As the Haines Borough Assembly weighs a draft ordinance that would eliminate a cap on heliski tour permits in the borough, a new idea has piqued the interest of assembly members. The borough could limit the number of helicopters per operator and abolish its current restriction on skier days.
The idea, which emerged in a version of the ordinance recently proposed by Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventures (SEABA), one of the three current heliski permit holders, dominated much of a Monday Committee of the Whole meeting. Largely absent from discussion was whether to remove the cap on heliski tour permits, an issue that local officials have been pondering for several months.
The borough, which is the only municipality in Alaska that specifically regulates heliskiing, has managed the industry for more than 15 years. For even longer, the question of how to shape regulations has caused, or reflected, division among environmental groups, tour operators, officials and concerned residents.
But at Monday’s meeting, all three current operators and a potential fourth operator publicly agreed on something: the borough should restrict helicopter use instead of skier days (which are defined as individual skiers or photographers in the field on any given day). The operators also agreed to provide daily GPS data to the borough. Near the end of the meeting, longtime Haines resident Diana Lapham said, “This is the most productive meeting that I’ve been to…You’ve got operators here (and) on Zoom that are cooperating. I mean they are all working together.”
While assembly members didn’t formally endorse the shift to limiting helicopters, and while they cannot introduce amendments to the draft ordinance until their next meeting on Dec. 14, the proposal appeared to gain traction. SEABA suggested removing the boroughwide 2,600 skier-day limit and establishing a limit at two helicopters per operator. Sean Gaffney of Alaska Mountain Guides, Rhianna Brownell of Alaska Heliskiing and Reggie Crist of Stellar Adventure Travel all backed SEABA’s suggestion.
“I kind of like the idea of what SEABA proposed about limiting helicopters per permit,” assembly member Gabe Thomas said. “We’ve never seen (the operators) historically hit all their skier days, so that metric doesn’t seem to work.” Assembly member Caitie Kirby concurred that trying the helicopter limit for a year could be worthwhile.
The months-long debate about whether to change the permit cap in part arose from a concern, based on lack of skier-day use, that current operators haven’t been realizing the industry’s full potential. During the Monday meeting, assembly members Debra Schnabel and Gabe Thomas both referenced a line graph showing a significant decline in skier-day use among the three current operators over the last decade. Crist, who applied last spring for a fourth permit but was denied due to the borough’s three-operator limit, has argued that a decline in skier-day use reflects unfulfilled economic promise and an opportunity for a fourth permit holder to help stimulate Haines’ winter economy.
There’s no question that the current three operators haven’t made use of all their available skier days. In 2021, 817 days were used out of 2,600 allocated. In 2020, only 262 out of 2,500 were used; and in 2019, operators used 541 out of 2,600. Since 2007, the closest the tour companies have come to using all allocated skier days was in 2012, when they ran through 1,971 skier days out of 2,600 available.
But Nick Trimble, co-owner of SEABA, pushed back on the notion that skier days are a marker of a business’ well-being. He said that an operator could fill bookings and bring hundreds of clients to Haines yet poor weather (or a pandemic) could cause the operator to use only a fraction of allocated skier days. “We’re completely controlled by the weather we can fly into, the snow conditions on the ground, the actual surface conditions…and then there’s the avalanche stuff, too.”
Due to challenging weather conditions last year, Trimble said SEABA flew only 15 days of the 92-day season, well below its historic average of around 39 days. He also said if just one group of clients backs out of a trip at the last minute then an operator might use 200 to 300 fewer skier days in a season.
There was some question about how many helicopters the borough should allow—a total of six or eight, or one or two per operator—if it wanted to establish a limit. Trimble said having eight choppers in the air at the same time “is a disaster,” in terms of logistics and safety risks. He said if there were a limit on the total number of helicopters used on any given day in the valley, it should be six.
But if the assembly moves to a six-helicopter limit, it will need to determine whether or not to lift the permit cap. The question remains how the assembly would allocate six, or eight, helicopters to operators if the permit limit were abolished and a fourth or fifth company were permitted.
In addition to discussing skier days and a potential helicopter limit, assembly members heard presentations by Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Kevin White and Lynn Canal Conservation board vice president Eric Holle.
Citing peer-reviewed studies, White said that helicopters are known to have an adverse effect on mountain goat behavior. He also noted that brown bears and wolverines are sensitive to helicopters during denning and reproductive seasons.
Holle showed that the part of the current heliski map overlaps goat habitat in the Takhinsha Mountains, where the state estimates the goat population has declined as much as 54% in places. White said the state can’t conclude a causal link between helicopter use and the goat decline without more data showing where helicopters go and when.
All the heliski operators agreed, for the first time publicly, to let the borough access their daily GPS field data. Operators hesitated to share specific geospatial data in the past because they didn’t want to publicize proprietary ski runs, but Trimble said that information is no longer secretive now that three operators have been touring in the valley for a decade.
The assembly will hold a second public hearing on the draft heliski ordinance at its meeting on Dec. 14. If significant amendments to the draft are made at that meeting, the assembly could choose to hold a third public hearing before voting on the ordinance.