A Seward Highway Safety Meeting
The sign-in table for a "safer Seward Highway" meeting held Wednesday in Girdwood was like a merch booth at a music festival.
A representative from HDR, a private environmental consulting firm, handed out Cotopaxi Fanny Packs, blue stress balls, and Nalgene water bottles.
"No, please, take one," said the young woman at the door. "We've got plenty."
Just inside, six pizzas covered a counter and a bowl of candy stood on a table with blank comment sheets and other handouts.
Signs lined both walls displayed maps with sections of the highway (McHugh Creek, Potter Marsh, and so on) highway design options (separated two lane, three and four lanes), breakdown displays of accidents and other informational graphics.
Soon about 20 people sat down while HDR consultants stood at the perimeter of the Community Center room.
Taking turns, four HDR consultants gave an overview that included a timeline, various highway construction alternatives, the purpose for the project, and the safety concerns that prompted what could be a billion-dollar investment.
Read the entire story at:
https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/a-seward-highway-safety-meeting
Gear Up! Gear Exchange Buys and Sells
Calling all gear lovers! Gather up your gently used outdoor gear and clothing. Girdwood has a new business in town. The Girdwood Gear Exchange opened this past summer giving Girdwoodians an opportunity to buy and sell gear.
It is owned and run by Mara Hall who followed the consignment model when creating her new business. This model benefits the consignor, who makes money by selling used items, while the buyer gets quality gear at a discounted price.
Mara, who loves thrift shopping and clothes, started her career selling women’s clothing at markets. When the commercial space at her current location opened she bought it hoping to expand. Instead of going to Anchorage, her hope is that locals will utilize her store.
The Gear Exchange is located at 599 Alyeska Highway. December hours are: Friday & Saturday 11-5; and Sunday & Monday 11-3.
The Gear Exchange is currently taking winter clothing and gear, but will transition to summer gear when the seasons change.
Go check out the Girdwood Gear Exchange and you might just walk out with a new Patagonia jacket that you didn’t know you needed
CoasT Pizza Goes Bigger
CoasT Pizza is renovating its Old Girdwood location and hopes to serve beer and wine in the future.
The pizzeria has expanded its kitchen, removed walls and scraped away an old, tiled floor to give employees more room to work and customers more room to dine.
For its signature bar, it took owner Amanda Tuttle “months of time and a lot of extremely hard work” to culled and reclaimed lumber from a nearby property.
"The end of the bar is a perfect place to watch the sunset," said CoasT manager Jen Morse. "It's the corner where locals hang out.”
Potter Marsh Watershed Park is on the Horizon
Great Land Trust has been working with Municipality of Anchorage (MOA) Heritage land Bank and GCI to conserve 300 acres of important hillside watershed features that are critical to sustaining the vibrant habitat of the Potter’s Marsh, located between Golden View Drive to the east and Old Seward Highway.
“We are thrilled how this project is proceeding and it is nice to be doing a project in Anchorage at this scale as these opportunities are few and far between,'“ said Dave Mitchell, Conservation Director with Great Land Trust.
“We select our projects based on prioritizations that look at wetlands and anadromous streams and adjacency to protected areas and we try to collect all the data we can and rank and put it into GIS and rank land based on conservation value,” he added. “This property actually ranked number one.”
Set between the old and new Seward highways, Potter Marsh is a portion of the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge is Anchorage’s gateway to Turnagain Arm. The new Potter Marsh Watershed Park will be owned, operated and maintained by the MOA Parks and Recreation Department.
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Opening Day a Wash
By Harper Landry
TNews Contributor
There was skepticism amongst skiers and riders when Alyeska announced that they were opening the mountain Nov. 24, the earliest day in a decade.
That skepticism turned to sheer excitement when recent blizzards and ongoing snowfall led riders to anticipate an epic full mountain opening pow day.
Where we landed was somewhere in between.
Alyeska followed through and got the mountain open early but a shift in weather to rainfall and warm temperatures resulted in a limited opening and groomed slushy slopes.
Chair 3 (Bear Cub Quad) and Chair 7 were open from 10-5. Resort management cited safety reasons for the limited opening.
An email sent out by the Mountain Manager Duane Stutzman informed passholders that the new ticket system adopted would not recognize the passes that were purchased in the spring/summer of 2023.
The email directed passholders to ticket offices to exchange passes. Some passholders were unaware of this change, but lifties at Chair 3 had great attitudes and graciously let passholders through and directed them to the ticket offices to update their passes.
The weather was blustery, rainy, and unseasonably warm with temperatures in the low forties. This didn’t stop skiers and riders from having fun and being clearly excited to be shredding in November.
Nor did limited mountain access stop the Alyeska Ski Club racers from training. The two functional lifts had congestion at times due to the racers which usually train on Chair 4.
Calling All Heroes: Nominations for American Red Cross Awards Open
Calling All Heroes: Nominations for the 2024 American Red Cross of Alaska Real Heroes Awards are open
“A hero is someone who rises in the face of adversity and helps others in a true moment of need,“ said Anchorage Police Officer Jacob Raygor.
Officer Raygor and two of his fellow police officers were selected as one of the American Red Cross of Alaska Real Hero Award recipients in 2023. Raygor and his colleagues provided successfully evacuated another police officer that was injured in the line of duty and provided first aid which saved his life.
El Nino May Not Be Behind November Snowfall, Experts Say
An unprecedented storm that hurled over three feet snow across Turnagain Arm this past week occurred during an El Nino year, but it is unlikely a natural cycle of warming ocean water is responsible for that event, said Alaska Climate Specialist Rick Thoman.
Nevertheless, El Nino and global warming are having and will have impacts on our winters, scientists say.
"I've had a lot of questions in the last couple weeks, [such as] is this south central snow, the warmth and lack of sea ice in parts of western Alaska, is this tied to El Nino'. Thoman said in videotaped briefing Friday.
[But} where these storms are the first half of November give me confidence to say--and I don't often get to say this--we think pretty darn confidently that our unusual weather is not directly linked to El Nino," he said.
Yet, while there were other influences causing the storms, El Nino will likely create a warmer winter and spring in Alaska and "win out in the end" as a leading factor in weather systems, he said.
Heavy, wet snow that fell last week cut off power across Girdwood and parts of Anchorage, clogged local roadways, and even restricted, in some cases, cell service. On the Richardson Highway, around Mile 46, 72 inches of snow fell in a 20 hour period.
Read the. entire story by clicking the headline or at:
Town’s new ski tuner is a Robot
As Girdwood and the Turnagain Arm gets slammed by another early season storm, many of us turn our thoughts to breaking out our snowboards and skis and tuning our rides.
Whether conditions are wet and deep or thin and icy, we all know a little love towards our equipment can jump start the season and give us the edge we need to rally like a pro.
Two local shops serve skiers and riders, Powder Hound and Alyeska Resort's tuning shop in the Daylodge, coined "Alyeska Ski Service" by its techs.
The head technicians at each location are recognized locals, highly qualified and, coincidentally, tuned skis for separate ski shops in Park City, Utah at one point. Both shops are gaining better equipment, which, for skiers and riders, means boards with sharper edges, smoother glide and conditioned bases. It also means faster turn-around for tuning.
Local Girdwood ski shop, Powder Hound, has brought rarely-available technology.
Introducing ... The Reichmann Slope Master Ski Tuning Machine.
Read the entire story by clicking the headline or at:
https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/towns-new-ski-tuner-is-a-robot
https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/towns-new-ski-tuner-is-a-robot
Turnagain News INN NewsMatch Fundraiser enters second week
Last week the Turnagain News, your local, community online newspaper had over $650 in private donations that translated into $1,300 for Week One of the eight-week Newsmatch.inn.org annual fundraiser for membership for your paper.
Our challenge is on.
It is our goal to reach the $13,000 by December 31st, the Newsmatch limit for the first year of local community news, news that is important to the communities of Turnagain Arm!
Each week, we will post our donation amount and share our progress to meeting this goal. This dollar-for-dollar match is made possible by INN.org, an Independent news network. This is an amazing and supportive organization with over 400 local, community, non-profit, newspapers in the US. TurnagainNews.org is one of 400 community-driven newspapers INN’s Newsmatch is supporting with this fundraising platform.
Slopes Success: Lessons propel winter sports enthusiasts to new heights
With the snowfall and on the brink of the thrilling world of winter sports, enthusiasts from Southcentral Alaska have the opportunity for skill enhancement through structured lessons at Alyeska Resort.
As Alyeska Resort staff gear up for the winter season, the demand for lessons is expected to soar. Whether carving down beginner trails or conquering advanced slopes, enthusiasts are increasingly recognizing the pivotal role of structured instruction in unlocking their full skiing or snowboarding potential.
Read the entire story by clicking the headline or at:
Planning Maps Stir Controversy
On a mid-week night in early October, a young couple left the Girdwood School after sitting through two hours of presentations laying out options for the community's future.
They moved to Girdwood a little over a year ago, have decent jobs and are outdoorsy. They just want a home to buy.
They said they were frustrated with all the zoning and planning planning particulars, but, also with what they see as a contradiction between a call for affordable housing and resistance to development proximal to existing homes.
Turnagain News kicks off INN NewsMatch Fundraiser
Today is a big day here at Turnagain News. It’s the kickoff of our NewsMatch campaign — our biggest fundraiser of the year,” said Jon Scudder, Turnagain News publisher. “As a reader of the Turnagain News, you already know the value of our local and investigative coverage.”
NewsMatch begins Nov. 1 and runs through Dec. 31 and is supported by the Institute for Non-Profit News, matching individual donations. “Our goal is to raise at least $13,000 in individual donations to allow us to add a print edition of the Turnagain News,” he said. People can donate on the Turnagain News website or by making a tax-deductible donation in care of the Turnagain News through Girdwood Inc.
Low turn out for HLB open house
A low-publicized Heritage Land Bank open house to solicit input on its 2024 work plan drew only a half dozen residents to the community center Monday afternoon.
Though its first meeting with Girdwood had little public notice, the meeting is only the first of three, said Nicole Jones-Vogel, a former HLB land manager whose company, Rise Up Coaching Solutions, was contracted to help with planning.
Of about 10,000 acres HLB controls in the Municipality of Anchorage, a little less than half of those lands are in Girdwood.
Bear Escapes Apparent Shooting in Girdwood
Alayna DuPont set an alarm for 3:30 a.m. to wake up early Friday morning for bear patrol.
At 2:15 a.m. a string of gunshots woke her instead.
The report came from a parking lot near Alyeska's Sitzmark bar where a brown bear had knocked over a dumpster 24 hours earlier. She quickly texted her contact with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. No response.
GCVA hosts show featuring Anchorage Clay Arts Guild
The Girdwood Center for Visual Arts hosted the Anchorage Clay Arts Guild on the evening of Oct.7 in a well-attended community opening reception titled “Thrown Together” featuring pottery works of art from numerous local artists.
Girdwood hosts Homer Police forum on ‘Parenting in the Digital Age’
On a recent Friday evening in Girdwood, a much anticipated guest speaker came to Girdwood thanks to outreach and support from the Public Safety Advisory Committee and Girdwood Board of Supervisors. Lieutenant Ryan Browning of the Homer Police Department engaged parents and youth in a frank conversation about the real life risks of youth social media usage, cyberbullying, sexting.
Lt. Browning’s time as a police officer, and personal experience as a father of two teens himself, inspired him to create his two hour presentation “Parenting in the Digital Age.” Over the last year Browning has traveled all over the state of Alaska sharing his thoughtful, engaging, and at times provocative, two hour program with the goal of helping parents and teens open up a dialogue about what they’re seeing and experiencing online.
Sold Out Girdwood Trails Marathon held Saturday; brings new record, and inspiring stories
The sixth annual Girdwood Trails Marathon was held Saturday, Oct. 7 starting from the Alyeska Daylodge and travels through some of the most amazing meandering trails in Girdwood.
This sold-out event included a full marathon, a half marathon, and a juniors half marathon. In total, 193 participants, including 62 full marathon, and 131 half marathon particpants, from all around Alaska. This included 26 locals and 14 runners from other states, who ran the “marathon loop” in the Girdwood Valley.
Girdwood's Ava Earl Releases New Album, Helps Power Northwestern U. Running Team
In fourth grade at Girdwood Elementary, Ava Earl had to write a self-reflection on her school performance: "What are you good at? What are your weaknesses?"
Assessing her strengths wouldn't be hard, she was an exemplary student, star runner and already showed a proclivity in music.
But there was one thing she scolded herself on, something that could cause her teachers' "mild frustration", and something, as it would turn out, for which women are typically chided for more than men.
Talking--being--too much.
That accusation became the title of Earl's latest album, her fourth, released Sept. 15
Alaska WWAMI Equips Future Doctors for Wilderness Medicine in Girdwood
First-year Alaska WWAMI medical students gathered in Girdwood for a day of intensive wilderness medicine training earlier this month.
“I think it’s important for Alaska WWAMI students to gain wilderness medical experience simply because we all live and recreate here, and many of us plan to have our careers based here,” said Rya Berrigan, who grew up in Palmer, AK. “As we train to become physicians in Alaska, it is an added responsibility to be knowledgeable and comfortable treating patients either while we are in the wilderness ourselves, or if we see patients come in with injuries or illnesses sustained while out in the wilderness," she said.