(Published: June 8, 2003)
The broad, open expanses that filter the water that drains into one of the
most important salmon streams in Alaska are ripped and torn with the black,
muddy tracks of four-wheelers and off-road, tracked vehicles.
Trees are snapped off where snowmobilers looking for navigational targets
plowed over them in the winter. Beer cans, either maliciously discarded or
dropped accidentally into winter snows never to be found until spring, litter
the landscape.
Were the damage confined to this one, small corner of Alaska it would be one thing, but you can find these sorts of scars all over the face of the 49th state. They crisscross the Nelchina Basin to the east. They fan out around Bush communities to the west. They tear into the foothills of the Kenai Peninsula to the south.
While organized environmentalists fret about what the tracks of a few oil drilling rigs might do to the tundra wetlands of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the thousands of tracks and tires of everyday, fun-loving Alaskans trace a spider web of disintegration everywhere else.
What the oil industry might or might not do in the name of profit pales compared to what legions of average folk will do in the name of fun or laziness. One of the more shocking realizations encountered in Alaska these days is the length to which some people go to avoid walking.
Not to mention the damage they are willing to inflict upon the landscape so as to save their feet from any use other than bouncing on foot pegs.
Having witnessed the devastation firsthand yet again, it is tempting to launch a forlorn plea to ban off-road vehicles in Alaska, but that's no solution. For one thing, much of the mess is attributable to people trying to get to and from their "winnings'' in the remote parcel land sales and land giveaways in which the state has engaged over the years.
After promising Alaskans a piece of paradise -- your own cabin in the deep woods complete with "Keep Out -- Private Property" signs to welcome backcountry travelers or any neighbors -- it would be not only unfair but wrong to block access to these properties.
Yes, I know, the greenest of readers will mumble, "Hey, they can walk; can't they?"
But anyone who's ever tried to keep a rural cabin supplied knows this is unrealistic. Even the most back-to-nature Alaskans are now today linked to the hydrocarbon-powered machines that rule the modern world.
Somewhere out there might be a man or woman still cutting wood with the venerable Swede saw, but most have given in to the two-cycle engine and the chain. It only takes a day to cut with a chain saw the volume of wood that would take a week with that old bow saw. But, alas, the chain saw needs gas and oil.
Anyone who has packed gas cans -- or water cans, for that matter -- quickly learns the luxury of motorized transport -- be it truck, riverboat, snowmachine or four-wheeler. Loads that are burdensome to carry manually are easy to move mechanically, and there are always loads to move.
The slight fuel demands of a chain saw are nothing compared to the equipment needs of modern Americans retreating to the Bush. The petrochemical-sucking potential of the electric generator alone is huge.
Yes, more and more, rural cabins are going to roof-mounted solar cells for electrical power, but generators are still widely used as backup for lights or water pumps (who wants to live without running water in this day and age?), TV sets and satellite dishes (who can survive without television anymore?).
And then, of course, there is the freezer, which must have power or everything thaws.
These sorts of needs make it unrealistic to believe the problems of all-terrain vehicle use in rural Alaska can somehow be made to go away by anything as simple as a futile demand for a ban on four-wheelers, tracked vehicles and the like.
No, the best solution here is not in restriction but accommodation.
Alaska needs a good trail system.
If that sounds too green for motorheads, call it a "Bush road system" -- our own, uniquely Alaskan intrastate built to accommodate not cars and trucks but four-wheelers, snowmachines and -- for those of us still preaching the benefits of exercise -- mountain bikes and hikers.
Instead of pouring millions of dollars into overdesigned, overbuilt roadside bike trails used by the few, the state needs to figure out a way to get some of that money flowing into Bush trails used by the many. Raise this issue with officials in the state Department of Transportation, of course, and all you hear is how the trail money is linked by federal law to federally funded highway projects.
Are we to believe Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young lack the political juice to get this modified to recognize Alaska's unique predicament? Young is the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, and he used to live in Fort Yukon.
If there's anyone who ought to be able to see the need for a "Bush road system" in Alaska, along with possessing the political muscle to make it happen, it's Young. He shouldn't exactly have a hard sell either.
Consider safety alone. A "Bush road'' (a four-wheeler trail for the rest of the world) from Bethel along the Kuskokwim River to Aniak would not only provide easy four-wheeler travel, it would also provide a fine snowmobile trail to help get people off the ice in fall and spring. Too many river snowmobilers go into open water there every year and die.
This program needn't be costly, either. Kevin Keeler and others associated with the National Park Service's Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program have spent the past decade developing the technology for building all-terrain vehicle trails over or into muskeg. They could show the state Department of Transportation how to build "Bush roads'' for a fraction the cost of our urban roads.
They have been working with plastic matting that allows natural grasses to grow through and around it, creating a firm, long-lasting bed for four-wheeler and tracked-vehicle traffic with little change to the natural setting.
The environmental and aesthetic impacts of this are obvious.
If ever there was a win-win situation for Alaska greenies and motorheads, this is it.
There are a few people working on it too. A group called Alaska Trails has formed. Tireless Joe Westfall has been named its first head. There is potential here, but the organization is going to need a lot of help to move a bureaucracy mired in traditional thoughts about road construction and traditional "standards" for roads and trails.
Those hurdles have for decades posed a financial blockade to the expansion of Alaska's transportation system. In the interim, Alaskans have taken the matter into their own hands in the worst way, carving four-wheeler tire trails willy-nilly across the landscape.
It is time to change that. The costs of a suggested road to McGrath remain mindboggling, but it's not impossible to think about someone building a "Bush road" from the end of the Petersville Road, along the muskegs in the foothills of the Alaska Range to McGrath, with a bunch of fords high on the rivers that drain the range and maybe a bridge or two in places.
Or maybe, for that matter, making the Iditarod Trail a real, usable, 12-month-a-year trail in places. The U.S. Forest Service is already working on that idea on its section of the route between Seward and Girdwood. The state could start doing its part by at least getting the trail upgraded to "Bush road'' caliber from Knik to the Susitna River.
About half of the work there is already done. The trail has been cleared where it passes through forest. All that is needed is some rerouting around lakes and the building of a lot of over-muskeg trail through wet areas to prevent four-wheelers from churning them to mud.
This is not just the right thing to do. This is not just the sensible thing to do. This is the best thing to do.
Outdoors editor Craig Medred writes a weekly opinion column. He can be reached at cmedred@adn.com or 257-4588.
Scars from off-road traffic
damage tourism industry in Alaska
"Motorized Alaskans Wreaking Havoc in Bush" by Craig Medred (Daily
News, June 8) was a great article on the scarring of the land in Alaska by
off-road and tracked vehicles. Some of us have cabins that we use only in the
winter because crossing wetlands with off-road vehicles would tear up and scar
the land in summer. Access to the cabins is by snowmachines only after the
ground is frozen and snow is sufficiently deep to protect the underlying
vegetation.
One point not mentioned in the article is the scarring of the land and its
effect on visitors who come to Alaska. Tourism here is huge, and the drawing
card is wildlife, wild places and the vast wilderness Alaska is known for around
the globe. Anyone flying over many areas of Southcentral Alaska can readily
observe the unrelenting maze of scars on large areas of wild and unpopulated
country for miles across the horizon. From the air, this scarring of the land
makes a striking and lasting impression of the magnitude and irresponsibility of
off-road vehicles turned loose. Eventually, this is going to seriously affect
retaining the wild character of the land that is so critical to Alaska's tourist
industry.
-- Bill Quirk
Medred's
Bush trail system idea just needs a better sales job
So to sell the trail system idea, you have to find a way to sell it to Texas
oil tycoons. How about making the snowmachines as big as SUVs, at about half the
mileage. Put up toll booths at the trail head and mark half the profits for oil
exploration in the Valley. Or for that matter, require oil companies to pave
over the thousands of miles of arrow-straight trail scars they have already made
all over this state. Then they can raise prices at the pump again, and we can
bomb another third world company (oops, country) to make certain we Americans
have the oil.
Craig, sales isn't about reality, it's all about public perception. How else
could Murkowski and his cronies get elected?
Eagle River