By Marc Donadieu
Glacier City Gazette
After working at the Glacier Ranger Station for 23 years, Alison Rein looks forward to retirement. As a U.S. Forest Service Recreation Planner, her days are focused and organized, yet she yearns for a more open-ended existence with more opportunities that retirement will bring. She had already been contemplating the decision for some time when her daughter Jean’s South High School graduation spurred the welcome change.
“My daughter is graduating from high school,” Rein said, “and then she’ll be going on to college. I’ve been eligible for a couple years, and she wasn’t out of high school yet, so I thought I would wait.”
Rein’s final day is May 30, Memorial Day, at the Glacier Ranger Station. She concludes 32 total years of federal service. Originally from Wisconsin, her first job with the forest service was in the northern part of the state at Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. The job was part of an internship that led to a year working in a lower Michigan forest that left her bored and restless for something else.
“A job opened up in Juneau,” Rein said, “and I took the big leap.”
About seven years later, she returned to the Forest Service. It led to an opportunity in Girdwood, where she first arrived in 1993.
“When I first moved to Anchorage,” Rein said, “we looked at Girdwood because of skiing. Then a job opened up in Girdwood, so I took it. It’s a perfect place for a skier, and you can work.”
She considers build trails to be among the highlights of her lengthy career. Trail work is one of the reasons she spent about a quarter of her time on the job in the outdoors. Making the Winner Creek Trail accessible without the need for rubber boots is a project that stood out for her. The trail was originally a mud pit that had been worked into a decent trail that is among the most popular in Girdwood.
“We had our own crews working on it.” Rein said. “They put a lot of boardwalk, and then a lot of gravel. We had contractors working on it. It actually took Sen. Ted [Stevens] to take a walk on it and slip and almost hurt himself pretty badly. It was how we got the money for it. While we had the contract going on that trail, Jimmy Carter visited. The trail contractors got to meet Jimmy Carter. They were pretty happy about that.”
When asked about her departure from Girdwood, Rein jokingly revealed the true motive behind it.
“The real reason I’m leaving is the damn swoops on the bike path,” Rein declared. “I’m so glad that I won’t have to be living here once that trail has been improved. It’s just such a disappointment after spending so much time working on it.”
This summer, the bike path along the Alyeska Highway from the Seward Highway to Arlberg Ave. will be replaced with a design created by the Alaska Department of Transportation. According to Rein, the design puts pedestrians closer to speeding traffic on highway, and it is being done to enhance visibility for pedestrians and drivers turning onto the highway. Instead of the bike path proceeding in a straight line, it will veer out toward the highway at each intersection before resuming its course.
The design is based on how it’s done in Anchorage and Eagle River due to heavily used side streets. “Girdwood does not have the same volume of traffic as the more developed parts of the Municipality do, and never will,” Rein said.
“I’ve spent a lot of time and effort promoting getting money to replace our bike path, to repair it. They [Department of Transportation] came and presented how they were going to design it. At any road intersection that has any kind of traffic, instead of the bike path going straight across the driveways, it swoops down to be closer to Alyeska Highway, and then it comes back up. They say that’s a safer design.”
As an avid cyclist, Rein is eager to pedal her way through the Kenai Peninsula, the location of her new home pending retirement.
“I’m moving to Cooper Landing,” Rein said, “and I’ve got a collection of boats. I’m going to try to do a lot of boating and biking. I love my bike. I’m hoping to take a bike trip and just head south and take the ferry and keep pedaling until I get tired of that. I don’t have any major pursuits at this time. I’ll let it sort itself out a little bit and see what sounds interesting.”
Rein would like to travel more once she settles into life in Cooper Landing. She has a book about places to travel and put a sticker on each place she wanted to see. “It didn’t narrow things down very much,” Rein said. She still plans to visit Girdwood whenever the urge strikes.
“I’ll miss it a lot, but it’s only a couple of hours away,” Rein said. “All the friends, all the people I know here. It’s a great life. I ride my bike all over town. Every morning I’ve been taking a bike ride. There are all these cool loops you can do. It’s great. I really like Girdwood.”