Heliskiing operators are suspending their seasons during one of the better snow years in a decade to help slow the spread of coronavirus in Haines.
“It’s the heliski operator’s dream forecast,” Alaska Heliskiing owner Sean Brownell said last week of recent conditions and forecasts of sunny days intermixed with snow. “To wrap things up when it’s so good is a huge sacrifice especially with the phone ringing off the hook and the emails coming in. As hard as it is to not want to make a buck, because we could capitalize on it right now, it’s not worth the risk.”
President Trump announced a travel ban to and from many European countries on March 13. Brownell said he’d been getting many calls from Americans who wanted to ski in Haines, especially since many ski resorts had closed across the country.
Alaska Mountain Guides owner Sean Gaffney said his company, which had guests booked beginning in the middle of March, rescheduled those trips for the next season before they began operations this year. “It was easy to see where things were going,” Gaffney said of the decision. “There was a lot of overlap with other state and federal declarations. It wasn’t reasonable to consider operating in those circumstances.
Brownell shut down his operations early last week, when cities and states across the country began issuing health warnings and mandates. His company provided trips on March 19 to the last of his American clients who were already in town. He kept the guests in their lodge and isolated from town, he said.
Borough manager Debra Schnabel reached out to heliski operators last week to ask what the industry’s plans were to prevent the spread of the virus. “At the borough’s daily emergency response meetings, people question what steps are being taken by heliski operators to minimize the possibilities that COVID-19 might enter the community on a visitor from a high-risk place,” Schnabel wrote.
Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventures did not respond to CVN questions by press time, but Schnabel said a representative for SEABA told her they would close for the season last week.
“SEABA has clients this week, but does not intend to take any more reservations,” Schnabel said on March 20.
Snowpack at the Haines customs border station is at 272.4 inches as of Monday, according to NOAA data. The 10-year average is 211 inches.
Flower Mountain’s current snow depth is 72 inches, compared to the 54.3-inch average depth.
Before this winter, the heliski industry in Southeast has been plagued with what the National Drought Mitigation Center describes as “snow drought.”
In January and February 2019, the Haines customs border station received 9 inches of snow as opposed to the 50-60 inches it typically sees.
Brownell told the CVN last year that he turned 33 customers away in 2019 due to poor conditions, a loss of $350,000.
SEABA, Alaska Heliskiing and Alaska Mountain Guides used an average of 37.5 percent of allocated skier days, according to the “Commercial Heli-skiing 2018 Season-End Report.”