Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventures (SEABA) co-owner Scott Sundberg this week confirmed his company was operating on Bureau of Land Management property during the March 3 heli-skiing accident that killed a guide and injured two others. According to GPS coordinates provided to the Haines Borough, the accident took place on BLM-owned land in the Kicking Horse drainage. […]
Search results
Posted inNews
Planners drop 26 Mile rezone
Due to survey results and testimony at its March 14 meeting, the Haines Borough Planning Commission is dropping discussion of a potential rezone in the Chilkat Lake Road area. Several property owners in the Eagle Vista subdivision petitioned the commission more than a year ago asking the area be rezoned to rural residential in response to a heliport project […]
Posted inNews
Survivor’s account of fall off mountain
A photographer who survived the accident that killed heli-skiing guide Christian Cabanilla on March 3 said his group’s plunge hundreds of feet off a nearly vertical cliff was “like a washing machine.” Cedric Bernardini of Chamonix, France, gave his account of the day’s events to the Chilkat Valley News this week. Bernardini was a client […]
Posted inNews
Film features story of extreme skiing, risks
The March 2012 deaths of a heli-ski guide and client near Haines are profiled in a film currently making the rounds on the festival circuit in the Lower 48. From mid-February to mid-March 2012, filmmaker Ben Clark skied and interviewed staff and clients of Haines-based heli-ski operator Alaska Heliskiing. The result of Clark’s time here […]
Posted inNews
Alaska Heliskiing loses 350 skier days
Citing Alaska Heliskiing’s 2012 safety record, Haines Borough Manager Mark Earnest cut the company’s skier-day allocation by 25 percent for the 2013 season. Earnest this week allocated 1,050 skier days to the guide company, 350 fewer than the company’s request of 1,400. “It was based on safety record. And I made a determination I was not going to allocate […]
Posted inNews
Operators: Heli-skiing here for the long term
Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventures and Alaska Mountain Guides representatives championed the positive economic impacts of the heli-ski industry on Haines during a recent Chamber of Commerce luncheon. Scott Sundberg and Nick Trimble, co-owners of SEABA, and AMG President Sean Gaffney spoke to the chamber Feb. 8 about their expectations for the upcoming season and the future […]
Posted inNews
Borough OKs permit for Alaska Heliskiing
Alaska Heliskiing broke state law, Haines Borough code and its own safety plan during a season that included the deaths of a client and guide, but its violations “do not rise to a level of ‘substantial noncompliance’” for revoking the company’s tour permit, clerk Julie Cozzi ruled this week. “I do not view commercial tour permits as […]
Posted inNews
Heli-ski requests pass cap
Alaska Mountain Guides, a company that has previously conducted its heli-ski operations mainly out of Skagway, is looking to move those operations to Haines. According to its 2013 permit application to the Haines Borough, AMG is seeking 450 skier days. Last year, the company requested and was allocated 200 days, but only used five. AMG is […]
Posted inNews
National heli-ski group focuses on standards
The Haines Borough’s heli-ski season is just around the corner, and in the wake of an accident that killed two people last spring, concerns about safety aren’t going away. Like much of the recreation industry, heli-skiing falls largely outside most state and federal regulations concerning occupational safety and health. Similarly, the borough, which requires heli-ski […]
Posted inNews
BLM issues ‘Ring of Fire’ draft plan
More than 300,000 acres of currently off-limits mountain terrain near Haines would reopen to heli-ski use under a recent Bureau of Land Management plan. The BLM released its Ring of Fire Draft Resource Management Plan Haines Planning Area Amendment and Draft Environmental Impact Statement last week, which is used to determine land use designations, management […]