Scoping underway for Mt. Dewey trail extension

With over $450,000 in promised federal funding, the city will spend the next few months scoping out a possible extension of the Mt. Dewey trail.

“There are so many conditions or issues at play that affect our timeline,” Amber Al-Haddad, Wrangell capital facilities director, said. “Assuming we got that money in short order we would move forward and pursue the full engineering design of the project. … Our best case would be to see this project constructed in the summer of 2022.”

The proposed extension would connect to the trail somewhere along the mountain, Al-Haddad said. It would then go down the backside of the mountain and behind the industrial park. It would let out onto Bennett Street, near Ishiyama Drive, she said, where the city hopes to develop trail parking for vehicles.

Additionally, if there is enough funding, she said the city is considering making a connecting trail between Ishiyama Drive and the Volunteer Park trail, as well as an off-road parking near the end of the drive.

The Mt. Dewey project has been on the table for years. Al-Haddad said the city received approval for the trail extension back in 2014 through the Federal Highway Administration’s Federal Lands Access Program (FLAP). The program offered Wrangell $457,577 for the project, but the funding would only become available in the future.

“The way the FLAP operates is they will indicate your project has been selected for award but with a future award date and availability of funding,” Al-Haddad said. “In 2014 we were notified our project was selected for funding in 2018.”

However, with so much time having gone by, Al-Haddad said they need to take another look at the trail extension and really figure out design scenarios and costs. This scoping work will look at different routes the trail could take, wetland mitigation, construction methods and estimated costs among other aspects of the project.

“We originally projected it (the extension) to be approximately 4,100 feet, or you could call it 0.8 miles long, or something like that,” Al-Haddad said, but added that these numbers could grow or shrink depending on the outcomes of the scoping project.

 

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