‘It should be here forever’

It’s the classic Alaska tale.

A guy from Kasilof sees the land of his dreams and puts up a tent.

Quickly, something with actual walls and a roof is needed — in this case a CONEX box.

About a decade goes by and the funds are finally available for an actual building. With heat and light, it’s a palace at the time, but space and the lack of bathroom become serious issues after years of growth.

Then, over 20 years later, with help from all the friends made along the way, the permanent home — bathroom included — is finally put on that piece of land.

That permanent home is the new Tsalteshi Trails maintenance facility, which was celebrated at an open house and winter kickoff event Saturday.

Tom Seggerman, the maintenance manager at Tsalteshi and the driving force behind the construction of the 36-by-60-foot, nearly $400,000 facility, was one of those to speak to a crowd of about 50 people Saturday, a gathering which included former maintenance manager Bill Holt.

“This building wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for people like Alan Boraas, who had the vision to build these trails,” said Seggerman of Boraas, the late Kenai Peninsula College anthropology professor who lived in Kasilof. “And people like Bill Holt right here, who built most of these trails for us to maintain.”

The backbone of Tsalteshi Trails, which began in the fall of 1990 with about 6 kilometers of trail and today has grown to 40 kilometers, has always been volunteer support and money raised from membership fees.

That saw the organization through its early days, when a carport and then CONEX were used to store grooming equipment, but eventually state and federal grants were used for improvements.

That’s how the maintenance shed was built in 2002, insured at that time for $25,000. The shed gave groomers heat and light for the equipment.

“We outgrew that building quite fast,” Seggerman said. “So we’ve always had a vision, for some time, to get a big building like this.”

In the fall of 2022, clearing for the new building, located right off the pool parking lot at Skyview Middle School, began.

With the aid of a Recreational Trails Program grant of $150,000 and a Rasmuson Foundation grant of $185,380, Seggerman, a retired contractor, was able to put together the building with a final tally of $378,211 in construction costs.

The project drew so much volunteer labor and support from the community that Seggerman estimates the building is double the value of the construction costs. He’s recommending insuring the facility at $800,000.

“It wasn’t going to be this fancy,” Seggerman said. “It’s why we live here. This is such a giving community.”

Seggerman said it began to be difficult to spend all the money due to the generosity of local businesses.

“They gave us such good deals and discounts because they see the importance of Tsalteshi Trails in the community,” Seggerman said.

The Recreational Trails Program is administered by the Federal Highway Administration through Alaska’s Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation.

Ricky Gease, the director of the Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation, spoke at the open house event and said investments like the grant for the facility promote economic development and the next generation deciding to live in Alaska.

“When we make timely, adequate and meaningful investments in the outdoors, we’re putting the investments in our health, in our jobs, in our new workforce and our young kids coming up behind us,” Gease said.

Gease said the outdoor recreation industry is too often talked about as being all play.

“The outdoor recreation sector supports 5% of Alaska’s payroll,” Gease said. “We, as people, spend more time outdoors than anybody else in the country.

“We live outdoors.”

The trails association also presented certificates of thanks to the Kenai Peninsula Borough, the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District and the City of Soldotna at the open house.

The borough and school district have had a symbiotic relationship since May 1987, when the borough first issued a lease to the property and assented to the construction of the trails.

At the time, Boraas wagered the volunteers could do a good enough job that the borough would keep extending permission. In December 2020, the borough approved another 10-year lease.

The 40 kilometers of trails and the new, expensive building on borough land further cement the partnership.

So does all the use cross-country running and cross-country skiing teams get out of the trails. In 1987, no central peninsula high schools had ski teams.

Eventually, Skyview, Kenai Central, Soldotna and Nikiski would all have teams, though Skyview High School is now closed and Nikiski no longer has a ski team.

The City of Soldotna was thanked for providing annual grant money since 2009 even though Tsalteshi is not located in the city.

Jenny Neyman, administrative coordinator at the trails association, said after the event that the building is mostly finished, with the biggest exception being fencing that will surround the facility.

“It’s heated, dry and secure storage for all of our equipment for the first time,” she said. “That’ll extend the lifespan of these machines.

“It’ll make it easier for groomers to do whatever small maintenance projects they have to do in there.”

Neyman also said the volunteers now have running water and a restroom for the first time.

“I mean, these guys show up at 3 in the morning to go suck down snowmachine fumes and the cold for like eight hours at a stretch,” she said. “Now we’ve finally got somewhere warm for them to change clothes and use a restroom.”

The facility also has a heated floor to quickly thaw out machines, a weather station available on tsalteshi.org, solar panels to help with electrical costs, fuel storage tanks to cut down on constantly having to ferry fuel, and a location which allows groomers to access the trails even when the main trailhead is being used for an event.

In a nod to the future, there are two 16-foot doors and a massive 18-foot door that could accommodate a PistenBully. A PistenBully is a machine Seggerman has called “state of the art grooming equipment.”

“It wasn’t originally planned to be this nice,” Seggerman said of the facility. “But that’s OK. We like that.

“And it should be here forever.”