By Marc Donadieu
Glacier City Gazette
Alpine Air has a summer dog sledding tour on Punchbowl Glacier just above Girdwood. If you look closely, you can see the track from the tour.
Alpine Air has been in business for nearly 27 years.
Based at the Girdwood Airport, the outfit offers a variety of helicopter services that have grown and changed over the years. Alpine Air President Keith Essex appreciates where his job takes him, whether it’s a scenic excursion or charter work.
The Gazette caught up with the busy Essex, who first began flying in his teens, for an interview about his business and how it has progressed over the years.
“That was in Talkeetna where I learned to fly as a teenager,’ Essex said. “I moved down here from Talkeetna in 1986. I spent summers in Talkeetna for another five years after that and spent winters down here. I moved down here full time in ’91.”
Alpine Air initially began offering charters with fixed wing planes. Clients included climbers going to the Chugach Range and Alaska Ranges, skiers and sightseers.
“It started as an air charter service modeled on what had been going on in Talkeetna at the time,” said Essex. “We started in 1991 up there, and then we would move it down here in wintertime. Girdwood was initially pretty slow in the early 90s. There wasn’t very much going on at all.”
In 2000, Alpine Air switched from fixed wing planes to helicopters, which offered more flexibility and flying possibilities.
“What changed is our reliability of operation,” Essex said. “When we were operating fixed wing, there were a lot of days we couldn’t operate because of the winds or weather when we can still operate with the helicopter. It has helped quite a bit.”
Alpine Air does quite a bit of charter work for various industries throughout Alaska. Essex estimates about half of his flights are charters such as working with Alaska State Troopers for search and rescue, as well as fish and wildlife management with the Department of Fish and Game and utility work.
“Not only are we doing scenic flights, we’re doing charter work, and some of that will include the Gulf of Alaska clean up from all of the trash and debris out there. We’re involved in that every year. We work extensively on communications flights for cell phone towers and microwave sites. Then we refuel a lot of those sites because a lot of them need power generation.”
Another big component of what Alpine Air does is work with trail crews to move staff, haul in supplies and haul in gravel or a boardwalk. In addition, the business transports maintenance equipment to the hand tram, hauls ropes in and out and takes the man basket back and forth.
For Essex, weather is one of the biggest challenges. The coastal climate with lots of moisture and wind can make for tough decisions when clients need to be picked up from the field.
“We’ve flown in 50 knots of wind before,” Essex said. “We’ve landed in 50 knots of wind, but the air has to be reasonably clean to do something like that. There are times where we have had to deal with high wind, where we’ve had to deal with fog when we’re trying to get to people. That’s the nature of Bush flying, and you’re always dealing with weather and then you’re also dealing with people who want to get picked up. You’re always balancing the two.”
Essex also enjoys scenic flights Alpine Air offers because he gets to take in the gorgeous sights as well. He likes seeing the happy look on people’s faces after a flight concludes.
“When you live in Girdwood, unless you fly, you don’t realize how rugged and glaciated our backyard is. It’s almost like going to a completely different planet. The roads take the path of least resistance, but we’re not confined by that view with the aircraft. We can go into the rugged country. You’ll leave Girdwood Valley, and straightaway you’re in some pretty rugged country, and it’s really dramatic.”
Alpine Air offers three helicopter tours with different features, as Essex explained.
“Just to the northeast of here we have a series of very large glaciers in Lake George Valley,” Essex said. “And from there we go into Prince William Sound. From the end of May to the end of August, we do glacier dog sledding with the Seavey family. They set up a training camp on Punchbowl Glacier, and we bring people up there for tours where they get to learn about dog mushing and the nuts and bolts of how it all works.”
Essex said many people are very excited about hooking up a team and going for a dog sled ride on the glacier. It’s a unique experience in a spectacular setting. He loves seeing the reaction people have after tour and hearing what the experience means for them.
He said the idea of the dog sledding tour came when he met a woman in Seward who was giving tours. She put Essex in touch with Dario Martinez, who was running a glacier tour nearby.
“He and I got to talking, and we decided we would do the same here,” Essex said. “He bought Chugach Express, and we operated together five years or so. Then he decided it was too much for him and wanted to concentrate on his kennel and tours here.”
Essex and his wife Deb have built a business that continues to develop in interesting ways, much as the town around it.
“It’s funny, Girdwood from what it was back in the 80’s to what it is now is almost unrecognizable from the amount of growth in the town. Our business has kept pace with the growth of the town. As the town has grown, we have grown.”