By Soren Wuerth

TNews Editor

When Camilla and Dave Seifert moved into their newly built Girdwood home in 1981, there was only one hangar alongside an airstrip, they could hear chum salmon spashing in the creek and there were no trees behind her house.

"Between 1980 and 1983 everything seemed to be built at the same time," Camilla said recently, referring to the neighborhood by her log home on Lake Tahoe Street.

Seifert pointed to a photo in a gallery of pictures lining a stair case.

"This one shows my daughter and  Rosie Fletcher (who would become an Olympic snowboarder). They were best friends."

Two parka-clad children stand on an  unfinished top floor of the Seifert cabin. 

Beyond lies nothing but snowy mountains, Glacier Creek and a shed.

"The cottonwoods weren't even there," she said, looking out a back toward a stand of trees up to 70 feet high.

And the airport has since expanded. 

Helicopter chatter is so loud, "when we're talking on the back deck, we need to stop talking," Seifert said.

Now, the Sieferts have learned the state transportation has leased a parcel behind her and her neighbor's houses Silverton Mountain Guides for its heliski operation.

The 55-year lease could mean "helicopter operations will be quite literally ten feet from our back doors," Seifert told the Girdwood Board of Superviors at its recent meeting.

According to the Seiferts and others, Parcel H was never meant to be developed. 

Read the entire story at the link below:

https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/neighbors-fear-helicopters-in-backyards

By Yereth Rosen

Alaska Beacon

Responding to the lack of snow across Southcentral Alaska and other regions, state officials on Thursday ordered an early start to the official fire season.

Instead of the usual start date of April 1, the fire season will be in effect as of March 17 in Southcentral Alaska, Southeast Alaska and much of Western Alaska, the Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection announced. That means that permits will be required for any burns conducted on state, municipal or private lands in the designated areas, which stretch from the Southeast Panhandle to the eastern Aleutians.

The state forester “has determined that weather conditions including warm temperatures and low snowpack across specific areas of Alaska raise the risk of wildland fire ahead of the statutorily designated fire season,” the order said.

The order follows a forecast issued on Monday by the National Interagency Fire Center that warned of “the potential for a busy start to the fire season across much of southern Alaska.”

Alaska’s official fire season start date of April 1 was set in 2006, after the record-high fire season of 2004 and a near-record season the following year. Up to then, the start date was May 1.

As Alaska has warmed over the past four decades, the state’s annual wildfire season has been stretched over a longer period, according to scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Big fire seasons have also become more frequent over the past decades.

The early start to the official fire season does not affect Interior and northern Alaska, which have plenty of snowpack for now. The very large wildfires that are common in places like Interior Alaska generally start with lightning strikes that start around midsummer.

Read the entire story here:

https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/lack-of-snow-prompts-early-start-to-official-fire-season-in-alaskas-southern-regions

Above Photo: The ground at Anchorage’s Earthquake Park, at the edge of Cook Inlet, is almost entirely snow-free on March 6, 2025. Downtown Anchorage is in the background. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)

(Article courtesy of Alaska Beacon by Creative Commons)

By Soren Wuerth

TNews Editor

We all live at the mercy of Mother Nature, as on-going ecological catastrophes attest.

For people living below the shadow of a mountain, in the path of an avalanche, the reverberations of this reckoning become particularly poignant. 

Centuries ago, the Incas brought young women to the peaks of mountains in sacrifice. They revered the mountain deity "Apus", protector of land and animals. In the Peruvian highlands, folklore still has locals crafting gifts for mountain spirits.

In Nepal prayer flags flutter along ancient trails and pilgrims chant the words, om mani padme hum. 

For Norwegians, the Bergrisi, or "mountain giant", guards craggy peaks and could command or prevent an avalanche.

In Chinese mythology, mountains were said to hold up the sky.

Two Girdwood avalanches, one in upper Crow Creek and another on Mt. Alyeska came so close to disaster, it was as if an Apus or Bergrisi had been summoned.   

Though the slides were considerable in both locations, no one was hurt and property escaped damage.

An avalanche that shed from Ragged Bowl above a small community along upper Crow Creek Road during a late January evening passed beside one cabin, went over the top of a vacant garage and stopped short of several homes. 

Avalanche forecasters had warned of "high" danger during a turbulent storm that brought wind, rain and a half dozen feet of snow in places.

During the storm, one resident thought he'd heard something, an earthquake he thought, but outside he couldn't see much beyond a white-flurried gale. 

When another local woke up the next day, he saw the avalanche beside, beneath and above his home. The avalanche sailed over the top of a vacant steel and concrete garage (designed for such events) loading the roof with feet of snow, branches and debris and came to a stop just before a house. 

In the end, only an abandoned car and fish smoker were damaged.

Read the entire story at the link below:

https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/late-january-avalanches-were-close-calls

By John Gallup

TNews Contributor

 I was just another college grad at loose ends.

I didn't have any idea what I wanted to do, and my supervising professor at college said, "If I were you, I'd go to Alaska."

It seemed like a good idea at the time, so here I am, 52 years later.

This story is about where I was born and spent the first 23 years of my life: Altadena, California.

Set up against the San Gabriel Mountains on sloping ground, Altadena was laid out on a basic grid pattern when old haciendas were broken up and Pasadena became built-out and expanded north.

It is divided almost exactly in half by north/south Lake Avenue. East of Lake was more upper-middle class, larger homes and lots, and it was here that Dr. Gallup moved into 1560 Homewood Drive on my sixth birthday in April 1955. I was enrolled in Noyes Elementary school.

The house at 1560 was huge by our standards, it was called a "New Orleans Colonial" and had wide balconies on three sides. In the backyard was a formal garden with a rectangular fish pond which was quickly emptied of its fish and became our summer swimming hole. To the west, down a steep slope, was well over an acre of raw scrubland which we called "The Jungle" and where four young boys could dig for buried treasure and build forts.

Fifteen-sixty was at the end of a cul-de-sac, so the street also was our playground and our football and baseball field. The Baby Boom provided us with lots of other kids to play and make mischief with.

We all had bikes, and our mother would greet us as we came home from school, saying, "I don't want to see you or hear you until dinner." Which was just fine with us. We pedaled off into the afternoon smog in search of adventure.

Elementary school, junior high, high school, then off to college. College was only about a 20 minute drive away, so I was back home a lot, usually with my hand out for spending money.

Read the entire story at the link below:

https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/commentary-dark-against-an-oven-of-yellow-firemy-home-of-41-years