Middle Ridge Road closed 'for the foreseeable future'

Middle Ridge Road, heavily damaged and blocked in several places by a 3,400-foot-long landslide Nov. 20, will be out of service until the U.S. Forest Service can come up with a repair plan and funding for the project.

"It is closed for the foreseeable future. ... We're talking a major project," said Austin O'Brien, interim district ranger for the Forest Service in Wrangell.

Several stretches of the road are covered in mud, trees and debris, cutting off access to the Forest Service's Middle Ridge public-use cabin - "one of our most popular cabins," O'Brien said.

Though it hit on the same day as the deadly landslide that came down at 11-Mile Zimovia Highway, the two were separate earth movements. The slide at 11-Mile, just north of the Middle Ridge slide, did not cross any Forest Service roads.

The heavy rain and strong winds that blew through southern Southeast Alaska that day caused 35 slides across several Forest Service districts, particularly on Prince of Wales Island, O'Brien said last week. There was significant damage to power lines and Forest Service roads.

The agency likely will assemble its damage reports and combined cost estimates and seek a special appropriation to repair the damage, he said.

The Middle Ridge slide started about two or three miles inland from the Pats Creek Road turnoff on Zimovia Highway, near 1,200 feet elevation. "It originated below one of the switchbacks," crossing the old logging road in three places as the mud flowed downhill, O'Brien said.

The landslide stopped about 300 feet from the Middle Ridge turnoff at Pats Creeks Road.

"The engineers have flown it with a drone," and determined that the roadbed was completely wiped out in a couple of places, he said. "We need to get on site" and walk the area this spring or summer to get a better look.

Drone video and a Forest Service map of the road and slide show a truck stuck on Middle Ridge Road, about 2,000 feet from the Pats Creek Road turnoff. The truck belongs to Stan Guggenbickler.

He went for a drive the evening of Nov. 20, heading up the road to the cabin from his house at Panhandle Trailer Court. But after turning onto Middle Ridge Road, he could see that the slide had covered his exit, trapping his vehicle.

"It happened 30 seconds after I drove across it," he said the week after the slide. "The road, it just fell right off. Took all the dirt, everything."

He slept in his truck and began heading back to town on foot the next morning. State troopers picked him up at the junction near Pats Creek Road.

The Sentinel was unable to reach Guggenbickler last week to ask about plans for possibly retrieving his truck.

Rather than rebuild Middle Ridge Road, said Interim Borough Manager Mason Villarma, perhaps the Forest Service should consider abandoning the road and spending money instead to extend and connect Pats Creeks Road with the Spur Road on the east side of the island.

The connection could serve as an emergency access route for residents if another landslide cuts off the southern end of Zimovia Highway, stranding people at home - or away from their homes - Villarma said.

Borough officials discussed the idea when they met with federal officials in Washington, D.C., after the Nov. 20 slides.

"It doesn't make sense to spend millions and millions" to rebuild the road to the cabin, Villarma said, when the money could go toward an essential escape route. To replace the popular cabin, he said, perhaps the Forest Service could build a new cabin in a more accessible location.

Developing a cross-island connection road would require rebuilding culverts and drainage along much of the old logging roads, O'Brien said, plus building a section of new road and installing a short bridge.

"That's a complicated project," he said, crossing state, federal and borough land, though it would open up a lot of acreage to recreational access.

Villarma said he would like to see the borough apply for a federal planning grant to do more work on the emergency access road plan.