Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Haines amassed an average amount of snowfall this winter and it's still more than the biggest year California has seen in living memory, Haines Avalanche Center director Erik Stevens said. The northern slope of Mount Ripinsky, located 2,500 feet above the Haines townsite, boasted 750 inches of snowfall this winter according to the Haines Avalanche Center. Palisades, Tahoe and Mammoth, California received 710 inches and 705 inches, by comparison. Both California ski towns broke records for snowfall.

"What's interesting about it this year is that those resorts broke records and they broke them in pretty dramatic fashion," Stevens said. "There's been all this media attention, people have been freaking out talking about how it's the most snow they've ever seen in their lives, and that's an average year for us."

Snow samples are measured with a 150-inch coring device that is drilled into the snow, weighed and measured. The snow-water equivalent is multiplied by 10 to calculate the total snow accumulation for the season. This year, 750 inches of snow compressed down to 181 inches of snowpack.

Stevens said the calculations show "just how incredible our skiing is" on the slopes of Mount Ripinsky.

"If Haines wanted to market itself as a skiing destination these are exactly the kinds of things that would draw people here," Stevens said. "People came from all over the country to go to Mammoth and Tahoe this year because they heard it was dumping snow. It does that every year here and we don't market it at all."

While Haines has the potential to be a popular backcountry skiing destination, limited access to trails and parking makes skiing less user-friendly, Stevens said.

"Our issue here in Haines is that the access is not that easy," Stevens said. "We don't have a trailhead over there and we don't have a parking area, so it's really hard to find your way. You kind of have to do a lot of route-finding and you have to be careful of avoiding private land. You have to know where you're going and really only the locals know how to do that here. We don't have the infrastructure to allow visitors to come in and figure that out themselves."

Stevens said one of the best ways to improve accessibility to backcountry terrain would be constructing a ski lift. One group of residents has been advocating for a ski lift in the Chilkat Valley since last year. In February, the group suggested that Four Winds Mountain, a peak behind the Mosquito Lake Community Center, could be a potential site for the lift.

The suggestion has faced opposition from residents for its potential impact on neighboring residences and mountain goats.

The Avalanche Center also is hoping to upgrade the snow station on Ripinsky to a full snow-tell site, Stevens said. The project would rely on federal funding through the USDA's SNOTEL group. "That will be a really great upgrade for the town to have that because there might be years where we are not available to go up there and measure or we don't get up there until mid-May and we miss some of the snow that's already melted," Stevens said. "It's far better to have an actual piece of instrumentation recording up there all the time for a long-term climate record.