Summer Trail Maintenance Includes Path Through Contested ‘Holtan Hills’ Development

Sign post for the Middle Iditarod Trail. The trail's fate is uncertain amid development of a "Holtan Hills" subdivision. (Photo by Soren Wuerth)

By Soren Wuerth

TNews Editor

Enabled by a young, sturdy trail crew, local volunteers and a $110,000 grant Girdwood's network of trails became more deliberate this summer—with particular focus on a trail that crosses through an impending subdivision development.

Three new bridges, gravel, brushing and drainage have altered slightly the character of local trails, especially the middle portion of the Iditarod Trail from Girdwood School to the out-of-service hand tram.

"Trails play an important aspect in community. They should be available and, historically, they've been there," said Kyle Kelly, Girdwood's service area manager. 

Facing continual pressure from development of local lands, Girdwood's trails committee worked to get a trails plan adopted by the Anchorage Assembly in March. 

"It was a tough process, but we got through it and now we can refer to it all the time," Kelly said. 

The addition of a bridge and gravel to a 2-mile section of the Middle Iditarod Trail, between the school and Crow Creek Rd., adds permanence to a path whose fate has been called to question due to a competing plan for a "Holtan Hills" subdivision. 

Work w as underway July 3 on a bridge on the Middle Iditarod Trail. (Photo by Soren Wuerth)

With looming development, trail crews have put a "focus" on the trail, which runs along a bluff overlooking Glacier Creek, Kelly said. 

"Nobody has officially told me it's going to change, so I'm going to keep working on it and making it better. What I'm trying to show also is that the community is investing in this and they have been for a long time. If it's a broken down trail that doesn't look very useable, then it's like, 'you guys don't really care about this trail'. But we're showing that we care. Showing that investment puts us in a stronger position," he said.

The city notified the community last month the trail entrance would be closed for the summer. 

Whether the trail would be re-aligned for the development remains uncertain, Kelly said, since lots have yet to be platted. 

Nevertheless, the trails committee wants a minimum easement of 50 feet on either side of the path's centerline, Kelly said.

"If there is going to be a realignment, my big question is, where is the money coming from? Because the service area doesn't have it and we're not going to apply for grants for that," he said. "That would have to come from the development to fund that re-alignment."

Whether it follows a traditional route or not, the trail is recognized as part of the historical Iditarod trail system. 

"They consider these trails that connect to the main Iditarod as feeder trails," Kelly said. "That's why is has the name [Iditarod] on it... It was part of a trading route of how people moved around the community. Is the trail fully an historical route? Probably not, but that's why we call it a 'comemorative route'. It does have value," he said.

Kelly said a wilderness trail through a subvision is a "selling point" for future home buyers and he has advocated keeping the trail as is. 

"You've got this great loop system you can do a evening walk [though]," he said. "...Plus it's National Iditarod, you gotta maintain what's there, so privatizing a national trail system is not even an option. That's just my opinion."

Meanwhile, a crew of five college students, both in-state and out-of-state, have been working 10-hour days, four days a week over the summer hauling gravel, adding drainage, and creating turnpikes along local trails. The crew camped in the Forest Fair park and cooked in the Nissman Pavilion. In June, they endured three weeks of rain.

"You gotta be young for that [work]," Kelly said.

Also, 30 teen trail workers from Anchorage-based Youth In Parks "fire-lined" two truck-loads of gravel for a path to Virgin Creek this summer, Kelly said.

Trail work was complemented by teams of volunteers during two summer "trail nights"

Three bridges now span small creeks on local and all of them, plus a bridge on the Beaver Pond trail completed last year, bear the signature work of longtime resident Paul Crews. 

As for construction of a suspension bridge to replace a shackled hand tram over upper Glacier Creek, delays caused by Trump Administration layoffs and tariffs have bedeviled the project timeline, Kelly said.

He hopes to have a bid out this fall and will then determine whether the price tag is affordable. 

"It's been two steps foward and a half a step back" on the project, Kelly said.

The Middle Iditarod Trail. (Photo by Soren Wuerth)