Alaska News

Eklutna Lake gets recreational facelift with trail repairs, new cabins

There's no other bike trail quite like it. The Eklutna Lakeside Trail – a relatively flat, gravelly trail ringed by mountains – hugs the pristine, preternaturally turquoise waters of Eklutna Lake for 8 miles.

The lake is both a boon and a bane to the trail. Despite offering stunning views and occasional close encounters with wildlife, Eklutna Lake has been known to turn on the trail with vengeance.

Trail destroyed

The lake's surface, at its lowest every year just before spring breakup, can rise 50 feet or more by fall. In both 2012 and 2013, Eklutna Lake was full of water when hit by strong autumn winds. The resulting storm waves chewed up and swallowed large chunks of trail. Long and short sections disappeared into the lake along its length.

Although Eklutna Lake is located in Chugach State Park, prior commitments have allocated all of its annual recharge to supplying hydropower and at least half of the Municipality of Anchorage's public water. Because local power demands are highest in winter, the electric utilities – Anchorage Municipal Light & Power, Chugach Electric Association, and Matanuska Electric Association – like to see the lake to completely fill by autumn, before the lake freezes. Of course, in summers when water appears to be accumulating faster than normal, utility managers might also choose to take out more water on a daily basis during periods of high demand with the expectation that that water would otherwise be spilled over the storage dam when the lake filled up and be "wasted" for their purposes.

Trail damage was so extensive in fall 2012 that the park applied for disaster-relief funds. Some $360,000 in emergency funds to rebuild the trail was approved by former Gov. Sean Parnell that year. The money came from the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, which oversees state disaster funds, much like the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Work on the trail started earlier this summer. The contractor – Alaska Excavating, LLC – recently wrapped up, having filled and graded 39 sites along 8 miles of trail.

Trail repaired

In August, I rode my bike to the end of the lake to check out the reconstructed trail. The lake surface was still 10 feet or more from full, but with this summer's record high temperatures melting Eklutna Glacier, the water was rising fast. The bike trail is never far from the slap of waves on unconsolidated rocks.

ADVERTISEMENT

Newly filled and graded, the trail looks a little raw, but it's been widened and scraped smooth to facilitate biking, hiking or four-wheeling. Repaired sections are 6-to-8-feet wide, which allows two bikes, or bikes and hikers, to pass one another safely.

Although the same combination of high water and winds destroyed sections of the trail in 2013, only portions damaged in 2012 were eligible for repair using the disaster-relief funds. That accounts for some otherwise inexplicable lapses in the trail's reconstruction. In several sections destroyed by the 2013 storm, the trail shrinks to 3 feet, 2 feet and, in one short stretch, a daunting 1-foot wide. Letting a tire bounce off a rock or wobble a bit too much on these narrow trails could launch bike and rider over the edge onto the rocky beach.

Repairing the trail is one of several projects underway in the Eklutna drainage this summer. Two trails run along the north shore of Eklutna Lake. One hugs the shore while an old roadbed, which is now a popular trail for all-terrain vehicles, wends its way a little farther inland. The two trails often intersect.

ATV's are allowed on the old roadbed Sunday to Wednesday. While cyclists and others can use the roadbed anytime, the dust stirred up by ATVs often shunts non-motorized use to the other trail. The roadbed can be difficult to negotiate on a bike due to jutting boulders exposed by water and ATV tire erosion on steep sections.

Only short sections of the ATV trail near the trail head were destroyed by the 2012 storm. These were repaired using the emergency funding. Another project, currently out to bid, will replace 20 decrepit culverts on the ATV trail. According to Jacob Gondek, park project supervisor overseeing both trail projects, some defective culverts are being replaced with new ones, others with a broad-based, rocky swale that will work like a French drain. The swales should require less maintenance but aren't always as effective at conducting water across the trail as culverts.

Cabins built

The final Eklutna project involves cabin building. According to Tom Harrison, the superintendent of Chugach State Park, former state Sen. Bill Wielechowski several years ago sponsored a bill that secured $400,000 to construct public-use cabins in the park. Three have been built: two in the Bird Creek Campground and one on the south shore of Eklutna Lake.

The newest Eklutna Lake cabin, nearly completed by park staff, will be available for rentals next spring, according to Harrison. There is no trail on the south side of the lake, so most visitors will access the cabin by kayak or canoe in summer -- and skis or snowmachines in winter. You could also hike to it along the shore for 4 miles, but that alternative becomes more challenging as the lake rises in the fall.

Two more, road-accessible cabins will be built in the Eklutna Lake day-use area with the legislative grant. Construction is slated to begin this year. Harrison hopes the road-accessible cabins will make overnighting in the park more attractive to young families and older folks.

Even without the new cabins, visits by bikers, hikers, campers, swimmers, skiers, hunters, anglers and ATV users are increasing at Eklutna Lake. Many days this summer – not just on weekends – the parking lot has been full or nearly full.

Conflicting interests

In the week since I rode the trail, the lake's surface has risen nearly two feet. Like a ticking bomb, the inexorable slap of the waves is inching closer to the reconstructed trail. It won't happen every year, but the combination of high water and autumn winds will inevitably take their toll on the trail again.

Eklutna Lake water is owned by the electric utilities who produce power for Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. It's clearly in their best interest to allow the lake to fill up in fall so that they can produce and sell electricity. Hydropower is a cheap, clean, renewable source of energy. Eklutna Lake provides only about 3 percent of the electricity used in the Anchorage region, however -- not much more than the wind turbines on Fire Island.

The recent trail repairs remind us that the full cost of producing the electricity isn't being accounted for unless we factor in the public expense to repair trails damaged by high water levels. Perhaps the common good requires balancing the value of the water for hydropower with the cost of chronic repairs to the trail caused by stockpiling too much water in the lake.

Rick Sinnott is a former Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist. The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News. Contact him at rickjsinnott@gmail.com

Rick Sinnott

Rick Sinnott is a former Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist. Email him: rickjsinnott@gmail.com

ADVERTISEMENT