That’s all (the state) wanted that piece of the road (for).”

Although he concedes the old Chickaloon Trail has a historic place in the area and was a valid right of way at one time, it had largely been abandoned by the 1940s, Lone Wolf said. That the state, some 70 years later, claims a public right of way now that it provides access to potential coal exploration is dubious, he said.

“No, it wasn’t a fair hearing and there was no possible way I was going to get one,” he said. “The hearing was called for that a 60-year-old male put nails on the road to restrict people from coming and going from the property. Do you believe that? … Once the trees were removed, for our purpose, we knew the next step was court.”

In the end, the protracted hearing, which covered multiple dates over a two-month span, was for naught, Lone Wolf said. After he presented his arguments, Kent Sullivan, an attorney representing the state of Alaska, made a motion for summary judgment because Lone Wolf, who represented himself, didn’t follow proper legal procedure.

“The judge was not allowed to make a decision based on the information provided, because the state made a motion for a default judgment, because apparently we missed some of the timeline or something when this first started,” Lone Wolf said.

Lone Wolf said he’s still considering other options for protecting his property.

Specifically, he said there’s a case to be made that the area around Castle Mountain should be reclassified as a World Heritage Site.

“It has some of the most unique geology and landforms in Alaska,” he said. “Castle Mountain is from uplift and wind erosion, not from glaciers.”

Until then, though, Lone Wolf said he and his neighbors have to live with increased truck traffic on East Chickaloon Road going to and from coal lease areas.

“Who do we go to now because of the traffic problems with the trucks running across my property at 30 mph?” he said. “It’s slowed down quite a bit for winter … but before that we were getting 20, 30 trucks a day through here hauling back and forth.”

While his actions and arguments may lead some to believe Lone Wolf has an anti-coal bias, he said that’s not the case.

“I’m neither for or against it,” he said. “I believe in the planning process to mitigate and the state’s regulatory process.”

In the end, he said the lesson is a hard one for property owners.

“We all lost on this one,” he said, “because this was a misuse and abuse of power that the state has.”

Contact reporter Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.