SITKA, ALASKA – An ATV springs to life near Mud Bay. A-T-Vs are all-terrain vehicles, and here on Kruzof Island, they earn their name, navigating through mud puddles, up rocky hillsides, over gravel roads, and across black-sand beaches. And they’re hugely popular out here, for both private riders and tourists.
“Frequency up and down the road, we probably do about four tours a day, four or five days a week out to the beach, about three tours a day up to the top of the cinder cone,” says Christian Litten, of Alaska ATV Tours.
“The roads being smooth and rebuilt like this really helps out the business. We have less breakdowns, less crashes, so people don’t panic when they see big rocks in the road.”
The roadwork is funded by more than $500-thousand dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — you probably know it as the federal stimulus bill. Todd Miller is the head of TM Construction, which is doing the work. I’m seated behind him on a two-seat ATV, as we bounce across the island, through a bright green meadow dotted with brown bears, and past the work site, ending at North Beach. In all, we’ve covered about 8 miles of road.
“Not all of it will get reconstructed with rock, but sections will be improved as the project moves along here, and hopefully with the funding available, we’ll be able to get as much of the road in better condition than it was.”
Miller is working with more than half a million dollars in stimulus money. He employs six people at the work site, and says the stimulus funds are critical to the completion of this work.
“It’s definitely given projects like this an opportunity to exist, where possibly the funding wouldn’t have become available for it. A lot of recreational projects, it looks like. I guess it’s been great to have the work.”
The road allows ATV traffic to access North Beach, which is the only beach where ATVs are allowed. Neighboring Shelikof Beach is closed to all motorized traffic. Both places are expanses of sand so dark that when the surf crashes into the shore, it looks like it’s churning up ink.
In a place like this, it’s easy to forget there’s a construction site nearby. But there is, and a lot of work is waiting just back in the trees, where Annemarie LaPalme is walking down the newly resurfaced road.
“A lot of the problems with this existing surface is that traffic and water really take their toll on the surface over time,” LaPalme says. “A lot of the fine material that was here has just eroded away.”
LaPalme is the cabin and trails manager for the local office of the U.S. Forest Service. The road is being raised about two feet. And we have to step off every few minutes as a dump truck shuttles rocks from a pit to a backhoe operator waiting at the end of the lifted road.
LaPalme is here to check in on the project and see how things are going, but at the moment, she’s carrying a roll of pink plastic ribbon.
“I’m labeling the inlet and outlet of the culvert we’re going to replace here,” she says, scribbling a number on the ribbon. “There is one here that was placed originally, and we’re going to pull this one out and put in a new one.”
How she finds the culverts is anyone’s guess. They’re hidden behind thick brush, and after 40 years, there’s not much left.
On we go, down the road, as LaPalme hops off the road to the right, and then to the left, marking either side of the culverts. When this project is all done, the road will be better suited to accommodate pedestrians, private ATVs and the bike and ATV tours that come through here all summer long.
That ATV tour business is run by Ken Rear. LaPalme says Rear, like other tour operators out here, is investing in the road, as well as using it.
“He pays to use this area, so some of the money from his fees we’re planning to put back into this area in terms of maintenance,” LaPalme says. “So when Todd’s done, we’ll have a surface that can be maintained into the future, and really if he wasn’t out here with his clients, we wouldn’t have that money to put into maintenance.”
The project is scheduled for completion within the year. In the meantime, the construction equipment will share this little stretch of highway, along with the bike riders, the hikers and the ATVs.
