Tsalteshi Trails Association is thrilled to welcome the newest member of the TTA family — Hetl Qenq’a, which means “Sled House” in Dena’ina.
The new 36-by-60-foot maintenance and storage building replaces our 20-year-old, 16-by-24-foot snowmachine shed. The shed could barely fit TTA’s active snowmachines, had no space to work on machines and couldn’t fit any of our other equipment. The new building has dry, heated and secure storage for all our equipment, plus room to grow. It will increase the lifespan of our grooming machines — and likely our groomers. This is the first time in Tsalteshi’s 30-plus-year history that we’ll have a warm, dry spot for groomers to work — with a restroom, no less — after hours out in the cold, wrestling grooming machines up and down and around the trails.
And the new location, on the hill behind the pool entrance of Skyview Middle School, will improve the usability of the main Skyview Trailhead. Our grooming equipment used to be marooned on the field behind Skyview anytime there was an event using the Skyview trailhead. Now our groomer can still get out and work on the trails even when events are happening. And event organizers no longer have to route around our sheds and grooming drags in the middle of the field.
It’s taken a lot of development for TTA to get the point of being able to complete a project this size. Support from our community partners — the Kenai Peninsula Borough, Kenai Peninsula Borough School District and City of Soldotna, has helped TTA grow into the capacity of taking on a building project.
And it took a lot of help to bring Hetl Qenq’a into existence. Tsalteshi is grateful to have received two grants to fund the project. A $150,000 grant from the Recreational Trails Program, administered by the Alaska Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation, covered Phase One of construction — dirt work and site prep, foundation and building construction. That gave us the bones of Hetl. A $185,000 grant from the Rasmuson Foundation allowed us to put meat on Hetl’s bones — completing the interior and finishing the storage yard.
The grants were enough to construct a building. With incredibly generous community support, we were able to have the building of our dreams, complete solar panels to mitigate future electric costs and a weather station to give us snow conditions right from the trails. Volunteer labor and in-kind donations from our contractors and service providers allowed TTA to stretch grant dollars to afford much more value in the finished project than we would have otherwise been able to build.
Thank you to everyone who contributed and participated!
Volunteer labor:
Brain Springer
Pat King
Nathan Kincaid
Terry Berger
Jay McKee
Mitch Dammeyer
Chad Arthur
Tony Doyle
James Butler
Trevor Davis
Russ Rosin
Alan Holt
Chuck Perrine
Steve Ford
Pat Cooper
Patrick Parker
Kenai Peninsula Outdoor Club
Contractors and service providers:
Batir Construction, Doug Baxter
Davis Block & Concrete, Scott Davis
Doors/Windows, John & Brooke Straume
E & S Drywall, Joel Epenoza
G&S Construction, Dan Green
Integrity Electric, Chuck Gibbons
Kenai Peninsula Smart Home, Jeremy Love
Kraxberger Drilling, Rick Kraxberger
Lehman Builders, John Lehman
Mclane Consulting, Cody McLane
Midnight Sun Solar, Mark Haller
Morgan Steel, Wade Morgan
Nathan’s Mechanical, Nathan Kincaid
North Star Metals, Marc Yoder
River City Construction, Shawn Holly
Schrock Construction, Marvin Schrock
Sherwin-Williams, Bryan Baughman
Spenard Builder’s Supply — Dan Nelson, Toby Abbott & Aaron Newby
Sterling Custom Homes, David Buntz