With Eklutna upgrades complete, Ram Valley access emerges as a Chugach State Park priority

With work done on upgrades to the area surrounding Eklutna Lake completed in September, reestablishing access to Ram Valley in Chugach State Park has emerged as a subsequent priority.

Access to the area north of Eagle River is part of the Chugach State Park Trail Management Plan, and nonprofit organization Alaska Trails received a $100,000 grant in 2023 to conduct a feasibility study, examining potential access points and parking options.

Ram Valley has had a fluctuating history with regard to access. It has been a popular destination for hikers, skiers and hunters, but since 2020, access has been much more limited. A landowner previously allowed access via their private property, but parking, trespassing and other issues caused them to revoke those permissions that year. Now, the area is legally accessible only by “especially long and arduous routes” that are “unsuitable for most users,” Alaska Trails said in a project description.

The topic of access to public lands is one that persists across Alaska, but as Chugach State Park continues to attract more visitors each year, issues within neighborhoods near trailheads continue to increase.

Alaska Trails Deputy Director Haley Johnston said that in a perfect world, trailheads and easements would have been established before construction in those areas.

“I don’t think anyone every imagined Chugach State Park would become as popular as it is, with 1.5 million visits and the most visited public land in Alaska,” Johnston said. “No one imagined we’d need as much access as we do now, and concurrent to the park growing in popularity was housing encroaching on the edge of the park and very little planning done before housing was built about where this access would be.”

The valley is located south of Eklutna Lake and north of Eagle River — northeast of the Eagle River Nature Center — and features alpine areas surrounding nearby Cumulus Mountain and Pleasant Mountain.

So far, Alaska Trails has done a fair amount of consultation with groups including the Municipality of Anchorage, Eagle River Nature Center Board, Eagle River Valley Community Council and Chugach State Park Citizen Advisory Board. About $30,000 of the grant has been earmarked for community outreach.

In a May 14 letter to Alaska Parks Director Ricky Gease and Chugach Region Superintendent Ben Corwin, Eagle River Valley Community Council Julie K. Jessen emphasized the need for public input early in the process.

“While we are not opposed to the potential for new trail access to Ram Valley, we do want to be directly involved in the planning stages of the project,” Jessen wrote. “We believe public participation early in the process benefits projects by identifying areas of concern and potential opportunities to be pursued.”

Jessen said in an email last month that local residents made a recommendation to consider a different potential access point near Mile 7.5 on Eagle River Road. She said the location is near one of Eklutna Inc.’s newer subdivisions where there is still undeveloped land available for a trailhead and parking.

A number of potential options for public access to Ram Valley have been identified, but Johnston, with Alaska Trails, said a final result will require a good level of compromise between stakeholders and may not end up with a trailhead at slightly lower elevation.

“Like all compromises, there’s a world in which everyone is a little happy but nothing is perfect,” she said. “It’s not anyone’s ideal, but everyone is going to be able to live with it.”

Initially, the timeline for implementing an access plan had taken on greater urgency.

A million dollars in funding for parking lot and trail construction for fiscal year 2025 had been approved during the Alaska Legislature’s 2024 session. But those funds were vetoed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy in June. The reason he gave for that veto was the same explanation he gave for several others in his veto summary at the time: “Preserve general funds for savings and fiscal stability.” The governor’s office said recently that Dunleavy had nothing more to add in regard to the veto.

“The earliest any construction funds would come through would be late 2025, so that would mean a field season of 2026,” Johnston said. “So we’ve kind of extended our internal deadline.”

Johnston said initially, there were as many as 37 options. From there, the state park advisory board ad hoc committee that covers Ram Valley evaluated and ranked the options based on a number of factors. It’s likely that the feasibility study will result in a few options that will be ranked and turned over to Alaska State Parks for consideration.

“It’s a collaborative process, which is part of why it’s not fast,” Johnston said. “But working with these partners, I think, is going to help ensure that we have some good options.”

Despite the veto of the funds passed last session, there is a possibility for legislative funding going forward, but grants and private fundraising are also on the table.

September’s Eklutna improvements included an expanded parking area for ATVs and snowmachines, which are popular on the area’s motorized trails. There were also repairs made to deteriorated portions of the trail that runs alongside Eklutna. The eroded areas were on trails that were both motorized and multi-use.

The last major project that Alaska Trails has on its calendar is a reroute for the Indian Valley Trail. The newly aligned trail is 7 miles long and will have at least five bridges. The trail is also part of the Chugach State Park Trail Management Plan and has a total budget of $1.5 million.

Alaska Trails Executive Director Steve Cleary said he projects that the reroute will be done in late summer 2025.