The Juneau Icefield in the Tongass National Forest is a popular destination for skiers. Photo © Peter M. Griffin/U.S. Forest Service
In America’s last temperate rainforest, Mark and Patte Rorick are hoofing up a hiking trail toward the foot of the legendary Mendenhall Glacier. The Roricks need no reminder of why they’ve chosen to live in remote Alaska. The sheltering canopy of the Tongass National Forest, with its fragrant botanic understory and lush temples of old-growth trees, has always represented a ready escape from the frenzy of humanity in the lower forty-eight states.
Even the masses in downtown Juneau, the second-smallest capital city in the United States with 30,000 denizens, can prove too much during the summer months, when more than 800,000 international cruise ship passengers flood the city. While the crowds inject vital tourist dollars into the economy, they also inspire local residents to seek solace on public-land hiking trails.
What attracts Mr. Rorick are the natural acoustics of the rainforest. A few hours spent out here can bring a re-tuning of the ears, allowing one to hear again the low-decibel sounds of nature that aren’t present in town. Sweet little audibles: the gurgle of a stream flow; the swoosh of spawning salmon fins in water; the delicate melodies of songbird courtship; the thudding of brown bear paws bounding across the Tongass’s mossy floor.
As we hike, Rorick credits the calming serenity of the forest with helping him heal from a recent bout with cancer. Nearing a lake set at the foot of the glacier, he suddenly stops. “Can you hear them?” he asks. “Here they come.”
Within seconds, his voice is drowned out by a swarm of rotors above the West Glacier Trail. Three commercial helicopters fly in formation onto the shoulder of the Mendenhall and land in front of a popular U.S. Forest Service visitor center. Kids yell “wow!” and point at the helicopters. Parents look astonished.
The surreal convergence resembles electric mosquitoes landing on the white arm of a giant.
“This is how I imagine the jungles of Vietnam sounding during the war,” says Rorick, an activist with the Sierra Club who goes by the nickname “Badger.” And this is a reason he became involved with trying to get heli-tourism more tightly regulated on the Tongass.
Years ago, the Roricks’ first encounter with helicopters occurred when the couple awoke at a secluded campsite on the side of a mountain with a chopper hovering above them and passengers taking photos of them as if they were bighorn sheep. The site had been a haven, one of their favorite spots in the world to pitch a tent, but now they don’t go back.
Today, Rorick says, there isn’t a recreational trail around Juneau that isn’t impacted by mechanical noise and intrusion from the air. To some, it might seem just another skirmish in a far-flung corner of America’s national forest system. But natural resource policy experts say the issues surrounding helicopters in Alaska are also proliferating in the lower forty-eight states, with potentially large implications for existing and future federal wilderness lands, wildlife management and human safety.
For Rorick and other conservationists, three key issues are in play: the concept of natural quiet, the integrity of wilderness and the growing recreational commodification of the backcountry. Heli-tourism, which today takes many forms including heli-skiing, aerial sightseeing and bush camping, rocketed to record levels in the 1990s—and the trajectory continues to climb. Tremendous amounts of money, millions upon millions of dollars in profits each year for private companies, are at stake.
From a relatively small number of customers in 1984, visitation via guided helicopter trips to the Mendendall and five other glaciers inside the massive Juneau Icefield has grown to 89,000 people per year, driven by a corresponding boom in cruise ship passengers to this port city.
To stand on a primordial remnant from the ice age can be jaw-dropping, no matter how one gets there. “Every day we get clients who are so blown away by what they’ve experienced they literally jump up and down with joy,” says Tim McDonnell, vice-president of tourism marketing for TEMSCO, Alaska’s largest heli-tour operator. “People equate it with having a religious experience.”
To reach the Juneau Icefield, clients pay $200 for a 55-minute ride to a glacier—and prices go up from there. For twice that amount, you can be ferried by copter to Skagway to embark on a glacial dog-sled ride ˆ la Jack London.
“Commercial helicopter traffic is exploding across wild Alaska at industrial-strength levels and the federal land management agencies will tell you they’re ill-equipped to deal with it,” says Nicole Whittington-Evans, the assistant regional director with the Wilderness Society in Anchorage.
In the past two years, heated conflict has broken out on several national forests in the western United States, too, and more is on the way. It’s no coincidence that most of the flashpoints are close to commercial ski resorts. Heli-skiers currently account for 2 percent of total Forest Service backcountry users nationwide, but the companies servicing them have been afforded access to exploit and capitalize on vast amounts of terrain.
To be sure, public lands in Alaska are managed differently than those in the contiguous forty-eight. Aircraft travel, as addressed under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, is a necessity for those who want to reach many national forests and parks because of their remoteness. Whittington-Evans says that’s not the issue. The controversy surrounds the Forest Service’s perceived inability to scrutinize the real impacts of heli-tourism and the agency’s response of grandfathering in use levels without first gauging their appropriateness.
Alaska serves as a poignant lens. In 2002, the Tongass completed an Environmental Impact Statement on heli-tourism following years in which the Forest Service issued landing permits one year at a time, enabling levels to steadily increase. The analysis, contained in a document as thick and heavy as an urban phone book, was long overdue and, according to Rorick, a decade too late.
“Unfortunately in many places, the genie is already out of the bottle,” says Bob Ekey, the northern Rockies regional director for the Wilderness Society. “A lot of forest managers believe that motorized uses in the backcountry—[all-terrain vehicles], dirt bikes, snowmobiles, and now, heli-tourism —have gone too far but it’s hard to stuff the genie back in. When you look at what’s happened in Alaska, and in Utah and Wyoming with the Forest Service allowing commercial helicopter use to gain a foothold and then expand, problems have only become exacerbated. By refusing to have a national dialogue and [by letting] the issue fly under the public radar, the agency has set the stage for conflict to only grow more intense and become more divisive.”
In the Bridger-Teton Forest of Wyoming, the Forest Service recently rejected arguments from conservationists that the agency didn’t consider the breadth of cumulative effects by allowing heli-skiing numbers to triple in and around the Palisades Wilderness Study Area, which could set a dangerous national precedent.
In Utah, the agency has come under fire for reauthorizing commercial heli-skiing on both the Uinta and Wasatch-Cache national forests encompassing terrain surrounding Salt Lake City and the ski resort community of Park City. Although the compromise cut the number of runs permitted over a season from 19,200 to 12,800, opponents say they are being displaced from parts of the backcountry.
On the Tongass, Juneau District Ranger Pete Griffin acknowledges that the industry grew faster during the 1990s than anyone expected, but he says that radically scaling back flight numbers was not an option. After hearing from enraged citizens about the noise, and consulting with business interests in Juneau who cited the jobs and tax revenues being generated by heli-tourism, forest officials froze landing numbers on the Juneau Icefield at 19,039. The Tongass plan allows for volume to grow 5 percent each year until 2007, when 24,299 landings will trigger another review.Ê Part of the plan calls for channeling helicopters into landing zones that would accommodate up to 100 landings a day and a total of 600 people with up to 120 at any one time. Companies that make attempts to reduce their noise levels are given the opportunity to gain more landings.
“During the EIS, we asked the Forest Service to strive for balance by setting aside a couple of areas close to town and on the glaciers for quiet recreation. Is it too much to ask to be able to take a hike and not hear a helicopter? Is that radical?” Rorick asks. “We also wanted a couple of days a week that were helicopter-free. We weren’t out to kill the industry. Nobody was, but the Forest Service gave us nothing.”
In his record of decision, freezing in place a landing quota, which conservationists claim was already excessive, Griffin wrote, “We are fortunate that this popular activity has an almost negligible impact on the physical environment in the national forests. If that were the only consideration, then I would be willing to substantially increase the authorized landings to provide more opportunities for visitors to experience the icefield. But I have also heard about the effects on residents, especially about the noise under the flight paths. I wish there were an alternative that would alleviate all the noise problems and still provide visitors the opportunity to experience the icefield and provide economic benefits for Juneau. But there is no such alternative, despite great efforts to find it.”
Landing on the Mendenhall Glacier may be a life-changing experience for cruise ship passengers, but for extreme heli-skiers and snowboarders, the Holy Grail for steep shredding is a line of coastal mountains rising above the Chugach National Forest further to the north. Chugach Powder Guides, a skiing outfitter based in the resort community of Girdwood on the Kenai Peninsula, recently won approval from the Forest Service to dramatically expand its sphere of operation, much to the consternation of nearby residents.
“I would like to think that communities control their destinies…as much as that is possible when surrounded by federal public lands subject to federal law and policy,” the Tongass’s Griffin suggests. Griffin says the coastal community of Gustavus, another town surrounded by the Tongass, voiced opposition to the request by a private lodge operator who wanted a special use permit to bring skiers to the bowls of the Chilkat Mountains east of town. A number of public meetings were held, but Griffin says that local sentiments were vague until the last meeting. “I asked them to provide a community position and they ended up taking a vote,” he says. “Very clearly, Gustavus did not favor the Forest Service granting a permit for a heli-skiing business. We did not issue the permit.”
Well over half of all the adults in Moose Pass, population 350, signed a petition advising the Forest Service to reject the proposal from Chugach Powder Guides to dramatically increase the number of clients it can serve.
Chugach Powder Guides, founded by a group of skiing friends that includes former Olympian Tommy Moe, publishes a chart for clients that bases its charges for fresh powder on amount of vertical terrain. A full day of helicopter shredding starts at $700 per person and includes the guarantee of six runs totaling between 16,000 and 20,000 feet of vertical. “The charge for exceeding the package vertical footage is $25 per 1,000 feet,” the company states on its webpage. “If we don’t achieve the guaranteed package footage, the refund is $22 per 1,000 vertical feet.”
Besides Chugach Powder Guides, at least seven other heli-skiing companies operate between Anchorage and Haines, lured by the possibility of netting huge profits. One study shows that heli-skiers spend $20 for every $1 spent by conventional skiers. Skiers and snowboarders are promised access to fresh untracked powder in remote mountain bowls, like painters being given new canvases.
In 2004, the Chugach Forest, despite vocal opposition, rewrote Chugach Powder Guides’ special use permit, increasing its access from 110,000 acres to 260,000 acres of terrain and boosting its allowable client days from 800 annually to 2,200—based upon its argument that the company needed higher volume in order to compete in the global marketplace.
Turning public lands into a product and setting a price on the amount of terrain traversed is troubling to Scott Silver, founder of Wild Wilderness, a group that has fought user fees on national forest lands and corporate attempts to privatize public lands.
Not only has heli-skiing created an elite market for the backcountry that only deep-pocketed patrons can afford, it also means, he says, that a few companies have been given a de facto right to control hundreds of thousands of acres of public land.
Given the huge sums of money at stake, heli-skiing has put pressure on both the Forest Service and the companies themselves to deliver the goods. When that happens, it often means that other considerations—such as noise-free recreation, disturbance to wildlife, and the loss of opportunity for locals who get to backcountry locations under their own power—are overlooked, he says.
Chugach Powder Guides, which says it approaches public lands no differently than river outfitters or hunting and flyfishing guides, recently unveiled what it calls “First Descents,” a new product that gives its patrons the opportunity to ski runs never before attempted in human history. A week’s worth of skiing in 2006, with 100,000 vertical feet guaranteed, costs upwards of $5,600 (not including airfare, food and liquor).
Shortly after the Chugach approved the company’s new permit, following completion of an EIS, seven conservation groups and citizens appealed the decision, arguing the Forest Service gave preferential treatment to the group and that it did not conduct an adequate environmental review.
A few months earlier, I sat on a picnic table in John and Annie Gaule’s backyard in Moose Pass. “This whole thing is crazy,” John says. “It’s like the Wild West of tourism has descended upon us.” The couple operates Alpenglow Cottage, a guest lodging that attracts people from around the world who come to experience “wild Alaska.”
Lying within the flight path of Chugach Powder Guides’ daily runs, their property is subjected to “annoying” noise levels, they say, but a bigger concern is how the escalation of heli-skiing is changing the character of their community. Moreover, the Forest Service admits that it does not have comprehensive data about the impacts of helicopter intrusion on wildlife or the risks of heli-skiers triggering avalanches. Lack of research should not be misconstrued as a lack of evidence that it isn’t harmful, observers say. The truth is, no national forest in the country has done any comprehensive studies or monitoring of the possible effects of helicopters on mountain goats, bighorn sheep, lynx, wolverine and other species that occupy high-altitude areas during both the breeding and hostile winter seasons.
“The Forest Service proposes major actions on behalf of companies yet it tells citizens that if helicopters cause harm to our lifestyle or to wildlife we have to prove it,” John Gaule says as a helicopter flies over his house. His comments are echoed in the lower forty-eight states.
In a letter to Nancy Hall, the Bridger-Teton’s district ranger, agency biologist Jeff Copeland raised concerns about wolverine, a reclusive and wide-ranging species that conservationists have petitioned for listing under the Endangered Species Act.
Just 500 wolverine, an estimate that many biologists believe is overly optimistic, are thought to exist in the northern Rockies. Concern for the species recently prompted managers on the Sawtooth and Lolo national forests in Idaho and Montana to scale back the amount of recreational intrusion into wolverine winter range.
In his letter, Copeland notified Hall that within the proposed permit area for expanded helicopter skiing, 100 percent of known wolverine denning habitat will be affected. He emphasized that the productivity of good habitat is “a function of its seclusion to human disturbance.”
Heli-tourism raises many questions about jurisdiction. The Federal Aviation Administration governs take-offs and landings and establishes floors and ceilings for flying. Together, local governments and the Forest Service map out flight routes, but it is the Forest Service alone that decides whether the use is allowed.
At present, the Forest Service has no over-arching regulation guiding its management. Instead, decisions are made on a forest-by-forest basis within the scope of forest plans. The closest thing to a federal directive governing over-flights is the National Parks Air Tour Management Act, passed by Congress in 2000 in response to concerns about the impact of over-flights on parks like Grand Canyon and Hawaii Volcanoes where numerous issues of safety have been raised in the wake of fatalities as well as questions of aesthetic impact.
The National Parks Air Tour Management Act placed a premium on the notion of “natural quiet” that rose to prominence during the Clinton administration as it attempted to implement a ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park (and which the Bush administration subsequently overturned). There were times in Yellowstone when the natural eruption of Old Faithful Geyser could not be heard over the roar of snow machine engines.
On the Bridger-Teton, there is a worry that increasing numbers of heli-skiers may preclude the Palisades Wilderness Study Area from achieving full federal wilderness status. Its designation has lingered for twenty years.
When the Wyoming Wilderness Act was passed in 1984, helicopter visitation to the Palisades Wilderness Study Area was minimal. It was argued and widely accepted at the time that the Palisades would be managed to preserve its enduring wilderness characteristics, which meant restricting further mechanized intrusion.
But Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, says the recent action could jeopardize the Palisades’ long-term protection. “Philosophically, wilderness begins on the ground and stretches straight up into the sky,” Camenzind says. He believes that having helicopters hovering two feet over a wilderness area and dropping skiers off is an abrogation of what lawmakers and citizens intended.
Rorick says that citizens in the lower forty-eight states should not make the same mistake that happened in Juneau. “We used to be able to camp back behind the Mendenhall Glacier and enjoy the day in complete silence,” he says. “Never did I experience a peace like that. Now you can’t find it within walking distance of Juneau. It has disappeared.”
In 2006, nearly 21,000 people will be airlifted over the Juneau Icefield, and the number will rise again the following year. Ironically, Rorick sees hope among the very tourists who have fueled the destruction of the natural quiet that brought him to Juneau. During the summer as the Juneau Icefield EIS was being prepared, the Sierra Club and other groups set up a table on the docks and spoke with departing cruise ship passengers about what was at stake.
“I got to know many of them. They are good people concerned about protecting and saving wild Alaska,” Rorick says. “They get it. That’s why they’re here. You don’t travel thousands of miles to Alaska and pay good money to hear the same sounds of what you left behind at home.”