Officials with the Recreational Aviation Foundation (RAF) note that 144 public use cabins in the Tongass National Forest across southeast Alaska are in danger of being closed due to lack of use.
Many of these remote cabins provide unique opportunities for hunting, fishing, hiking, and backcountry flying, according to RAF officials.
RAF officials note that many visitors, pilots included, are not aware of that the cabins can be rented.
Since many of the cabins can only be reached by airplane, their preservation is coming under the scrutiny of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS).
According to RAF Alaska Liaison Jeff DeFreest, the decline in general aviation over the past few decades has created a dilemma for USFS recreation managers responsible for their maintenance.
“Remote cabins are expensive to maintain, and with diminished government budgets and popular slogans like ‘we need to do more with less,’ it’s easy to see where a ranger would focus funding toward the close-in cabins or those accessible by their trucks or boats,” DeFreest says.
USFS cabin crews customarily provided annual maintenance and repairs at each cabin, even filling the woodsheds. With ever-tightening budgets, some cabins may not see a USFS cabin crew for three or more years, and deferred maintenance renders the visitor experience less satisfying, leading to diminished appeal and use, RAF officials noted.
The Tongass Forest recently published a plan for cabin sustainability.
“We’re going to build, relocate, and remove cabins in order to increase public access and use, while reducing costs and avoiding the addition of deferred maintenance on the cabin system,” it states.
Keeping the cabins full is key to preservation, it continues.
“With the goal of increasing visitation and decreasing maintenance costs across the Tongass, annual evaluation of this strategy will be key to demonstrating success,” it concludes.
Also contributing to success will be the RAF’s formalized collaboration with the USFS.
“Volunteer labor and cost-sharing agreements can help preserve fly-in cabins,” RAF officials say.
To that end, DeFreest and his wife Kari organized a volunteer work party to maintain two Heckman lakefront cabins.
In addition to the willing volunteers that turned out to work at Heckman Lake, a different kind of help is needed, according to DeFreest.
“Visit the fly-in lake cabins that offer something of interest to you and then let it be known,” he says. “Spread the word. Write in the cabin logbook, post on the Tongass Cabin Users Facebook page, and let the Ranger District know about your experience, and communicate any problems or repairs needed that you find.”
For more information: TheRAF.org, FS.USDA.gov/Tongass