By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
After fall and winter storms inflicted extensive damage to several remote road systems near Sitka, the Forest Service is spending much of the summer on repair work.
On Chichagof Island, storms damaged the False Island and Corner Bay road networks, and the Sitka Ranger District also has undertaken repairs on Kruzof and Baranof islands.
“It still looks rough in some places, but the mainlines on the False Island and Corner Bay road systems have been opened up,” Sitka District Ranger Perry Edwards told the Sentinel Monday. “But some of the small feeder roads that go off of that are not.”
Much of the work was done by contractors who conduct small-scale logging operations in the area.
“Most of the repairs on the roads, we have contractors that are out doing those… and we have been really fortunate to have folks out there who have small sawmills out there and do small timber sales, and they also have the equipment and expertise to dig things out and clear the culverts,” Edwards said.
Back in December, damage to the Corner Bay road network prevented crews from venturing more than one quarter of a mile on the 20-mile network that stretches into previously-logged areas of the island.
“They both got a lot of damage to culverts and bridges, and some landslides. Some places where the water was so high that water was literally flowing over the top of the bridges and ripping all the stuff off of them…. We don’t know the extent of all the damage,” the ranger said immediately following the storms. When repair crews arrived at the first bridge, there were holes in it, he said in December.
The storms didn’t just damage roads, erosion also threatened some salmon streams as culverts and bridges were clogged.
The winter floods created a cascading effect that blocked culvert after culvert, but Edwards stressed that in the summer’s restoration work, fish streams are a priority.
“Absolutely. What happened with a lot of those, too, was if it was simply draining… the first one (culvert) would block and run down the ditch line of the road… and by the time you got to a fish-bearing stream you had a lot of sediment,” the ranger said.
With so much damage to repair, Edwards noted that the Forest Service has employed contractors to perform much of the needed work. The district also used Emergency Relief for Federally Owned Roads funding to ensure that the repairs wouldn’t bankrupt the ranger district.
“We’ve really tried to keep it on the cheap… In the interest of saving taxpayer dollars and not completely bankrupting the Tongass with what we do, we’re being really careful and conservative in how much money we’re spending. Because if we spend too much money that would come out of next year’s funding,” Edwards said.
Over on the more frequently visited Kruzof Island, the ranger said, repairs on the Mud Bay road system have improved the safety of traveling there, especially on the Lower Cone route.
“That place has been unsafe and a very technical drive; I’ve heard of many people who have flipped their ATVs… and it’s now fixed up. You can drive a UTV out there,” he said.
The fixes to the Mud Bay network were financed with Great American Outdoors Act money.
While Edwards was pleased to see the roads repaired, a number of abandoned vehicles left to deteriorate in the backcountry stuck out to him.
“We went out there last Friday… and we were checking that out and checking out some other things, and we rode the whole system,” Edwards said. “And one of the things that was really concerning there were three UTVs and one ATV spread out on the main road system that appeared to be dead.”
While he’s not bothered by the ATVs and UTVs parked at Mud Bay, he thinks vehicles should not be abandoned on the trail itself.
“In the end, it just really impacts your recreation experience by seeing a bunch of junked, burned out crap by the side of the road… I’m hopeful that the owners will get their stuff off public land and deal with it,” he said.
Old logging roads were not the only things in need of repair after last year’s storms, however.
At the Sitkoh Lake cabin on southern Chichagof Island, the river rerouted in the storms and nearly wiped the cabin from the map.
“There’s still a river running almost through it. One of the tributary streams… rerouted and is going right in front of the cabin. And one of the employees said, ‘We’ve got to install rod holders on the cabin so people can fish from right there,’” the ranger joked.
North of Sitkoh, the Kook Lake cabin was less fortunate. The cabin – once raised up on four stilts – has toppled halfway over.
“It’s like a dog sitting down with its back legs sitting down. It’s down and we haven’t had a chance to get out there with the crew,” Edwards said.
Kook Lake Cabin is pictured after sustaining damage from storms over the fall and winter. It has not yet been repaired. (Photo provided by Perry Edwards)
At Kook Lake, the water drains to the ocean through a network of caves. But during the storms, Edwards said, these were overwhelmed and the lake rose by several feet.
“During these high flow events, that water in the lake came up so high, and from wind and wave action it completely obliterated the firewood storage area, just wiped it apart… It’s kind of like a bathtub ring… it was up by feet on a pretty big lake,” he noted.
More locally, the ranger said, plans to fix the artesian well at Starrigavan are still in the works, but not yet finalized. Also at Starrigavan, the project to restore the area annihilated in a 2014 landslide has been delayed because the district can’t purchase the bridges it needs.
Just north of town, the Forest Service also sent crews to the Nakwasina River this summer, to work on stream crossings in the logged-out valley,
“We just finished up a project out in Nakwasina. There’s a bunch of old roads out there that haven’t been used in many decades… We had a contractor go out there from Petersburg a week and a half ago or so,” the ranger said, “and they spent about a week out there pulling in stuff and improving stream crossings.”
Up on Harbor Mountain, crews are still working to improve the northern end of the Gavan-Harbor Trail. Forest Service plans to reroute the Gavan Hill trail are still moving forward, Edwards said. He expects that the environmental analysis for that project will take place this fall.
