DENALI NATIONAL PARK AIRCRAFT OVERFLIGHTS ADVISORY COUNCIL
                 MURIE SCIENCE AND LEARNING CENTER
           MILE 1.5 DENALI PARK ROAD, DENALI PARK, ALASKA
                         SEPTEMBER 10, 2010
                       9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

  IN ATTENDANCE:   
  CHARLIE SASSARA
  JOAN FRANKEVICH
  SUZANNE RUST 
  TOM GEORGE
  ERIKA BENNETT 
  BRIAN OKONEK 
  SALLY GIBERT 
  NANCY BALE
  PAUL ANDERSON 
  MIRIAM VALENTINE
  TIM CUDNEY
  LT. COL. SCOTT BABOS 

  

  
                       P R O C E E D I N G S
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  We're going to start with
  introductions, and the person that's taking notes for us has
  asked us just to -- everybody just spell their names.  At least
  for everybody that speaks, or for the names?  Because these
  guys sometimes talk, too. 
          COURT REPORTER:  Yes.  As people from the public speak,
  if you would state your name and spell it, because we're
  keeping track of this for the park service, so we'd like it to
  be accurate.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  And then also she asked me to
  remind you to put your cell phones on silent.  Okay.  So,
          Miriam, do you want to start?  
          MS. VALENTINE:  So, good morning.  It's great to see
  everybody again.  Thanks for making the time to come out,
  especially members of the public.  Paul will be here.  He sends
  his regrets.  He's probably about 10 minutes out yet.  He had
  something that needed to be taken care of, but he'll be down
  here.  I just want to go through real quick the roll call.  And
  that might help you, too.  
          So Lieutenant Colonel Scott Babos representing the Air
  Force is here; and Nancy Bale representing local environmental
  communities is here; and Erika Bennett representing commercial
  aviation, other than our air taxi and scenic air operators;
  Tim Cudney representing scenic air tour operators;
  Joan Frankevich representing Statewide and National
  Environmental Community; Tom George representing general
  aviation users.  Where is Tom?  Why am I not -- there you are,
  thanks.  Sorry.  Sally Gibert representing the State of Alaska;
  Brian Okonek representing our local land owners and the gateway
  communities to our park; Suzanne Rust representing authorized
  air taxis, those that can land within the -- who have
  authorized concessions and scenic air tour operators; and
  Charlie Sassara representing the mountaineering and mountain
  climbing community. 
          In addition to that I want to share that we received
  from the Federal Aviation Administration a request to take
  Jim Edwards, who normally serves on the council in representing
  the FAA, Mike Yorke, who is in the audience today and will
  serve as a technical expert for the meeting today, is going to
  be filling that seat.  So his -- that is in process with the
  seat.  
          And I just want -- if I could take a minute, there were
  questions by the committee about Nan Eagelson's spot.  That is
  moving forward.  Just recently we've moved that forward. 
  Amanda Smith is still very interested in serving in that role. 
  She is at a race today and is not going to be able to be here. 
  So those two are not official.  And so if I can turn it over. 
  I am Miriam Valentine.  I am the designated federal officer for
  the group, and Paul Anderson will be here -- the superintendent
  will be here momentarily.  If we can now turn it over to the
  public -- Teresa?
          COURT REPORTER:  We would like to go around and spell
  their names, please. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Oh, sorry.  
          COURT REPORTER:  That's okay.
          MS. VALENTINE:  If everybody -- and the reason is
  Teresa is recording this, so if you could go around the room
  and spell your name out, then.  Charlie, let's start with you.
          MR. SASSARA:  Charlie Sassara, S-a-s-s-a-r-a.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Joan Frankevich, F-r-a-n-k-e-v-i-c-h.
          LT. COL. BABOS:  Scott Babos, B-a-b-o-s.
          MS. RUST:  Suzanne Rust, R-u-s-t. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Tom George, G-e-o-r-g-e.
          MS. BENNETT:  Erika, with a K, Bennett, B-e-n-n-e-t-t. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Brian Okonek, O-k-o-n-e-k.
          MS. GIBERT:  Sally Gibert, G-i-b-e-r-t.
          MR. CUDNEY:  Tim Cudney, C-u-d-n-e-y.
          MS. BALE:  Nancy Bale, B-a-l-e.
          MS. VALENTINE:  That will be Paul Anderson,          
  A-n-d-e-r-s-o-n.  And I'm Ms. Valentine, Miriam Valentine,    
  V-a-l-e-n-t-i-n-e.
          COURT REPORTER:  Okay.  Thank you. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  So if we can have members of the public
  now introduce themselves.  
          MR. LAHAIE:  I'm Greg LaHaie, Kantishna Air Taxi.
          MS. VALENTINE:  Great.  Thank you, Greg. 
          MR. RODERICK:  And Paul Roderick with Talkeetna Air
  Taxi.  Roderick is R-o-d-e-r-i-c-k.
          MS. VALENTINE:  Thank you, Paul.  And, Mike, it's up to
  you now. 
          MR. YORKE:  Mike Yorke, Y-o-r-k-e, representing the FAA
  Aviation Safety.
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  Thank you. 
          MS. HOMAN:  Paula Homan with National Park Service.   
  H-o-m-a-n.
          MR. COOMBS:  Colby Coombs, Alaska Mountaineering
  School.  C-o-o-m-b-s.
          MR. BETCHKAL:  My name is Davyd Betchkal.  Davyd is
  spelled D-a-v-y-d, and Betchkal is B-e-t-c-h-k-a-l.
          MR. WITHERS:  Jerry Withers with the National Park
  Service.  W-i-t-h-e-r-s.
          COURT REPORTER:  Thank you. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Great.  Thank you. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  And Paul will be here shortly? 
  Okay.  So we've already done introductions.  One thing that
  we've talked about doing in the past is having some informal
  notes that are less than the full transcript.  And do we know
  the status of the May meeting transcript? 
          MS. VALENTINE:  It's loaded up on the Web site.
          MS. GIBERT:  Oh, it is now? 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Yep. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  And so that we don't have to wait
  as long as it's a shorter -- mainly because it is a shorter
  reference document.  And I don't think anybody -- see, I didn't
  think about it last time, and I didn't have very many notes,
  but we were mainly focusing on the best practices, so that
  wasn't really a problem, but I was wondering if anybody wanted
  to volunteer to assist in taking some notes.  I'll try and pay
  more attention to taking notes, and then -- so that we can kind
  of do a much shorter -- you know, sort of action-oriented
  summary.  You want to help with that?  Okay.  Great.  So we can
  figure out how to do that.  Okay.  Great.
          COURT REPORTER:  When people volunteer, I need a
  verbal. 
          MS. BENNETT:  Erika Bennett volunteers to help take
  notes. 
          COURT REPORTER:  Thank you. 
          MS. BENNETT:  The abbreviated version of the agenda
  meeting. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  So we've been messing with the
  agenda, changing things around the last week or so, and we just
  thought we'd make another change this morning.  And
  John Leonard, the mountaineering ranger is not going to be here
  until 10:00 so.....
          MS. VALENTINE:  John is now here, so.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Oh, okay.  Oh, you just snuck in.  Do you
  want to introduce yourself and spell your last name for the
  reporter, court reporter. 
          MR. LEONARD:  John Leonard, southeast ranger.         
  L-e-o-n-a-r-d. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  So I guess we don't need to mess
  with the agenda any more.  So the way I was thinking this would
  go today is that we'd start off the meeting by kind of looking
  at how this summer went, how we made recommendations in the
  spring, and kind of get a sense from both the air tour
  operators and the park service and the public from, you know,
  how this year went, and then moving on later this afternoon
  into, okay, based on that information and what we've done in
  the past and what we'll look to do in the future, sort of what
  are our next steps, so that we can kind of -- this is a good
  point to kind of say, okay, what have we done and what do we
  need to do now, including maybe adjusting some things that
  we've done in the past.  So that's kind of how I'm seeing this
  day kind of unfolding.  
          So the first item is to do kind of a retrospective on
  this past summer and how it went.  So Suzanne or Tim or Tom
  whoever, feel free to report on how you thought it went this
  year. 
          MS. RUST:  I can start, but Tom's actually spoken with
  probably more people than I have.  I talked with John, and I
  guess on the south side, he didn't have any formal complaints,
  and I guess he'll tell you that.  I think we had one ranger
  forward, one -- actually, a series of two -- I think two days
  where they saw somebody operating out of the best practices,
  and we followed up on that and we weren't able to determine who
  it was, whether it was just a private airplane, if it was a
  series of two, or it was a commercial operator.  But we did
  follow up with the different operators.  I talked with R.D. and
  Eric, and then with our -- we reviewed our records, and it was
  a Navajo making some flights.  
          So there were those incidents, and those were the only
  ones that we were made aware of during the summer, but it was
  nice because it was brought to our attention pretty quickly,
  John got with us, and we were able to look and review and to
  see, you know, oh, is it us, or is it somebody else that we
  have no control over, and so that worked well.  
          I got an e-mail from Paul, who is here, who said -- 
  the Talkeetna Air Taxi, Paul Roderick, saying that the people
  he had talked to, the climbing community, I think felt good
  about this summer? 
          MR. RODERICK:  Yeah, there weren't any -- again, there
  weren't any -- Paul Roderick.  Again, there weren't any formal
  complaints.  I talked with a few of the concession -- the
  guiding concessionaires, the owners of them, and some of the
  guides as well, and they didn't have any, you know, big issues
  with what we were doing.  
          Mainly, we were trying to stay out of -- off of the
  West Buttress route, and if we had to fly over the climbing
  route itself, we weren't climbing or had, you know, the high
  rpm setting on the airplane itself.  And the same went for the
  Ruth with their climbers, like say in the Ruth Gorge area.  We
  were tying to at least stay out of there as best we could for
  the scenic flight tours, and if we had to go down the Ruth
  Gorge, we were descending and usually heading back downhill
  heading, you know, basically toward Talkeetna.  But I'd say all
  in all, you know, a good year in that respect.  And, Colby, I
  don't know if you have anything to add to that, but.....
          MR. COOMBS:  Yeah, no, complaints.
          MR. RODERICK:  Okay.  
          MS. RUST:  And I talked with our -- the guide
  concessionaires we work with, and they said the same thing,
  they felt good about the summer.  RMI and AAI felt good about
  where we were and how things went, so that was good.  Talked
  with R.D.; he said he hadn't gotten any complaints from -- with
  Denali Air, and hadn't heard of any feedback from park service,
  and had really not had any issues with the best practices.  So
  that's -- and then I guess Tom talked with -- so I'll turn it
  over to Tom.
          MR. GEORGE:  I've got really nothing to add, unless
  Greg LaHaie wants to make any comments on kind of the north
  side reduced operations.
          MR. LAHAIE:  Yeah, I had no -- I had received nothing
  from -- any comments whatsoever. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  Same thing, nothing on our side as well. 
  They're very quiet.
          MS. GIBERT:  And there were no hardships or anything
  with implementing Best Practices from the pilot standpoint or
  anything?  Safety and weather, that never became a problem? 
  Well, weather was definitely a problem, but it -- yeah.
          MR. SASSARA:  How did the weather change operations
  this year?  Because I had heard, you know, in this middle part
  of the season that, you know, people weren't able to really get
  into the range, you know, and so they were landing in other
  spots, and, you know, so the use changed a little bit.  How
  much did it change?
          MS. RUST:  Well, I can -- I probably could speak to
  that, and Paul might help refresh my memory, too.  But what I
  recall this summer is that May was beautiful and grand and we
  were flying -- you know, there aren't the numbers of people for
  sure, but we were busy, you know, in May, a lot of climbers
  going in, scenics happening, and we were able to implement best
  practices.  
          June, the weather wasn't as bad as July and August. 
  July and August were horrible.  So June we were still flying in
  the range and still we had days where, you know, we were able
  to fly into the range, and sometimes not get up as far into the
  range.  So we were in the range in June, right? 
          MR. LAHAIE:  Yeah.  
          MS. RUST:  Okay.  July and August, I did a lot of Knik
  Glacier flights out of our business.  We went all the way to
  Knik, so we didn't even get up into the range, so -- but that
  wouldn't affect the people on the ground really because there
  really weren't any, you know. 
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.
          MS. RUST:  So we were in the range in June and July --
  I mean, May and June.  Certainly the numbers were reduced some
  in June.
          MR. SASSARA:  And so in July, August, you know, you
  that you have to move because of the weather, and how much --
  like, was it a drop of like, you know, landings of 20 percent,
  100 percent, you know, what do you -- just a guess.
          MS. RUST:  You know what, it was a lot.  I would say --
  Paul.....
          MR. LAHAIE:  I mean, landings had to be done 50 percent
  or more at least, I would say. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Landings what?
          MR. LAHAIE:  Landings probably -- I mean, in total, I'd
  say the landings were down 50 percent.  We'll compile the
  numbers here.  I think the park has them and we have them, but
  if we're going to compare it to last year, I'd say -- it would
  be a rough guess.
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.  So overall impact is down as a
  result of weather.
          MR. LAHAIE:  But during the climbing season, I wouldn't
  say it's that far down, you know.  So, I mean, the relative
  impact for climbers was relatively similar to 2009.  And
  overflights -- you know, I'd say the -- my guess is you'll hear
  more complaints this year because we couldn't fly as high as we
  would liked to have because of the weather, so we had to stay 
  down lower.  Even like on the Kahiltna.  
          I think, you know, there were a few times where, you
  know, we had to land on the Kahiltna, a few of the scenic
  flight tours, because the weather was down on the Ruth.  But I
  would say, you know, my guess would be the impact to the
  climbers was either equal to or greater because of the weather
  on the Kahiltna.  And that's why -- I mean, it's good to hear
  that there weren't any, you know, negative, you know, reports
  because I would have guessed this year there would have been
  more.  This was weird.  You know, to stay VFR, we had to come
  down a little lower.....
          MR. SASSARA;  Right, right.
          MR. LAHAIE:  .....than we normally -- you know, we like
  to be at 12,000 feet in the Upper Kahiltna and there were
  probably days that we were, you know, right at 9 or 10.  
          MS. RUST:  And I just.....
          MR. LAHAIE:  And, Greg, I don't know if you have
  anything to add to that, too, but I mean, I think a lot of
  us -- I mean, a lot of us were forced this year to stay on our
  own sides because we couldn't get to the other sides.  And you
  know, Greg, we probably didn't even fly by you all that often
  this year.  But.....
          MR. SASSARA:  Was this season, was it like a 1-in-10
  season or a 1-in-5 season?
          MR. LAHAIE: Probably at least 1 in 10. 
          MR. SASSARA:  1 in 10?
          MR. LAHAIE:  But we did have a rough -- bit of a rough
  weather year in 2008.  We thought that was our 1-in-10.  We got
  hit again with this, but you know.....
          MS. RUST:  I would say.....
          MR. RODERICK:  It was worse on your side for sure.  We
  had much more flyable days, but there were -- I went around the
  mountain probably myself less than 10 times this summer.
          MR. LAHAIE:  It was significant.
          MR. RODERICK:  That's huge. 
          MR. LAHAIE:  But also -- but where the season, the
  climbing season hits where weather.....
          MR. RODERICK:  The climbing season was the best season.
          MR. LAHAIE:  .....you know, because there's less
  people, yeah.
          MR. RODERICK:  So definitely I agree with Paul, it was
  definitely -- we impacted the same, if not more than a normal
  climbing year.  But as far as the other users in the park,
  well, hard to say.  I mean, we were pushed off the range maybe
  down in a corridor.  You know, we were running for our lives
  several days where all of a sudden the weather would just turn
  and you had to go down a corridor, you had to go low level
  oftentimes.  So there might be a few -- I was expecting a few
  more backpacker complaints, you know, just because of, you
  know, the things were shifting.  And I don't know about you,
  but forecasting on this side for weather was so far off, you
  know, where we would get up -- I have to make a decision at
  6:00 in the morning as to whether I'm putting people on the bus
  or we're going to fly them, and day after day they just had
  these glorious reports of how good it was going to be, and
  within an hour we were sitting in fog and rain and low
  conditions.  And so it really made it very, very challenging
  for us as far as, you know, making the right call at -- and at
  that point, then we're, you know, kind of committed to flying
  people and probably going a little lower than we would like to.
          MR. SASSARA:  Does the park have any recorded instances
  on the north side that you know?  Because that's where the
  feedback -- there was some feedback books, right, there?  I
  mean.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, I think you're seguing to our next
  agenda item.
          MR. SASSARA:  Oh, okay.
          MS. BALE:  I think that Paul had mentioned that one of
  the things that they did do was to try to avoid the Ruth.  Is
  that correct?  Or when they were there, to be.....
          MR. RODERICK:  In the Ruth Gorge primarily.  The Gorge,
  yeah. 
          MS. BALE:  Yeah.  And so you were flying -- there was
  something you said about the directionality?  You would go up
  another route and come back down over the Ruth? 
          MR. RODERICK:   Exactly, yeah.  Try to go up either the
  Tokositna or the backside glacier or maybe the Buckskin Glacier
  and avoid kind of climbing up the Ruth Gorge where most of the
  climbers who climb in that area are.  And then descend down
  the, you know, Ruth Gorge on the way out.  If we were doing on
  a scenic flight tour, typically you're up high or 9 or 10,000
  inbound to the Ruth Amphitheater or landing at the Mountain
  House, and then, you know, flying, you know, and descending
  down the Ruth Gorge on the way home.  And so we're trying to
  mitigate the impact on the way in more than the way out, but,
  you know, that's.....
          MS. BALE:  Would the council be ready to bring that up
  as a best practice recommendation at some point? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, I think that's something that needs
  to go to the aviation working group to be able to sit down and
  hash out in detail.
          MS. BALE:  Totally, but would we be willing to send it
  off to an.....
          MR. SASSARA:  Yeah, we can't avoid all conversation
  there, Tom.  It's got to be in this group sometime.
          MR. GEORGE:  And you're discussing it right now, which
  is fine, but in terms of actually crafting a technical
  recommendation, that's what we have that group for, and I think
  that's what we should use that group to do.
          MR. SASSARA:  Push back on that a little bit, man.
          MS. BALE:  It's just a -- sort of bringing it up as
  something that we would maybe provide them with a white paper
  saying we discussed this, and people from the attending
  operators brought it up; we think this is worthy of your
  discussion.  So I do think that's appropriate.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, I think it.....
          MR. GEORGE:  And we're capturing it in notes right now,
  and that's the note I already have written down, so, yep,
  absolutely. 
          MS. BALE:  Yeah, well, it's great when we hear
  something from an operator that we haven't suggested that
  they're already doing.  You know, we can add that to our
  toolbox, if it works for -- if it could be generally workable.
          MR. RODERICK:  Well, we try to maintain a balance
  flying.  You know, because we understand.  I mean, I do some
  climbing up there myself, so you kind of -- I mean, you know,
  you can feel for them when there's, you know, flight tour after
  flight tour going in there, and so, I mean, we hear about them
  and we're friends with a lot of them, and so we have a
  relationship with them, and so we try to -- you know, a lot of
  this stuff is, you know, basically just relationship oriented. 
  So we try to, you know, maintain that as best we can.
          MS. RUST:  But it also makes -- I mean, along with
  that, it makes for a good flight tour to go one way and come
  back the other.  There are times where weather kind of dictates
  where you're going to go.  But, I mean, this does make sense,
  and it's something easy that we've been able to successfully
  do.
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. GEORGE:  I guess to Charlie's point, I would like
  to make the point that part of how this process works is that
  we get some of these discussions going, and some of these
  things that were talked about even in the -- in last spring's
  aviation working group, people then have a season or two, you
  know, once it's brought up either in a council meeting or
  another setting there to go -- you know, try it out on their
  own operation.  And then I think, you know, they are ready to
  sit down and kind of talk about it and figure out, once they
  understand what the impact to them might be, as well as how it
  relates across kind of the industry. 
          So, you know, some of this -- this is a process in
  which -- I mean, that's what I kind of am pretty pleased with,
  to see that things that just were kind of maybe casually
  brought up at one point and now are kind of percolating out,
  and then we come back later to where people are now willing to
  talk about them in a more technical context, and then we add to
  that document.  
          So I'm aware certainly there's concern either among the
  council or beyond that's like, well, gee, we're never making
  any progress, you know, this is slower than a glacier flowing
  downhill on a good day.  But some of these things, that's kind
  of the process that needs to go on here to give people the
  opportunity to kind of take a look at these things and see how
  they fit in their operations.  
          And, again, that's where I think we're in a pretty good
  place right now kind of having a couple different forums, the
  full council, which, of course, does not include all the
  operators, and yet this other entity where all the operators
  are equal partners and really sit down and talk turkey about
  these things.  So I think what we're doing at the moment, even
  though it may seem awkward to some, is actually a very good set
  of processes, and we need to continue moving those ahead.
          MR. SASSARA:  Well, I'm going to try to push.
          MR. GEORGE:  Feel free to push, then, show up at a
  meeting.  That's the place to push.
          MS. BALE:  Well, I think there are times, too, when
  there's enough attendance from operators at the council
  meetings, that that really constitutes a working group in and
  of itself.  There has been in the past.  A lot of it, you know,
  depends upon how close to Talkeetna we are with the Talkeetna
  operators, because it's harder for them to come up here,
  although, the meetings are announced well in advance, and there
  are people who live in Anchorage that come up here.  So there
  is the option for the full council to, in addition, be a
  working group, and to encourage the operators to attend the
  full council meetings as well, which I think may as well write
  up as a policy of the council that we'd like it if many
  operators would come to each and every meeting.  We really
  appreciate it when they come, because we get great suggestions.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, I think certainly, you know,
  springing something new on the full council and just
  immediately adopting it.....
          MR. SASSARA:  That's a whole other piece, yeah.
          MS. GIBERT:  .....that's not the intention, but I think
  my concern is that we want to make sure that the aviation
  working group isn't completely driving the bus, so to speak. 
  And, I mean, it's really the full group.  It's important to vet
  ideas in the context of that working group, and that's good. 
  But I think we just need to remember that the full council is
  where the recommendations come from, and if -- you know, so if
  we suggest something or we want to throw something out there
  that, you know, it's okay to say, wow, that's a really good
  idea, let's go caucus on that, and that's kind of what you
  said.
          I think it's just -- there's a little bit of just kind
  of a perception thing.  But I think we want to avoid building a
  scenario that the aviation working group is sort of all
  powerful and.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, well, anybody who thinks that the
  aviation working group is all powerful, just come to a meeting.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, I've never been to one, so.....
          MS. RUST:  Yeah, I think it's a good idea for people to
  attend from the council, and, you know, it's a work to get
  everyone to come together, and also to be able to sit down and
  discuss what that really means in terms of their operations and
  get people on board.  And that's the thing, is, you know,
  everyone is different.  And it's -- I'm impressed to see people
  who compete come together and try to solve problems.  So I
  mean, I'm impressed with the group working and what efforts,
  but it's important for us to keep them -- everyone on board.
          MS. GIBERT:  I totally, totally get that. 
          MS. RUST:  So it's a balance. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MS. RUST:  I think it's a real -- I think it's a
  balance.
          MR. SASSARA:  We just don't want to stifle
  conversation.....
          MS. RUST:  No, I know.
          MR. SASSARA:  .....which is the dialogue that needs to
  be open for all this input.  And so that was the little bit of
  the resistance on that, and so that.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Don't want to stifle conversation.
          MR. OKONEK:  Remember at the last meeting we had some
  people from near Talkeetna and from right in Talkeetna that had
  some comments on flights that were departing and arriving back
  in Talkeetna?  Ed Craver was the gentleman who lives at the
  south end of the airport, and he had come and expressed some
  concerns about landings and take-offs.  
          I talked to him last week and asked him how the summer
  went.  He said that about 25 percent of the flights, the air
  taxi flights, flied the VOR before turning west.  And one of
  the things that we had talked about was the planes should
  depart south, fly to the VOR before turning out over the river
  and heading north to get the noise away from town.  
          And so he doesn't think there's been too much
  compliance in that; that people continue to get in a hurry and
  turn out well before they're south of town.  And he said it
  really does make a huge difference if the planes will continue
  down to the VOR before turning.  Because they're not only
  turning, they're climbing right over the library and homes that
  are along the river right there. 
          Beth Pike (ph) said things were -- she lives north of
  Talkeetna along the river.  She said things were overall much
  better this summer.  She doesn't know if it was because of the
  weather being down or people were using different flight
  routes, but she said it was definitely much better.  There were
  a few planes that came over, and I think she contacted air
  taxis and talked to you about that.  
          And it sounds like the key is, is to really keep a
  dialogue going with your pilots.  I mean, Ed was very, very
  blunt with me and said he feels like there's pilots who just
  don't care.  They don't live in Talkeetna, they don't care
  about Talkeetna, and they just don't understand the impact that
  their prop noise is having on the community, and he would --
  that's just what he feels.  
          So I think if you can keep telling those pilots, you
  know, we've got a PR issue here, you know, we've got to try to
  make town as livable as possible for the people who have been
  here a long time.
          MR. CUDNEY:  We've obviously done a lot of flights out
  of our south operation for a couple years, but I did have a few
  request flights out of there this year for Princess that's
  still a key customer of ours.  But I know years ago that
  that -- from the 134 heliport there was subject of a lot of
  conversation due to the -- some of the homeowners in the
  backcountry there.  
          And even though we did have some minimum departures
  this year, I can't say what's going to happen next year, but I
  know that once we started working with everybody that was there
  and letting them know where we were going to go and such, they
  kind of pointed out, well, hey, if you could deviate here or
  deviate there, and obviously staying within the state park
  minimums, we mitigated a lot of stuff.  
          But I don't see us being there on a full-time basis
  probably until 2012, and I know this working group will still
  be working at that time.....
          MS. GIBERT:  No doubt. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  .....but I just want to make sure that,
  you know, we go in there with, just like you said, the open
  mind and the -- it's an attitude, as well.  You're right.  You
  know, some pilots don't care, and some care very, very much,
  you know. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Right.  
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, and I'd add to that.  Part of your
  comment was, you know, the people that don't live there.  I
  think that is true, and I think a lot of people, in fact, that
  don't live there don't know about those procedures, and I would
  encourage both him and you to make sure you're communicating
  with the operator of the Talkeetna airport, which is the State
  of Alaska, because I do think more of an effort is made there. 
          And again, I've got it in my notes - I'll do some
  follow-up with them as well - to actually push the awareness of
  those procedures out, and particularly to the nonlocal pilots. 
  So I think there is more work done there, because yeah, I'm
  sure there are a lot of people that come in that don't know
  about those procedures. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah, Ed was talking in particular about
  hired air taxi pilots, not about general aviation.
          MR. GEORGE:  Oh, so when you said that don't live
  there, you mean that the pilots are operating out of there, but
  they're -- aren't Talkeetna residents?  Is that.....
          MR. OKONEK:  Right.  That was his comment.  And I did
  try to communicate with FAA after our last meeting about
  getting more awareness out there for the general aviation, as
  well as air taxi operators, and that was a no-show.  I got
  absolutely nowhere.  We had a real problem with Jim Edwards
  leaving and not having another FAA representative on, and it
  was like e-mailing a giant black hole, so.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, of course, we can now add Mike
  Yorke's.....
          MR. YORKE:  Oh, no.  
          MR. GEORGE:  Oh, yeah.
          MR. YORKE:  No, no, not if it's the daytime.  I'm not
  here today.
          MR. GEORGE:  But, I mean, it's fine to talk to the FAA. 
  Certainly, again, the airport operator is who has the chief
  responsibility to do that, which is not the FAA; it's the State
  of Alaska DOT.  That's the place.  I mean, we should focus all
  places, but that needs to be the principal place to focus to
  radiate that message out.
          MS. GIBERT:  So just for my information, we might want
  to get Mike to speak to this too, what are the forms that
  either the FAA or the state or anybody else for that matter
  have to communicate to pilots about the best use of any
  particular airport?
          MR. GEORGE:  If you got the supplement?
          (Multiple voices)
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. YORKE:  To some, it's called the "Salmon Book." 
  Here in Alaska we call it the airport -- the Alaska Air --
  excuse me, the Alaska Supplement.  In the rest of the world
  it's called Airport Facilities Directory.  There's a nice
  little picture in there of how you're supposed to operate in
  and out of Talkeetna. 
          MS. BENNETT:  It even says go out through the.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  It does says that?
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. YORKE:  It's always open for comments.  We have a
  group called Runway Safety headed by Roger Motsko, and anytime
  you have any issue, he pretty much takes them up the line.  
  He's not the individual who takes the complaints, but that is
  correct: the state runs the airport.  We take care of the
  airspace and regulatory matters.  We also can define
  recommended procedures, and we can make fixed procedures.  If
  we make fixed procedures, that makes it a little tough.  Scott
  can understand what I'm talking about.  DP, departure 
  procedures.  And we can make those fixed in there, and that
  means everybody has to do them.  Generally when you do
  something like that, you gain one group's approval and force it
  into another vote.  
          But there are some issues on the future here that's
  going to help out.  We have 8,000 certified airmen in the state
  of Alaska.  We are mailing out a large binder, and it's going
  to include the Alaska Supplement, which may go away by the way
  in May of next year.  The Salmon just did. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, we'll talk about that in a little
  bit more.....
          MR. YORKE:  Yeah, yeah.  Thanks for that, Tom.  We sure
  hope it doesn't, but we're going forward with putting that out,
  Brian.  So, you know, the procedures are there, they've been
  vetted through the committees in Talkeetna, they've been
  modified a few times, and I think they're pretty good
  practices.  They're similar to the map here that Tim and one of
  our inspectors worked pretty hard on, Phil Watson, and others
  there in making that a better usage down there.  
          MR. RODERICK:  When you were talking to Ed, was that
  before this season or after?
          MR. OKONEK:  It was right after the last meeting, our
  last spring meeting, and I just simply started by.....
          MR. RODERICK:  Well, that was before the season, yeah,
  because I think that would be.....
          MR. OKONEK:  Well, I simply started by asking him how
  does the public go about communicating with an airport or FAA
  how to recommend operating procedures?  And, you know, I never
  got an answer on that or any other question.  So it was just --
  I just got an e-mail that he said he's busy and that he was no
  longer on the council and that's as far as it went, you know. 
          So it's great to know, you know, what to do, but it's
  hard to -- very hard to get information on what to do, you
  know, from somebody you expect should be able to provide some
  answers. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Call me any time, I'm happy to help.
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  
          MR. GEORGE:  Half of my job each day is to try and
  figure out what part of the FAA to go to to get a certain thing
  done. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Well, at that time -- at that time -- so
  was Jim Edwards.  Yeah.  Thanks. 
          MS. RUST:  I want to follow-up on that with Ed.  One, I
  can make an effort to talk to him.  I've seen him throughout
  the summer and fishing down at his place, you know, I.....
          MR. OKONEK:  I wouldn't bother.  I'd just -- let's work
  with Mike.  Jim is no longer on the council.
          MS. RUST:  I'm talking about Ed Craver. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Oh, okay. 
          MS. RUST:  But going back to the Ed Craver issue, I
  think it's an important one.  I think the thing we need to let
  folks know is that they -- you know, that we welcome that
  conversation, and we're interested in being reminded if
  somebody is not following those best practices.  And it's not a
  lot of fun to hear at the end of the season that that's -- you
  know, we're busy running our businesses and trying to do our
  best job in talking about those with our pilots.  But what we
  like to do is hear, you know, rather than at the end of the
  season, hear along the way so that if there's a course for
  action, we can do that.  Because those are easy things to do. 
  Ed Craver's problem is easy to solve. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Well, that's what he thought, too. 
          MS. RUST:  And it is.
          MR. OKONEK:  And I think it just wears people down. 
  You know, he came to the meeting, he expressed his concerns, he
  thought the operators would let their pilots know.
          MS. RUST:  And we did.
          MR. OKONEK:  And that's what he expected to happen. 
  And I think he's pretty much thrown his hands up and said it's
  an unattainable goal.  You know, he was very discouraged. 
          MR. RODERICK:  I don't know if we've gotten comments
  from him after the season, though, because we did put a lot of
  effort in the training this year. 
          MS. RUST:  We did. 
          MR. RODERICK:  And I personally watched it, and, you
  know, I mean, when you're flying out there you're watching
  other pilots and your own.  And, I mean, I would guess that if
  we talked to Ed that he could feel that we were practicing,
  especially after this year, because there was so much effort
  put into it.  And even at some of our safety meetings this
  spring, we really, you know, impressed upon the fact that we
  need to make sure that we extend out, you know, further on our
  take-off run from -- basically it's from 1-8.  So it will be
  interesting, you know.  Well, I'll talk to Ed and see, you
  know. 
          MS. RUST:  So when did you talk to Ed?
          MR. OKONEK:  A week ago.
          MS. RUST:  A week ago.  So, okay, so that's the time
  line.  So we'll have a conversation with him.  That's an easy
  one to follow up on.  And it's an easy one -- well, I guess
  it's not that easy, because in his perception, things didn't
  change, but we -- what Paul said is we did try it this year. 
  We spent time talking to our pilots, we spent time reminding
  folks.  So we will see what we can do about that. 
          MS. BALE:  Is the south take-off or -- what is it,
  southwest take-off much more common at the Talkeetna airport
  than a northern take-off? 
          MS. RUST:  It just depends on the weather. 
          MS. BALE:  So there's not a real common direction?
          MS. RUST:  No.  It's just -- it changes, and it can
  change even within 10 minutes, you know, using one runway and
  then using the other, so.....
          MS. BALE:  And there's a lot take-offs from the
  Talkeetna airport in a given day, June, July, August, like how
  many?  Like 500?  Or is that too many?
          MS. RUST:  I don't know.
          MS. BALE:  So there's a lot of pilots to find, I guess,
  is what I mean.  So there's your guys, but there's.....
          MS. RUST:  And there are a lot of others.
          MS. BALE:  Others.
          MS. RUST:  Other folks coming in there, too. 
          MS. BENNETT:  Just about every -- I was in the
  playground a lot in Talkeetna this year, and that happens to be
  right off the end of 1-8.  And I made a point of watching, and
  every operator I saw -- now, I wasn't there every day.  Every
  operator I saw went to the VOR.  Every person I didn't
  recognize turned right over the library and Craver's house. 
  But I was there maybe a dozen times all summer.  So I thought
  what I was witnessing was, wow, they're practicing it and --
  but hearing it from a person who lives there every day..... 
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah, that's -- he said he thought 25
  percent of the operators were going to the VOR, so that's what
  he told me.
          MS. BALE:  So, Tom, what's your impression of private
  pilot compliance with the salmon book?
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, I'm not at Talkeetna enough to
  observe. 
          MS. BALE:  In general, just.....
          MR. GEORGE:  But the issue is the notice that -- or one
  of the issues is the notice there -- is in the notices section,
  which is kind of an unindexed part of the booklet, which is not
  directly in the place where you would actually go read about
  Talkeetna, so I'm not sure that gets as much attention.  And,
  again, there are a variety of things that can be done, you
  know, in addition to the runway safety folks.  
          The FAA has another element called the FAA Safety Team,
  which has an e-mail list out to people in the state.  So there
  are a number of things that can be done to try and draw
  attention to the specific, you know, procedures that have been
  set up for Talkeetna. 
          MS. BALE:  The map doesn't have suggested flight paths,
  though.  That would be too busy.  The aviation.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, the flight charts don't get into
  that level of detail.
          MS. BALE:  Okay.  It shows the VOR, though, doesn't it?
          MR. GEORGE:  Yes.  
          MS. BALE:  Okay.  Well, then.....
          MR. RODERICK:  I have one last thing to add to that. 
  If you're departing 1-8 -- and I think Ed may even be
  misconstruing this there.  The VOR is up on a hill, okay.  And
  when you take off of 1-8, you almost can't even keep going
  straight, you know, because you're getting close to the hill. 
  So you -- when you take off, you naturally are turning right, a
  slow right-hand turn.  Even if you're doing an instrument
  departure, you have to turn to a heading of 188, which is 8
  degrees to the right of runway centerline, or 1-8.  So when
  you're taking off, you naturally have to do a slow right-hand
  turn to avoid terrain.  
          So I think it's possible that, you know, Ed may be
  construing that, you know, when you're doing your general
  right-hand turn, that we're turning early.  But you have to
  naturally do it and -- I mean, I have to say that I kind of --
  I mean, I watch a lot up there and fly a lot.  And, I mean, I
  rarely -- I didn't even see a pilot turn -- I think once I saw
  a pilot turn, and we talked to them and that was it.  I mean,
  you rarely get to see them.  So, I mean, it's possible that --
  you know, I don't know, maybe we've got to go further.  But, I
  mean, you do have to naturally do that right-hand turn.
          MR. OKONEK:  Well, you're really treading a needle to,
  you know, go between Ed's and the VOR.  I mean, Ed lives in
  like the most impossible place.
          MR. RODERICK:  I mean, Ed is right -- I mean, he is
  literally right off the end of the runway, and it's
  unfortunate, and, you know, I feel for him.  And I know him
  real well, and I even spend time with him.  But, I mean -- and
  been at his place.  And you're like -- you know, it's -- you
  can't avoid it.  I mean, if you turn early, you can't turn
  early or later, just because he's just right at that -- I mean,
  he's like right in the sweet spot of where you have to come
  right down through.  
          MR. COOMBS:  I live right in town, and I notice if
  there's a plane that flies overhead and I didn't notice many,
  if any, planes flying over this summer.  But I did notice this
  little helicopter that wasn't the park service helicopter and
  it wasn't a military helicopter that would fly over, oh, more
  frequently than I've ever seen before, and I didn't know if the
  FAA -- would they see that and actually talk to them on the
  radio and be, like, you can't actually fly over town?  Is that
  something that happens or.....
          MR. CUDNEY:  There's really not a presence of the FAA
  in.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Again, the airport operator is the person
  that needs to receive that call and that needs to track down
  that individual.  That's typically not an FAA job unless it's
  violating a rule.
          MR. COOMBS:  So there's no one there that maybe like,
  oh, letting him know? 
          MR. OKONEK:  No.  
          MR. GEORGE:  The FAA is not -- doesn't have a person
  based in Talkeetna, nor is that their job in general with
  airports. 
          MR. COOMBS:  Well, who's the guy that you log your
  flight plan with? 
          MR. GEORGE:  That's the flight service station, which
  does not control traffic at all.  I mean, they could try and be
  helpful here and maybe do something, but, again, the person who
  is responsible for that is the airport manager, which is a DOT
  person, and that's..... 
          MR. COOMBS:  Who's out on the roads. 
          SPEAKER:  Steve Hampton. 
          MR. COOMBS:  Steve's out on the road somewhere like in
  Petersville most of the summer.  So for that helicopter just to
  go back and forth -- and it was a -- I don't know who it was. 
  Is that something that you just sort of let the air taxis sort
  of self-manage that?  Do you guys deal with the helicopters? 
          MR. RODERICK:  No.  But that guy, I don't know who it
  was.  It was a Robinson R44, and I don't really know -- I think
  he was doing some kind of survey or geological work and, you
  know, I didn't -- I wasn't aware that he was flying over town
  so much. 
          MR. COOMBS:  It wasn't that much, but it was really
  noticeable.  I mean, it used to be that everyone would fly over
  town, and then the town -- there's like an understanding that
  no one flies over town now, which is nice. 
          MR. YORKE:  And as Tim knows in the helicopter world,
  there's a rule out there that says they'll avoid -- helicopters
  will avoid the flow of (indiscernible) traffic, so in reality
  they have to do something different.  That doesn't mean that
  they need to pick that particular location.  And as somebody
  said here earlier, I think self-education is the way to go, and
  I'll let our inspectors know that when they're up in that area,
  hopefully, if they're up in that area here, that they'll, you
  know, ask them to maybe select a route that's not right over
  populated areas.
          MS. GIBERT:  Any other comments from the audience?
          MR. YORKE:  Yeah, one more for Brian, if I can help out
  on the FAA issue.  Maybe we can get on the side if you'd like
  and if like the process where if somebody is unsatisfied or
  dissatisfied with the procedure that has been vetted by the
  committee to go forward with it if we can.  Tom hit it right on
  the head, it's the airports who control that, not the FAA. 
          We've got some rules in there, and the rules with the 
  helicopter says, quote/unquote, fixed wing don't fly 300 feet
  or less over a congested area, which is not what helicopter
  people do.  They go above that regulation.  And I can tell you
  Eric does that for sure. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Well, I think there's definitely confusion
  amongst the public about the -- how the airport is run, you
  know, about the state DOT and the airport manager and FAA and
  who has jurisdiction over what.  I mean, most people when they
  talk about the airport, you know, nonfliers like myself, it's
  all FAA.  So I think there is some -- definitely some confusion
  there. 
          MR. YORKE:  Well, actually it's the airports that tell
  you you can't drive your car on there.  It's the airports who
  say the open hours.  They can close that airport at 8:00 at
  night if they like.  We have one in California that operates
  that way.  Dutch Harbor is a daylight-only airport.  That's due
  to terrain, but that's what the airport manager wishes to do,
  and they can do that.  And that's vetted, Tom well said,
  through public comment.
          MR. OKONEK:  Okay.  
          MR. YORKE:  So it's a tough place where this guy is at,
  Brian.
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  
          MR. YORKE:  I know it's a tough place, and I think Paul
  and a couple others talked about communication.  That's
  probably your best bet, unless you want to take a look at
  changing things, and then when you change, who else do you
  affect?  That's just a thought. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  
          MR. YORKE:  So thank you.
          MS. BENNETT:  There is an outlet for a concerned
  citizen if they feel as if an airplane or aircraft is doing
  something that's illegal or unsafe.  If there's a chance you
  can get the N number of the aircraft, there's a channel you can
  take and say, look, this is what I saw this aircraft doing, and
  is this legal, and this is the N number, and then there's an
  entity that will go research it and talk to whomever owned that
  airplane, see if they were the ones flying it, et cetera.  Say,
  well, this person said they saw you flying it five feet above
  their house or whatever; did you really do that, when did --
  and so there is a channel there if, for some reason, you see
  this guy going back and forth and you think it's unsafe or
  whatever. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Well, who is that channel?
          MR. YORKE:  I can help you out there. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Okay.  
          MS. BENNETT:  Yeah.  I don't know the exact.....
          MR. YORKE:  That's 271-5936, that's ROC. 
          MS. BENNETT:  ROC. 
          MR. YORKE:  Yeah, Regional Operational Control Center
  there in Talkeetna.  And if you don't want to spend the money
  on a cell phone to do that, just throw 800 in front of it.  You
  call up and you say, I saw a black helicopter flying over my
  house at two feet.  They take that down, it comes over, it
  falls on Flight Standards on their desk.  And Flight Standards
  says black helicopters; how many black helicopters are there? 
  We can't do nothing about this.  Find the helicopter 12345 N
  number.  We can find out who that's registered to, and let's
  say for demonstrative reasons it's registered to Joe's Flying
  Service.  We call Joe's Flying Service up and say do you own
  123456?  And he says, yes, I do.  Was it in this area over
  Talkeetna?  Yes, it was; we have a report they were flying low,
  and the investigation begins on our part.  
          Generally the outcome of those investigations are
  pilots are sometimes just completely unaware of what they were
  doing.  Not safetywise; they just didn't consider -- sometimes
  it's -- you know, if you live there, you'd a probably known
  more about the area, but if you don't live there, you kind of
  don't know.  And, yeah, we got the salmon book out there and we
  got all this stuff, but, you know, a guy can only read so much,
  so sometimes just a phone call to them, I know we.....
          MR. OKONEK:  What was that number again?
          MR. YORKE:  271-5936, R-O-C.
          MR. LAHAIE:  Yeah, and if I could add, on the pink
  book, I think for most general aviation flyers, you're flying
  up in Talkeetna and you're like, oh, you know, I haven't been
  there in a while.  You pull out the salmon book and you're
  trying to fly and you're reading and you get to Talkeetna and
  you do the basic runway heading altitude, and I don't know if
  you can see that, but if you try to read that fine print when
  you're bouncing along in turbulence, and then to think of, oh,
  there might be a reference map in the back.  You know, that's
  the first time I've heard of the reference map in the back
  about Talkeetna.
          MR. GEORGE:  And I looked as the book was going around,
  if you look in the section that we're referring to, well, there
  is a little note buried in the bottom that says, see Section C.
          MR. LAHAIE:  Right, Section C, correct. 
          MR. GEORGE:  But it doesn't really give you -- so, I
  mean, I think, you know, one thing we might need to see if we
  can get a more descriptive entry there, but the point is that
  map is in a different part of the book where the people are
  going to for normal preflight planning.  And, again, this is
  one of these things you kind of tackle on all fronts.  There's
  no single silver bullet here.  So one of them is to look and
  see what we can do there.  
          Another one, though, is again for the airport operator
  to make some big copies of that and post it at the flight
  service station and places where people refuel so that --
  that's another way to draw it to people's attention, and like I
  say, then there's different parts of the FAA that can actually
  push information out to a targeted audience.  So this needs to
  be a big campaign on the one hand. 
          Now, I still want to point out, though, that the root
  of the problem that we're spending a lot of time on is the
  airport sponsor has not engaged in appropriate practices of
  protecting the land use around an airport.  Because by rights,
  nobody should ever be allowed to build a house that close to an
  active runway in that volume of use.  So there's a bigger
  failure here.  
          I mean, we still have to live in a world with the cards
  that it is today, but recognize that the way to avoid this kind
  of problem in general is to avoid letting development into
  places like that.  And this is an issue we may come back to
  with regard to the airports that are actually inside the park,
  if we ever get around to some of those things.  
          So, yeah, I mean, we want to work this issue, but
  recognize why it's an issue was a bigger failure on the road
  behind us, and the question, though, is what is Talkeetna doing
  today to avoid that problem getting even worse.  And that is
  something you should be equally engaged in to try to head off
  future problems as well as trying to, you know, fix the other
  problem, just to -- I mean, you see how much time and energy
  it's taken just to try and deal with this one issue.  So kind
  of keep that in your focus as you work this issue.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  And, unfortunately, in Alaska "plan"
  is often a four-letter word.
          MR. GEORGE:  Oh, I'm aware of that. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  So.....
          MR. GEORGE:  And zone is even a worse four-letter word.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  I'm all with you, Tom.  But it's, in
  practice, pretty difficult.
          MR. GEORGE:  And this is where Alaska is changing. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Yeah.  It is.
          MR. GEORGE:  And some of those changes are bringing, in
  fact, some of the problems that have plagued Lower 48 airports
  for a couple decades now to our doorstep.  And the issue is are
  we going to sit here fat, dumb, and happy and just wait for
  them to descend upon us, or are we going to try and get ahead
  of that power curve and avoid some of the mistakes that have
  been made in other parts of the country?  
          So we still, in some respect, have an opportunity to do
  something, even though it might be painful.  And I'm sure it
  will be.
          MS. VALENTINE:  Sally, is this a good segue for maybe
  John to share impressions from the south side from the
  mountaineering?
          MS. GIBERT:  Yes.  Thank you, yeah.
          MR. LEONARD:  Good morning.  Thanks for the invitation
  to come share with the.....
          MS. VALENTINE:  John, why don't you step up here. 
          MR. LEONARD:  I'm battling a cold, so -- is that
  better? 
          COURT REPORTER:  Yeah.  
          MR. LEONARD:  As the group probably recalls, we started
  with a plan to start some sort of observations using the
  mountaineering rangers on Mt. McKinley.  I think the first
  discussion started in the winter meeting down at Campbell
  Creek, and then there were some plans put in place, and we
  really didn't finalize what we were going to do until the
  May 7th meeting.  
          And I have come up with kind of an idea of some more
  formalized sampling that was in line with some of the work that
  the park had done previously on the north side.  The group
  asked that we really pay attention to the best practices, and
  in particular the noise on the upper mountain and in the
  Kahiltna Pass.  And that's the areas where we had our
  observation. 
          Throughout the season I had four reports of incidents
  that were outside the best practices, and then other reports
  that were -- I don't know if you guys remember, we started
  going down the road about different audible noises and
  distractions and whatnot.  And I'll share with you the full
  reports that I received, and then if the group would like more
  of a narrative of the subjective of, you know, one of the
  rangers, as an example.  
          I would say one of the things -- we did get kind of a
  late start because we didn't pin things down until May 7th,
  and, you know, at that time, we already had one of patrol out
  on the mountain.  I was able to catch them at 14, brief them,
  and get them up to speed.  And the process I went through with
  each patrol is, before they went out, I would sit down with the
  patrol leader and the patrol and ask them, explain to them the
  best practices.  I think we can do a better job if this is
  something that we'd like to continue just being out in front of
  it a little bit more.  
          One of the things I think would also be good:  Do the 
  pilots get the reports out.  I kind of, on the fly, went
  directly to Suzanne with them being that she was a member of
  the committee.  When I made the report for the aircraft, I did
  talk to Suzanne, and she requested Eric, as well as the
  Talkeetna operator, and said, hey, if you're hearing something,
  please let us know.  So that seemed appropriate.  
          The four events that were outside of the best
  practices: two were on May 16th, one was on May 17th, one was
  on May 19th.  I'll just read them as I received them.  At 1900
  hours, a white Navajo -- and I think it's probably worth noting
  that our rangers, anything with two engines is probably a
  Navajo.  That's something that we could probably do better, but
  if it has two engines, it's a Navajo.  
          So 5/16 at 1700 hours, white Navajo aircraft circled
  the football field three times.  May 16th, 2115, a white Navajo
  directly over the 17,000 foot camp flying north to south
  through Denali Pass.  5/17 at 9:00 a.m., white Navajo aircraft
  flew through Denali Pass north to south, and then on 5/19 at
  11:45 a white Navajo aircraft flew through Denali Pass north to
  south.  
          When I made this information available to Suzanne, I
  wasn't looking for any response, but I was very impressed with
  the response I got.  You guys seemed to really follow up on it. 
  And it wasn't intentional at all, but I know Eric and you both
  looked into it thoroughly.  And by no means was I saying that
  this was a direct key to aircraft or a (inaudible) aircraft. 
  It was just simply observations that we were making in the
  field, but anyway, it was a -- I think with the calls that we
  had back and forth, it was impressive, the follow-up on you
  guys' end.
          MR. SASSARA:  Did you find out who was flying the
  aircraft?
          MR. LEONARD:  One of the things that I think came to my
  mind is -- and I don't know if this is my place to comment on
  it, but I will because it came to my mind.  But whether this
  was out to -- because I was thinking, you know, when we're on
  the mountain, we just think white Navajo, and, of course, the
  immediate reaction is, well, it's just somebody in Talkeetna or
  Denali that's flying by.  Well, it became apparent it could be
  anybody in the state.    
          I'll read the narrative of one of the rangers from this
  year, if you guys would like as well.  This is a report from a
  patrol that was conducted, a high-camp patrol conducted from
  May 14th through June 13th.  And I'll just read this as it was
  turned in to me. 
          From 5/14 to 6/13, I conducted a high-camp patrol on
  the West Buttress.  During this time I logged flight noise from
  airplanes on the attached sheet, which was -- I showed that to
  you.  Detailing this list comprehensively proved to be
  difficult, in part due to other matters taking priority, and
  also in part to the fact -- also due in part to the fact that
  air traffic noise simply blends into the background.  The
  familiar whine of Navajo engines is all too familiar.  This
  year, however, was a good year for resolution on the mountain. 
  There were still instances when air traffic was distracting to
  conversation or the ability to hear significant natural sounds. 
  One noted, a few others not noted, but it was notably less than
  prior years when it could be difficult to carry on a
  conversation at the 17,000 foot camp for an entire day.  
          There were still times when air traffic noise was
  clearly audible, but background noise, 12 noted and not noted. 
  However, again, it was notably less than previous years.  And
  faint barely audible noises that were maybe heard but not seen
  were still common; 7 noted, numerous not noted.  But at this
  point those noises are so common they have simply become a part
  of the scenery.  So pretty subjective; some are objective
  findings, but.....
          MS. RUST:  What were the dates again?  I'm sorry.  
          MR. LEONARD:  5/14 through 6/13.  In the view of at
  least this ranger.  He's been on the mountain for the last four
  years he says. 
          MR. SASSARA:  So he's got some perspective, yeah.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  And this is -- I'm sorry, I didn't
  catch the date.  This is in May when the weather was good, so
  we can presume it's because of a change in the flying patterns,
  not because of weather?
          MR. LEONARD:  Yeah, right. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Right.  So this is a reflection on the
  best practices.  
          MR. LEONARD:  Yeah, this was in the heart of the good
  weather.  
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Great.  That's great.
          MR. LEONARD:  Anything for me? 
          MR. SASSARA:  Are you guys going to consider doing it
  again next year?
          MR. LEONARD:  Personally, I think it's a valuable
  thing.  We're only going to get better in our observations. 
  You know, starting May 7th for us, when there's a lot of other
  things going on, I think wasn't ideal.  I think getting this
  out, ingrained in all the staff early, will allow for better
  observations.  
          I would say that all the staff members are vested in
  this, being that -- I think it's fair to say that the impact of
  noise is important to climbers, and all of our staff members
  definitely consider themselves climbers, so they do take it
  seriously.  They have a lot of other duties they're taking care
  of, but they're in tune with it and concerned about the impact.
  So they're not an uninvested group.  It's just really been a
  kind of -- but there are understandable obstructions.
          MS. GIBERT:  So you think this was a comfortable burden
  for them to take on at -- it sounds like they were willing to
  do that, that it wasn't perceived as, you know, extra duties
  that were not enough time to do kind of thing? 
          MR. LEONARD:  Yeah.  You know, we have -- being that we
  went kind of back and forth and -- probably when we first
  started talking about it, I think to monitor the best practices
  is something that's very reasonable.  To get into and note
  every flight that comes through, like I've kind of gone down
  that road, I think is probably too burdensome.  But to focus on
  the best practice I think is reasonable, not just in this area,
  but other areas.  And, like I said, this is important to all of
  us.
          MR. SASSARA:  Yeah.  
          MR. LEONARD:  And I think there's buy-in.  Of course,
  it's the first year, and it's kind of the baseline of things,
  but I think as we do it, we'll have more things to compare it
  to and do a better job.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  What amazes me is how bad it used to
  be.  Did he say that in previous years sometimes some days at
  17,000-foot camp you couldn't hardly hold a conversation all
  day it was so -- it was difficult to talk over? 
          MR. LEONARD:  Yeah.  
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  I guess I didn't realize it had been
  at that level.  And what a tremendous change.  I mean, good job
  to all of you guys. 
          MR. LEONARD:  I can speak from personal experience, and
  I think I shared this with the group in passing, there's many
  times, and especially on nice days where you couldn't hold a
  conversation.  I remember one time I was talking to my former
  boss on the cell phone about some incident, and we couldn't
  have a conversation through the cell phone because all the
  noise was so loud. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  And now you said that there were a few
  occasions that happened, but for the most part it's not
  that..... 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, that's good. 
          MR. LEONARD:  Yeah. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  That's a tremendous change.  That's
  awesome.  
          MR. LEONARD:  It is awesome. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  And you guys will have to be credited.
          MR. GEORGE:  I think this is good, and if you're
  willing to consider or continue it, I think this would be
  great.  And, again, I agree, meaning not every airplane that
  goes by at the significant excursions from best practices
  level.  
          Any more detail that you can get about -- you know, an
  N number ultimately would be the most valuable thing, because
  that is a -- that's DNA, aircraft DNA.  But even short of that,
  if there's a paint scheme or anything, it would help.  Because
  there are flights that launch out of Fairbanks, and presumably
  Anchorage and stuff, too, and I think -- and I'm not one to
  suggest that this necessarily would need to go on forever, but
  I think we may need to go through a few years, and I'll work
  with Suzanne, and we can talk later about maybe how to expand
  your notification network a little bit so that if some of these
  are outfits from some of these other places that we haven't,
  you know, been able to engage in the best practices forum,
  which is really principal operators there on an everyday basis,
  that we can actually start to reach out to some of those and
  see if we can't get them in the fold as well.  
          Now, there's still, you know, the notion that there may
  be some totally unassociated GA aircraft and, again, that would
  be good to know, too, because we know that the harder challenge
  ahead is to radiate some level of this information out to the,
  you know, GA -- the general GA audience that is not -- that is
  there maybe, you know, once in a lifetime or once in a season
  or something.  So there's work ahead to be done on this before
  we pat ourselves on the back too much.
          MR. LEONARD:  And I would say that, you know, simple
  things that we could do, I pressed -- and these came from
  multiple rangers.  Actually, two of the reports were both noted
  from the 14,000-foot camp and the 17,000-foot, in particular
  the one that was circled.  We think that shows the impact of
  even an airplane up high comes down the mountain quite a ways,
  but on our end to do better monitoring we'll simply have the
  binoculars at the 17,000-foot camp.  If I press the guys, come
  on, you got get me a tail number -- or not a tail number, but a
  color because you can usually pick that out, if it's blue or
  brown or whatever.  But they will be willing to come up with
  that. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, the time and date, particularly,
  because, again, any of the operators we talk to, they're going
  to know if those time windows fall within times that.....
          MR. LEONARD:  We're supposed to know where they are. 
          MR. RODERICK:  You can almost get within five minutes.
          MR. LEONARD:  Exactly.  It's pretty scary.  And I don't
  know that in the conversations I had with Suzanne and Erika, it
  was -- it would seem these weren't any of their aircraft.  I
  think it did serve as an opportunity to talk to all the pilots,
  and ameliorate the fact that -- you know, where's everybody at,
  so it served a good purpose on that note. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, and you mentioned that, Paul, that
  in some of your staffs' minds, all two-engine airplanes are
  Navajos, so the other question is: can we, the aviation
  community, provide you any additional information that you
  might be able to use in your training sessions to help with,
  you know, aircraft type identification?
          MR. YORKE:  Use flash cards.
          (General laughter) 
          MR. GEORGE:  At least the most prominent -- I mean, you
  know, here again half a dozen types that are the most likely to
  be there just so that -- just kind of like you learn different
  birds, you know, how to tell them apart. 
          MR. LEONARD:  I think it's really -- you know, I think
  already we're at the level where we can tell the difference
  between a C-130 and a Navajo, but a Conquest and a Navajo might
  be.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah. 
          MR. LEONARD:  .....difficult, especially at a distance. 
  But, you know, some sort of identification sheet or something. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, we'll give some thought to that,
  okay.
          MR. LAHAIE:  And I think Suzanne had, too -- the more
  detail you can get, time, and let us know right away.  I mean,
  we go through training, we tell our pilots this is very
  important, you know, the altitudes, where not to fly.  But, you
  know, just thinking back six years ago, I hired this renegade
  guy who -- man, he loved looking at sheep, and he loved showing
  people sheep, and even though we told him, this is our hard
  deck, we don't go below this altitude, over the Polychromes I
  would look over and see him doing circles right over the
  Polychromes at 200 feet, you know.  And no matter how much you
  yell at somebody, and once again, we might not even know.  You
  might get one guy up there, his favorite thing is to go through
  Denali Pass, and -- but if we know this and we can pin it down
  to one pilot, then we can approach him.  Even though we think
  we're doing everything right, you never know what your guys are
  doing out there.  So that's a big thing, too.
          MR. SASSARA:  You can make it a term of employment. 
          MR. LAHAIE:  Right.  Yeah, absolutely. 
          MS. BALE:  Question to the operators:  Does flying
  through Denali Pass from north to south automatically get you
  over 17,000 feet?  So do we want to make a comment at some
  point about flying through Denali Pass?  Just offering --
  floating it up as a balloon.
          MR. OKONEK:  I think as best practices, summit flights
  being either east or to the north, precludes going through
  Denali Pass.  You know, it's -- that's the whole point, is to
  keep away from the summit.  By going through Denali Pass,
  you're going right between the summits of the mountain. 
          MS. BENNETT:  And right over the climbers.
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  It already is their best practices not
  to do that.  We don't do that.  I mean, we do a few summit
  flights through the.....
          MS. BALE:  And you didn't do it before anyone said
  anything?
          MR. SASSARA:  Suzanne, have you got those guys going
  through Denali Pass going for your summit flights?  You guys
  are following the best practice of not going -- yeah.
          MS. RUST:  Yeah, we don't -- right.  So by having the
  best practices, that eliminates that as a.....
          MR. SASSARA:  Yeah.  One of the other discussions we
  had about a year ago was an alignment of what we're
  communicating to the clients about what we have out there for
  services, and then alignment of what we're actually doing, and,
  you know, and I brought out photographs or printouts of
  everyone's Web pages, and frankly, you didn't step forward,
  Suzanne.
          MS. RUST:  Well, let me tell you this:  I'm, right now,
  in the process of redoing my whole entire Web site, so it's
  being gutted.  So I'm not going back and reworking that Web
  site.  I'm getting ready to launch a new one.
          MR. SASSARA:  Okay.  Because it was a year ago, it
  was.....
          MS. RUST:  Yeah, I'm not -- you know what, Charlie, I'm
  sorry, I have so many things going on, and right now I'm -- I
  mean, it is painstaking to put together a new Web site.  That
  stuff will be reviewed in the new Web site, but it takes time
  to.....
          MR. SASSARA:  But it's a -- one of those, you said you
  were going to do it, it's a -- you're advertising a lap.
          MS. RUST:  Yeah, it just something that's been
  overlooked, and I will get it done in the next Web site.  I'll
  be glad -- I mean, it's not a bid deal.
          MR. SASSARA:  Well, it is a big deal when you create
  expectation in someone's mind that you're going to see the -- I
  actually saw the footprint from the climbers who made the top
  of the Denali, and that's what you're advertising, so -- and
  you're accountable for it.
          MS. RUST:  Okay.  So one thing we do is we also tell
  our clients that we often stay, you know, below, we're not even
  getting up to the 20,000, we say we're.....
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.  It's just matching us, that's
  all.
          MS. RUST:  And I understand, and what I meant by it's
  not a big deal, it just takes me getting to that and rewriting
  it, and right now the project that I'm working on is fairly
  big, and I'd like to just incorporate it in the new Web site
  than going in and working to change the old one.  So -- but I
  can do that. 
          MR. SASSARA:  Sorry, but I had to.
          MS. RUST:  Well, it's fine.  But, you know, it's -- you
  know what I'd appreciate more than this is for you to call me
  and remind me, because, you know, it is -- it.....
          MR. SASSARA:  And I looked at in just on 9/8.  I didn't
  look at it.....
          MS. RUST:  Yeah, but, you know, call me.  Call me. 
  Because it -- and then I can say to you, Charlie, you know,
  we're working on this or, you know.....
          MR. SASSARA:  But we have to be held accountable for
  these things, and this is.....
          MS. GIBERT:  I think that point is well taken.
          MR. SASSARA:  We're done. 
          MS. RUST:  Sure.  You know, yeah, you know, we're glad
  to work on things that -- I mean, we're doing our very best,
  and I would appreciate a phone call about it, I really would. 
  And, you know, and -- you know, I've tried to look for
  opportunities, like asking you to come to our training to talk. 
  I'm glad to look for opportunities to make things better, and
  this is one that we can.  It just fell kind of off the radar
  because there were lots of other things going on.  And it seems
  like, well, gosh, when we do the new Web site, we'll take care
  it.  Okay.  Deal?
          MR. SASSARA:  Yeah.  Deal.
          MS. GIBERT:  Thank you. 
          MR. OKONEK:  I think it is really great that John's
  rangers were noticing a reduction in noise that was affecting
  your ability to take -- you know, have a conversation at high
  camp, and that's fantastic in that most flights are staying
  well beyond and had very few incident that were, you know,
  beyond the best practices, but it is still concerning that
  aircraft noise is such a common part of the experience up there
  that it is now part of the scenery.  I mean, it wasn't very
  long ago that you were at high camp, the only time you heard an
  airplane was during a rescue, you know. 
          MS. BALE:  Can you put a date on that, Brian, that that
  was the case?
          MR. OKONEK:  Well, it was about the time that Eric got
  the Navajos and started doing regular scenic flights.  You
  know, that's.....
          MS. BALE:  Was that in the nineties? 
          MR. OKONEK:  Before that it took so much time for the
  206s and the 185s to get to altitude that it was very seldomly
  done for a scenic flight.  And so it was, what, the late
  nineties? 
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  Yeah, I would say '98, maybe '99.
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  In that area.
          MR. OKONEK:  Before that it was a very, very rare
  thing.  It was rare enough that it was almost fun to see the 
  airplane, you know.  But now it's, you know, very, very common,
  and as the report shows, you know, I mean, it is part of the
  scenery.  And that's why I continue to urge that summit scenics
  can be spectacular for the passengers aboard by staying a long
  ways from the mountain, but the true perspective of Denali is
  really much more impressive from quite a few miles away.  
          Up close you might as well be flying right up close to
  any smaller peak because it's all snow and rock in your face. 
  But if you're back far enough, you can see how much bigger
  Denali really is than everything else, and you can give your
  customers a fabulous flight of the range and reduce the noise
  as much as possible for those who are trying to experience a
  Denali climb.
          MS. BALE:  Operators, I have a question.  Do people
  sometimes come to you and say, you know, my cousin Vinnie is
  climbing, can you take me over to see him? 
          MS. RUST:  No.  I mean..... 
          MS. BALE:  As a request. 
          MS. RUST:  Well, I would say we probably do more -- I
  mean, Talkeetna Aero does -- or Fly Denali/Talkeetna Aero does
  most of the summit flights.  We do some, and Paul does a few. 
          MS. BALE:  But is there a market out there that wants
  to go see climbers?
          MS. RUST:  You know, no.  I mean, I don't -- we don't
  get many requests for that.  I don't know if you do, but that's
  uncommon.  I mean, and it's really -- and the thing is that
  it's really -- surprisingly, I think that text is from an
  old -- you know, old, old, just hasn't been updated.  It's not
  something we sell when we're in the office talking to people. 
  They want to know about the summit flights.  You know, it's a
  perspective that we're selling versus -- you know, I always
  tell -- let my child describe the -- getting down at the lower
  altitudes, a Star Wars kind of effect, and this is more of a
  high altitude, getting to see the, you know, eagle's eye
  perspective.  It's just a different perspective, and that's
  what people are really interested in.  They're not interested,
  I think, as much in going and seeing a particular person or
  going and seeing, you know.....
          MS. BALE:  So you're not beating off this big market
  for people who want to get really up close?
          MS. RUST:  Nope.
          MR. LAHAIE:  I think what's happening on the north side
  this year, talking with the operator that shall not be named,
  they can't land on the glaciers, they can't -- you can't see
  the mountain any way else.  Folks, we can show you the mountain
  via the summit flight, that's what happening.  Because you're
  getting -- you can't get them on a glacier on the south side,
  you can't really run them through the park, but we can get you
  through the clouds and show you the top of the mountain.  
          And so when nobody else is flying the park, those
  flights are still flying.  And when you only have the top 3,000
  to look at, they're not going to stay up for any distance.  I
  mean, there's people paying a lot of money, and this is all you
  have to show them, but that comes down to operator decision
  point of what is the quality of the product that you're trying
  to promote.  
          And I, frankly, find it surprising that people pay $300
  or $400 to fly through the clouds for the majority of the trip
  to get one little glimpse of Denali and then come home.  A lot
  of times that's all we really can get. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  It's called operator integrity, and we are
  the recipient of some of those bad flights, believe it or not,
  because we have people that come to us thinking that they're
  going to do that particular flight. 
          MS. BALE:  You mean the one I was describing? 
          MR. CUDNEY:  Uh-huh.  And as well as the one that Greg
  was describing.  What's happening is when the conditions do
  deteriorate, a company still advertises a landing and in-flight
  they basically make a call to the passengers that if they can't
  land, they're going to do a regular tour, and they either do a
  refund or whatever.  But that's a -- again, that's another
  model.  
          But on to your original question, a lot of the requests
  that we get, unfortunately, are wildlife viewing, and we've
  pulled every reference to that out of our media as best as we
  can.  It's very taboo with our company ops specs, because all
  we have to do is deviate one degree and it's considered
  harassment in a helicopter.  
          So we don't advertise it, we don't endorse it, but that
  is a pretty big request.  So what we do is we basically tell
  people that for wildlife viewing, you know, obviously you want
  to take the park tour, take the bus tour.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Great.  Appreciate that. 
          MR. LAHAIE:  Yeah, the same way people are, like, are
  we going to see animals on this trip?  And I always say, you
  came in on the bus, that was your opportunity to really
  see them.  I mean, we're trying to fly high, get above the
  passes.  It's about scenic, it's not about wildlife.  You know,
  if we happen, on descent, to fly by a ridgeline and there's
  sheep, but we're not -- we don't go out and seek it. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  That's why you can say you'll see them,
  they'll look like the size of a pinhead, you know, and by the
  time.....
          MR. ANDERSON:  That makes sense.  That's how big they
  were when we saw them from the bus.
          MR. CUDNEY:  Exactly.
          MR. COOMBS:  I think it's conceivable to say that
  you -- it's conceivable that scenic passengers would want to
  see climbers, and back in the day when it was really a
  nuisance, it was obvious to me that the pilots going by -- or
  the people in the planes wanted to see me because they kept
  coming by, you know, all day.  So I think these best practices
  are great.  I just -- I'm concerned about when it becomes a
  marketing thing and there's someone -- a new person from
  Anchorage or from Fairbanks who are like, wow, no one's really
  jumping on this, I'm going to plaster it all over my brochure. 
  Sure enough, they get a lot more business.  
          When is it unfair for the people doing the best
  practices when there's someone -- if there's no enforcement,
  what's going to keep the person that thinks, wow, that's a
  great marketing pitch, I'm going to spread it all over my
  brochure that we're going to go look for climbers and find them
  and people are signing up for my flights for that very reason? 
          It just doesn't seem -- since there's no enforcement,
  there's nothing about best practices, I'm assuming, written
  into the concession contract.  It just feels like it would be
  awkward for the existing air taxis to, like, get trumped by
  someone that's completely ignoring best practices and banking
  over it.
          MR. LAHAIE:  I think anyone making that much of a
  profit or actually starting to become a player in commercial
  operations up there, we would put enough pressure on them to
  either ante up and practice like we do or get out.  I mean, as
  you probably noticed, it's a fairly competitive business.  I
  don't think -- I certainly would have no problem verbally
  abusing anybody who I thought was taking advantage of a
  situation. 
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  I think if you were to canvass the
  people who were interested in seeing the mountain, the climbers
  are a pretty low interest level.  Animals would be higher than
  climbers by far.  Climbers, the only reason it's nice to see
  climbers is perspective association, and that's it.  Just
  associating with the size, but that's not necessary, really,
  and it's rare to even get a call to, you know, first off to
  want to go see climbers up there high on the mountain.  Once in
  a while somebody wants a photo opportunity like that, but it's
  rare.  It might be once a year, if that.  
          But it's -- I mean, it really is seeing McKinley
  itself, and sometimes whether it's from 10 miles away, I mean,
  is adequate, even 20 miles away.  This year a lot of times we
  had to fly up in the valley when the valleys were open and
  there was overcast on the range.  We had to fly up at the end
  of the glaciers and give them a look and then we could drop
  down lower and proceed up the glacier that way, but as long as
  they can see.  And they don't have to see it close.  I mean,
  when we do summit tours in the best -- I mean, like Brian said, 
  the best perspective that you can have on the mountain is a few
  miles away, and that definitely holds true.  
          It's more sometimes just keeping track of pilots,
  because pilots, you know, want to show people things, want to
  show people things up close, and -- because, I mean, you know,
  a pilot can -- wants to see new terrain and maybe look at
  things.....
          MR. SASSARA:  Well, it is part of the show, and -- you
  know, and it's hard to resist it.  I mean, years ago you flew
  by me in the Wrangells.
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  Right.
          MR. SASSARA:  Tight.
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  Checking you. 
          MR. SASSARA:  I know. 
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  But, I mean, it's certainly -- I mean,
  we do do that.  I mean, we go and try to find climbers who.....
          MR. SASSARA:  I know.  That's our -- yeah, we were
  looking at you.  Yeah, exactly. 
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  And you were at a difficult run.  It was
  like, all right, well, you don't want to get too close either,
  but, you know, we feel like it's -- there's a certain
  responsibility.  But Denali, we don't really need to check on
  anybody; there's plenty of oversight just amongst the climbers
  themselves because there's enough people on the West Buttress
  route.  But if, you know, occasionally there's somebody who is
  overdue on a -- you know, and that -- and, you know, we're
  going to get complaints, because sometimes we get calls and
  say, you know, all right, this guys are overdue and they're
  climbing on the south face and it might be the American direct
  or whatever..... 
          MR. SASSARA:  Right. 
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  .....and you got to go, okay, all right,
  well, we'll go look for them.  We might be up there, you know,
  starting up high and descending down lower looking for these
  climbers, and sometimes the -- you know, just like there's no
  word out there.  
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.  
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  So, you know, we're going to run into
  that issue.  We might get a complaint or two out of it, but in
  the end, it's kind of what we have to do.
          MR. OKONEK:  And see, those complaints will be negated
  once they know why.....
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  Right.  
          MR. OKONEK:  .....you were there.
          MR. SASSARA:  But the context, you know, is it's
  feeling that you're part of the commercial operation, but
  you're not getting any change out of it.  You know, here, look
  at this guy, and he's -- you know, you're going to the zoo,
  right, and we're paying to be part of the zoo, but wait a
  minute, that wasn't part of my deal.
          MS. RUST:  But, Charlie, I think that there's been
  certainly -- I mean, when we bought the business from Jim,
  that's kind of the text that was used way back when because it
  was a novelty to go take the 206 and, you know, tool up, you
  know, for two hours up to the summit, look around, see some
  climbers and put on the oxygen mask.  But it's really -- I
  mean, you should come do a summit flight, because it's really
  not really part of the overall atmosphere, what we sell in the
  office.  You know, it just -- it's just not that big of a deal. 
  It's not a big selling point, and it's not something that --
  it's a big deal to not have..... 
          MR. SASSARA:  Yeah, you guys all are making the effort,
  it's evident, because John's report and the information that's
  coming back is that it's actually working.  You know, there
  are -- his point about, you know, some other operator, maybe. 
  You know, the worst example I ever had was not in this state,
  but it was in Red Rocks and a helicopter tour came up on the
  wall that we were on, and, you know -- and they're all       
  ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, and they're, you know, 40 feet away.  That's
  the extreme of it.  
          So it can happen, but if this group and the operators
  are still -- you know, buy into the basic premise of here is -- 
  how do we separate the people on the ground from the aircraft
  to the maximum extent possible that's safe for both parties. 
  That's sort of the bottom line here, you know, so that you
  aren't crashing onto each other.  So, I mean, there's been a
  huge shift in perspective that you guys have made, and it's
  actually working.
          MS. RUST:  I think there's been a psychological shift
  for everyone, and it's just -- but there's also more summit
  flights, too, than there were in the past, and, you know -- and
  I don't see competition, I think as Colby -- I just don't
  see -- you know, I think there are going to be, you know,
  security coming out of Anchorage tooling around up there.  I'm
  just trying -- I'm picking a company.  You know, there's going
  to be these kind of fluke things where they come and do it, you
  know, twice a year or 10 times a year and -- because we've seen
  them up there, and, oh, you're here, you know.  You know, and
  but -- and, again, as a general rule most of the -- you'll be
  seeing the operators that are part of the working group,
  they're the ones that will have the biggest impact on this. 
          MR. OKONEK:  And I think that information is either on
  the park map, on the park aviation Web page that they have,
  that might be a good spot, too, any pilot coming up.  They're
  probably going to familiarize theirselves with that.  That's
  where you could even put in here are our best practices
  followed by commercial operators to give them a heads-up so
  they know they're not coming up and doing everything wrong.
          MS. GIBERT:  That was one of my thoughts, is what's the
  best way to get information out to other air taxis that aren't
  Talkeetna-based or Denali-based that are from Fairbanks or
  Anchorage.  What's the best way to get them information? 
  Because, you know, as it's turned out with this -- you know,
  with the group here, that information is -- solves a lot of
  problems right there.  So these people from Anchorage and
  Fairbanks, if they knew about best practices, you know, and
  understood more about them, that there probably would be a lot
  more compli- -- how can they comply with something when they
  have no idea about it.
          MR. CUDNEY:  Well, we've been addressing that since
  this group has started as public information outside of this
  group.  I mean, it's very easy for all of us to get together in
  a spring meeting or a preseason meeting and talk to our fellow
  operators and competitors, but the general aviation has always
  been the challenge, and Tom will attest to that.  You know,
  we've tried with some of these supplements and some of these,
  you know, area-specific maps, and then obviously there's a
  cost, but still there's a need, you know, to spread the
  information.  And I think.....
          MS. BALE:  We haven't been ready, I think, to go
  public.  I think we're just about ready now.
          MR. GEORGE:  Yep.
          MS. BALE:  But we haven't been before. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  But they just released -- what's the most
  recent Denali supplement?  Last spring? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, this map here, yeah.
          MR. CUDNEY:  Yeah, that's the most -- and it took
  awhile to get that, so it will be awhile before another edition
  will come out.
          MS. BALE:  I think we could get some.....
          MS. BENNETT:  That's online, though. 
          MS. BALE:  We should get some TV sometimes. 
          MS. BENNETT:  It will be updated online when we get to
  it. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  Yeah, absolutely.  What's that? 
          MS. BALE:  We should get some TV sometime.  
          MR. CUDNEY:  I can hardly pay my fuel bill, for crying
  out loud. 
          MS. BALE:  Well, no, it's public service.  It's a
  state -- it's a federal.....
          MS. BENNETT:  It's really hard to get something like
  that as a public service announcement.
          MS. BALE:  Oh, there's really stupid stuff on TV in
  Anchorage. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  Yeah, that's true.  That's true. 
          MS. BALE:  I think that all you have to do is know
  somebody, which I can't say that I know anyone, but I mean,
  somebody who knows somebody at KTUU, and if we're meeting in
  Anchorage, you know, invite them to the meeting and then do a
  little face time about, you know.....
          MR. CUDNEY:  I actually did make a call in.  We met the
  other day.  I did make a call to ATIA as far as the tourism
  group, and they -- I thought Lois was going to attend, but she
  said no, they -- this is too far and too costly for them to
  come up and attend.  Which, after our discussions, I was
  all.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  Well, I mean, probably the next
  meeting will be in Anchorage, and that's.....
          MR. CUDNEY:  Yeah.  
          MS. GIBERT:  .....you know, that's free.  
          MR. CUDNEY:  Yeah.  
          MS. BALE:  Or it might even be more appropriate if we
  had a spring meeting before the season, and the -- what best
  practices had been developed, had been developed, and what PR
  and stuff.  We had a good packaged-up message, and then, like,
  in an April -- April or May meeting next year we could try to
  have it in Talkeetna.  They'd come up there, I think, and then
  we could kind of segue the season starting and this council's
  meeting, and it's involved with these people and they're
  developing these things and pilots are doing this and that.
          MR. CUDNEY:  Well, as far as -- and I'll go on record
  for this on the side, ERA's group for 2011 -- I mean, we
  actually had what I consider a pretty good year this year.  We
  obviously downsized our allotments and what we flew, but we
  also compacted more departures in our operating day than
  spreading it out over three or four aircraft; I did it in two
  aircraft.  There's a couple days I had the third aircraft there
  and we filled it in, but we're finding now that I'm actually
  staying away with competing with the folks that go around the
  mountain, or the Navajo operators and what they do and we steer
  a lot of folks to the bus tour I'm utilizing outside of the
  park.  
          And I think I've mentioned in the past that I've
  reduced our park overflights drastically over the years,
  because our niche right now is the glacier landing, it's not
  showing McKinley, and it's not, you know, the park itself.  But
  next year I'll probably wind up adding an additional departure
  to the east for -- and drop a departure from the west.  And I'm
  not going to call that a best practice, because I want to be up
  front, if things happen in 2011 and 2012 that I do decide to
  put four aircraft there, that means we're going to change the
  model again.  
          But it just -- as far as the -- as far as the current
  footprint of what we're doing, we've changed it drastically,
  but it's not necessarily on operational costs and stuff, it's
  based on the demand of the passengers.  And I know for a fact,
  I think Eric is probably doing more flights now -- or Talkeetna
  Aero was doing more flights out of here than he has in the
  past, and it's a competitive issue as well, but when somebody
  asks us to go around the mountain or show them the summit, we
  just steer them to a different operator.  Not always Eric, but
  we steer them to a different operator.
          MR. YORKE:  Nancy, I might be able to help you on the
  issue there.  You talked earlier about the pink book may go
  away, or the salmon book, we -- everybody that flies an
  airplane loves these things.  I mean, they're great; we just
  hate paying for them.  They're $3, so sometimes the operator
  have some older ones. 
          We have an organization called Runway Safety, and I
  mentioned it, they are going to do a printing here, as we're
  speaking.  That Denali map will be in there, runway safety
  issues will be in there.  It's similar to what air carriers did
  years ago.  It's going to be a real nice thing, something
  you're probably going to want to keep it in your aircraft. 
          We're going to have an update on that in January, so
  maybe if the advisory council has some best practices by then,
  I can assure you we would get those in there.  We can list them
  as Denali, whatever word you choose, to get those best
  practices in there.  And that might be rushing some of the
  members here.  
          We also have a Web site, but of course everybody has a
  Web site, faasafety.gov, and we send what's called fast blasts
  out in their information.  And at the beginning of the season,
  we could send those out.  We actually send them out and
  reference the fires and issues like that.  We have one that's
  come up here about new verbiage, I think, taking the use of a
  runway that's for landing.  That's going to be the lineup and
  wait now, as everybody here in aviation knows about that.  But
  that's the way to get some of that information out, Nancy, at a
  cost of hardly anything.
          MS. GIBERT:  So when do you -- for that January
  publication, when do you need to have something in hand? 
          MR. YORKE:  You know, I'm thinking Christmastime, maybe
  before Christmas, because that's a tough month for us.  But it
  would be the right place to start.  I don't know if the council
  would have -- or the committee would have them all, but surely
  some. 
          MS. GIBERT:  I mean, we have some now. 
          MS. BALE:  We already have some. 
          MS. GIBERT:  I mean, we have some that are.....
          MR. YORKE:  And those I haven't seen, and maybe shame
  on me, and I know there is more to come, and that's part of the
  advisory committee issues.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  I'll make a note to forward you the
  latest -- the thing that we formally kind of signed off on last
  spring. 
          MR. YORKE:  Okay.  
          MS. GIBERT:  And then there's -- you know, there have
  been other ideas that have been cooking that might be more
  cooked by then, but certainly that is ready to go now.
          MR. YORKE:  Maybe somebody on that committee would be
  interested in formatting them or something.  It's going to be a
  similar book like this with the wide rings around it.  It's
  going to be pretty nice.  They're figuring about.....
          MR. LAHAIE:  And that's going to take the place of
  these?
          MR. YORKE:  No, no,  This is.....
          SPEAKER:  That's just going to go away.
          MR. YORKE:  Yeah, that's just going to go away, so
  Runway Safety had a lot of money, and they asked us what are we
  going to do with this? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Please relay to Runway Safety, it would be
  nice if they come out to the rest of the community and got some
  input on this project before it's all done.
          MR. YORKE:  Okay.  And again, they're going to be.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Because one -- you sat in a meeting
  earlier this week where it would have been appropriate for that
  to come out, and nobody said boo about it.  So we can talk
  offline.
          MR. YORKE:  Okay.  Fair about that.  But now that you
  do know.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Yep, I've got a note right here. 
          MR. YORKE:  Okay.  And the question was asked, how do
  we get the info out.  It's a pretty good place to start with
  very minimal costs, so thank you, Sally.
          MS. GIBERT:  And that -- well, obviously, we can't do
  it right now, but in terms of it -- things need to be boiled
  down into a small number of words, I presume, to go.....
          MR. YORKE:  No.  No.  We're going to put -- that whole
  map is going to be in there. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. YORKE:  We're putting the whole chart in there.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. YORKE:  And right next to it we can put best
  practices for McKinley, we can put, you know, high level, low
  level, whatever way would be easy.  As Greg said sometimes, you
  know, we get in a hurry and big print is better than small
  print.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Well, I was just going to -- you may
  have said this and I may have missed it.  Your best practices,
  it's still somewhat of a living document and evolving as we go. 
  So how often is what you're -- this publication you're talking
  about reprinted?  Is it going to be out there for 10 years, or
  is it going to change in a year so as best practices changes? 
          MR. YORKE:  Well, it may never come again. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Oh, I see. 
          MR. YORKE:  And I can't say that for sure.  We're going
  to mail 8,000 of them out, I mean the FAA Runway Safety, in
  about a month.  And that the op -- the airport guide, you've
  seen that before.  I've just got a couple of those things there
  that will be in there.  And we have the Denali map in there. 
  They asked me, did we want that in there, and I said,
  absolutely.  So now what I'm hearing is there's some best
  practices, some have been developed and put in place. 
          Obviously, feedback is whether you're going to do them
  or not.  Sounds like you've got some good -- or positive
  feedback on some of them.  And if we could get those, there's
  going to be another printing in January, which kind of sounds
  crazy, but the government spending year, as you well know, ends
  in September.  So opportunity.
          MS. GIBERT:  So it sounds like it's going to be too
  late to incorporate the current finished best practices in the
  document that's going to be printed imminently?
          MR. YORKE:  I could make a phone call, but I'm saying
  if you wanted that, it could probably get inserted.  I would
  say the deadline would be a week from now at the max, because I
  think they're very close.  There's some stuff on my desk to
  review for fast team, those include those issues and some
  signage issues.  But, yeah, we could get those in there. 
          MR. SASSARA:  Is there anything in that group of
  practices from the air taxi operator's perspective that is --
  that wouldn't stand the test of time?  I mean, because.....
          MR. GEORGE:  I don't know.  I mean, we're down to the
  technical level right now, but, you know, we don't know.  We'll
  have to go look at all this.  I mean, the whole notion has been
  to, yeah, again, develop these, and the people that do them on
  a daily basis see what's working and what isn't and tweak it. 
  So we aren't sticking out something that we would then have to
  turn around and retract later or modify, and that's where, yes,
  we want to take advantage of some of these things, but we kind
  of need to look at each one and figure out the schedule.  
          The question you asked, Joan, was an excellent one,
  when's your next publication date?
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Right.  Because if we have to.....
          MR. GEORGE:  I'm sitting here hearing about this whole
  thing for the first time, which doesn't make me a happy camper
  in terms of FAA communication with the rest of the community. 
  You know, gee, thanks a lot, FAA, for inviting us to the
  meetings, to participate in these things.  So, yeah, we're just
  going to have to go take a look and see.  
          I mean, my guess is, from the sounds of what we just
  heard, you know, fresh off the press that maybe the January
  thing, we might be able to get something in.  We may need to do
  a little reframing to, again, generalize it a little bit,
  because again this was fairly specific initially for the people
  that are there every day.  
          On the other hand, just thinking about it right now in
  real time, I don't think of anything in there that I think
  would be bad advice, but we need to look at it and just chew on
  it a little bit more.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MR. GEORGE:  And also we need to covey that this a
  living, breathing thing and, you know, maybe get a Web site
  link because even after this is published -- and I was very
  appreciative, you'll notice in this one that the park service
  did add the Web site so that even in this document, which is
  going to become dated before too long, there's a link to the
  Web site, which we actually can put more current information. 
          So, yeah, it's a strategy and a flow that we need to
  work on and see what we can take advantage of.
          MS. BALE:  We've already got a disclaimer at the
  bottom, so that's progress. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MR. LAHAIE:  And keep in mind the number of operators
  that we're going to the general public with that really are
  going to be flying high altitude or close in where we fly, and
  it's pretty small.
          MR. SASSARA:  Yeah, because there's not that many
  aircraft.
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  
          MR. LAHAIE:  It's very, very small. 
          MR. OKONEK:  And another good way we could let
  commercial operators know our best practices would be to --
  there's not that many of them -- would be just to mail out a
  letter.
          MS. GIBERT:  Is there a mailing list of all of the
  state's commercial operators?  Is anybody making that?  Yeah. 
  Yeah, we could do that. 
          MR. GEORGE:  I think there's about 300 in the state,
  just to put rough number on it, I believe. 
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.  But that would be involved up
  here.
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, but now how do you fix that?  I
  mean, that gets a little more challenging.  So, again, you
  know, I mean, it's part of a process we need to kind of roll
  along.  And one dimension of it, I think, again, is getting
  feedback, you know, off the mountain if we can get down to
  specific aircraft to then go track down that company or that
  owner and bring them into fold.  So, again, it's -- there's no
  single silver bullet; it's working on multiple levels as we can
  and as resources allow. 
          MS. GIBERT:  What we could do is around the time that
  the January thing goes out, we could mail out to all the air
  taxis statewide and say, you know, by the way, here's this --
  we include the fact sheet about the council, and who we are,
  and that we've developed these best practice, that these are
  going to be represented in the next safety document, and, you
  know, be aware that this is an integrated process and that
  there could be more.  You know, attach the Web site.  And so
  everybody kind of gets a -- in kind of one package, you know,
  the process, a link to the current information, and a heads up
  that it's going to be in the next publication.  
          And that might be sort of a good staring point for, you
  know, really broadcasting the word out there.  And then giving
  more time.  Like, it sounds like you're trying to rush it.  To
  do something the next week might be too quick even if the
  information ends up being the same.  But if we work toward more
  a December-type time frame, that I think they'll probably be
  more comfortable with that. 
          MR. GEORGE:  And there's also going out and giving
  talks like at the air carriers' conference.  I mean, I've
  already being giving talks at both the Anchorage spring seminar
  and the fall general aviation conference, again, just to raise
  awareness about these things.  And at the moment, that map is
  the primary product that we're using in that arena.  
          So, again, it's a very broad range of things that are
  available to us, and, in fact, some of which we've been doing
  for a while now.
          MR. YORKE:  Would you like me to check and see if we
  could get in that early publication?  Any thoughts? 
          MR. SASSARA:  Yeah.  
          MR. YORKE:  Because something done early and then
  updated.....
          MR. GEORGE:  You should check and see what the deadline
  is, absolutely, sure.  
          MR. LAHAIE:  At least a reference to a Web site.
          MR. YORKE:  And we can might be able to help with that,
  too.  We have one FAA safety, a Go Fly Alaska.  I'll get you
  some information on that.  We would surely put that on our Web
  site of best practices at Talkeetna Aero.  You bet. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, at least a reference to your Web
  site. 
          MR. YORKE:  If you're going to fly in the Denali area,
  or are considering flying, please look at best practices.
          MR. GEORGE:  And the FAA, through the fast team, if
  that's the Web site you're referring to, and.....
          MR. YORKE:  I am.
          MR. GEORGE:  .....I'm sure, they have the ability for
  the pilots that have signed up actually to push an e-mail
  message out, which, again, you could do something like that at
  some point down the road to actually do a direct push to at
  least the people that are on that mailing list.  Which I think
  is a couple thousand at the moment, isn't it?  Fast team?
          MR. YORKE:  No.  No.  It's about -- well, it is a
  couple thousand.  It's 5,000, so that's pretty good with 8,000
  pilots in the state.
          MR. GEORGE:  So there's, again, a way to push -- and
  like you say, kind of an overview thing.  I mean, not a huge
  detailed thing, but an overview that raises peoples' awareness,
  points us -- them to some Web sites and stuff. 
          MS. GIBERT:  To where to go, yeah.
          MR. YORKE:  And that's what it -- excuse me, Tom.  I'm
  sorry.  That's often how it would be done, if you're flying in
  the Denali area, here are the best practices, look at this Web
  site.  You can show them that and away you go.  We also have
  the ability to send them out paperwise.
          MS. BALE:  Does the council want to go on Facebook?
          MR. GEORGE:  Go right ahead, Nancy. 
          MS. BALE:  Just asking.
          MR. GEORGE:  Go right ahead. 
          MS. BALE:  No, no.  DCC is on Facebook, and we've got
  seven friends. 
          MR. YORKE:  Oh, I wouldn't be surprised within a couple
  years we're there.  
          MR. GEORGE:  The FAA is actually looking at that right
  now.
          MR. YORKE:  There's actually big movement in that way,
  because of communication. 
          MS. BALE:  Sure.  Absolutely. 
          MR. YORKE:  You know, and Sally, and -- and you're
  correct, Nancy, you want to get this information out.  Well,
  how do we do it?  Well, I can tell you if you buy a 30-seconds
  ad on KTUU at the news hour, it's $192.  We just spent 80,000
  bucks there, so I know what it costs.  And that's public
  service, and that's, you know, state.....
          MS. BALE:  Well, I'm not talking about doing an ad on
  TV.  I'm talking about being there as a public relations thing.
          MR. YORKE:  How some way we're getting back to this
  Facebook is -- that's the way.....
          MS. BALE:  Yeah, Facebook is good for certain things,
  it is. 
          MR. YORKE:  That's the media that gets peoples'
  attention, so.....
          MS. BALE:  You just have to -- you have to have someone
  on the council who's dedicated to keeping the site updated. 
          MR. YORKE:  Absolutely.  Absolutely. 
          MS. BALE:  Otherwise it becomes flat and.....
          MR. YORKE:  And what Tom's talking about, we do that
  often.  The problem is, is when we do it too often, then people
  just go, there you go, you got it all.  They're not interested.
          MS. BALE:  Here's a picture of my new cat, you mean? 
  That kind of stuff?  No, that's the Facebook too-often use. 
  Here's my cat riding in this outfit with me, you know. 
          MS. GIBERT:  So we might actually want to create a
  little working group to maybe deal with this outreach issue,
  just literally what's the -- just brainstorm ideas for getting
  a -- not just brainstorm, but actually start to develop a plan
  for outreach.  I think that's really -- it would be really
  helpful.  
          MR. SASSARA:  Yeah, that's sort of the next progression
  of it, isn't it?  Because you figure out what you can do and
  then try to communicate it to those who would be affected.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Yeah, the trick is trying to come up
  with the right language for an audience that isn't as familiar
  as this group. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, that's right. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  And that will take some work.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MR. GEORGE:  That's right. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Right.  Right.  
          MS. BALE:  Messaging they call it, right? 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  But at the very least, I mean, if we
  can -- even in this current printing if we can say there's best
  practices for Denali, see this Web site, and then that Web site
  can be updated, is great.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MS. RUST:  Joan, I think as -- just in general terms, I
  think that that outreach component, I think we really should
  spend time on it.  I mean, we should develop our message, but I
  think it's really important to think of the different ways. 
  Because I think as pilots, the idea of somebody grabbing a
  little book as they're, you know, tooling along somewhere, that
  they need to be thinking ahead, oh, I'm going to go up to
  Denali, you know, I remember, there's a Web site I can go to
  and I can get help, or I can -- so that they know that this is
  a different environment, you know, and that it's on their radar
  as such.  So I do think that that's something we really
  should -- that might -- that should be a focus.
          MR. SASSARA:  There's a question of -- like Tom or
  Erika or any of the -- you know, the private pilot perspective
  is if you're going someplace new, what do you look at?  I mean,
  because, you know, it's a conversation that we have about going
  in the mountains, you know, how the information is
  dessiminated, you know, guidebooks and stuff.  What do you do? 
  I mean, what's the first thing you look at?  I'm going
  someplace new.  What do you do?  I mean, don't answer it for
  his peers, but what would you do.....
          MR. GEORGE:  If it's an airport -- I mean, typically
  the place you're going is an airport, and that's where you
  would, in Alaska, use the salmon-colored Alaska supplement to
  look up information on the.....
          MR. SASSARA:  But if going to, like, a place.
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, this is where this is a different
  challenge, because there isn't a well-developed infrastructure
  that I'm aware of for going to a place or an area. 
          MR. SASSARA:  Like I'm flying.....
          MR. GEORGE:  The system is designed to go from one
  place you took off to a place you're going to land, and
  there's -- and, of course, you study a flight chart to look at
  the route in between. 
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.  
          MR. GEORGE:  But the kind of thing that we're talking
  about here, especially this Denali map, is that is not part of
  the standard aviation infrastructure.
          MR. SASSARA:  Okay.  But you're -- as an individual,
  you know, like an aircraft tourist, if you will, what do you
  look at?
          MS. BALE:  Let's say you're going to go to the
  Juneau.....
          MR. GEORGE:  I'm going to Nome, I look at the
  supplement to find out what kind of landing facilities are
  available in Nome and what radio frequencies I use to talk to
  there, and I look at the sectional map, you know, the flight
  charts, to figure out the route I'm going to go, and where
  there might be challenges along that route.  Since I'm talking
  about in a VFR world.  
          If I'm in an IFR world, actually it's even a different
  set of documents that are probably less informative in terms of
  things like on the land.  I mean, this has to do with lines and
  space and altitudes, because it assumes you're not bothering to
  look out the window, you're flying relative to the instruments
  in the airplane as your primary way of operating.
          MR. SASSARA:  Well.....
          MS. BENNETT:  Well, I think I've got an answer.  This
  fall, I plan on going to a place called Baultoff Creek in the
  Wrangells. 
          MR. SASSARA:  Okay.  
          MS. BENNETT:  Never been there.  
          MR. SASSARA:  Okay.  
          MS. BENNETT:  There's kind of sort of a landing strip
  there.  The first thing I did was Google it.  Is there any
  information out there, has anybody else been here, has anyone
  written about it? 
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.  
          MS. BENNETT:  Got a couple hits, read a little bit of
  information about sheep hunters.  Got on Google Earth, found
  out -- actually flew to the spot on Google Earth, sort of saw
  it, got an idea of what the terrain was like.  So I just went
  out and started picking things out of cyberspace, basically,
  and started asking.  I went to Wrangell Mountain and.....
          MR. SASSARA:  To orient yourself, yeah.
          MS. BENNETT:  Yeah.  And so we wound up never going
  because the weather that week wasn't very good, but we felt
  like we had enough information to get us there and get us on
  the ground.  But so if -- let's say if somebody is going to go
  to Denali National Park, they might -- instead of looking at a
  supplement, they might just, say, type in, let's say, "flying
  Denali National Park" and see what comes up and what's relevant
  to that.
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.  That's why I was going with the
  question, because it's -- and, you know, which is -- you're
  coming from another generation, Tom, I think, with the
  discipline this is how aviation.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, the technical approach.
          MR. SASSARA:  Yeah, exactly.  But the information is
  broader in how we -- I'm sorry for that diversion, but I was
  just curious. 
          MS. BENNETT:  I had a feeling that's what you were
  looking for.  It's like, well, okay, I'm going to this spot.
          MR. SASSARA:  How do you do it?
          MS. BENNETT:  I mean, it's not an airport.  How do we
  find out information?
          MR. OKONEK:  Is this Denali map that's printed, is it
  on the flight charts?  Does it say that this map -- there's a
  supplement?  No?
          LT. COL. BABOS:  On the sectional, is that even -- is
  there a reference to it?  I mean, you can -- if we're going to
  look at the sectional, but does the sectional even reference
  this additional publication?
          MS. BENNETT:  No. 
          MR. GEORGE:  I don't believe it does. 
          LT. COL. BABOS:  So then any pilot can.....  
          MR. YORKE:  The sectionals are not printed by the FAA. 
  We don't do the print of that. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Oh, actually they are printed by the FAA
  now. 
          MR. YORKE:  They are?
          MR. GEORGE:  Yep. 
          MR. YORKE:  Really? 
          MS. BENNETT:  Oh, dear.
          MR. GEORGE:  Sorry.  I knew it was all very confusing. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Erika, can you at any point Google
  Wrangell St. Elias, like go to a national park service.....
          MS. BENNETT:  A lot of our information actually will
  get sent back -- it will come back up as being information from
  an NPS site.
          MS. VALENTINE:  Oh, okay. 
          MS. BENNETT:  Yeah.  
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  Because I'm wondering -- and I
  just shared with Paul, it was like maybe we, on our parks home
  page, have an aviation-specific.....
          MR. GEORGE:  You have one now. 
          MS. BENNETT:  Is there a password for this building? 
  Can I get in?
          MR. GEORGE:  She wants to get on your wireless
  Internet.  Or do you have to tell her?
          MS. VALENTINE:  Well, you can go in as a guest if you
  can't -- oh, no.  I don't know, here in this room can you get
  wireless?
          MS. BALE:  Tim knows, I think.
          MS. HOMAN:  Have wireless research.
          MS. VALENTINE:  Oh, Paula knows it.  Research. 
          MR. GEORGE:  And, madam chair, do you think it would be
  appropriate to have a five-minute.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, let's take a five-minute break right
  now. 
          (Off record)
          (On record) 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  Brian has a proposal to offer, and
  I'm thinking we might want to either identify a work group to
  talk about outreach more, or if we wrap up our meeting early
  enough today, maybe we can just do a little more discussion
  about it.  I don't want to spend too much more time on the
  outreach piece, even though it's obviously really important and
  I want to keep moving on it, so -- and then Paul had -- he's
  here.  So I was thinking maybe we could quickly let Paul do his
  own introductory remarks and then go to Brian, and then Mike
  had something to add, too.
          MR. YORKE:  I just had one thing to add, and actually
  kind of catch you up there.  I talked to Roger Motsko, runway
  safety, but I can't seem to get a hold of, but anyhow, he said
  if you get your best practices to him by September 20th, he
  could have them printed at the end of the month and in the
  publication.  I would encourage that to be done and maybe
  that's a committee thing as opposed to a council thing.
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  September 20th. 
          MR. YORKE:  Yep.  And he would -- he's reserved room at
  this point, Brian, and maybe it should be the outreach group to
  decide how those are done.  He's reserved a spot right next to
  the chart so that it could fall in line there.
          MR. OKONEK:  And how do we get a hold of him?
          MR. YORKE:  I can get you his phone number, or if you
  get me the best practices by the 20th, we will get them in
  there.  He has to -- you don't have to completely format them,
  but how you'd kind of like them to look.  And if we format them
  to get them in that publication and that will.....
          MR. OKONEK:  And we can get you at -- how's the e-mail
  work?
          MS. GIBERT:  His e-mail address is in that.....
          MR. YORKE:  It should be on the links. 
          MR. OKONEK:  At faa.gov? 
          MR. YORKE:  Yep. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MR. YORKE:  And I'll get it to you personally, but if
  anybody cares, it's Mike, M-i-k-e, dot Yorke, Y-o-r-k-e, at
  faa.gov.
          MR. OKONEK:  Okay.  
          MS. GIBERT:  And he's been copied on the last couple of
  e-mails from me. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Okay.  
          MS. GIBERT:  So you've got it in your systems. 
          MR. YORKE:  Thank you for the time this afternoon. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  Okay.  Great.  Thank you.  So,
  Paul, do you want to go next?
          MR. ANDERSON:  Okay.  Sure.  I'll be quick.  Well, I
  just want to thank everybody for taking the time and the effort
  to be here.  I know that there's other things that you could be
  doing instead of sitting here in Denali in the meeting room
  when the weather is.....
          MR. GEORGE:  The nicest day we've had. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Yeah, exactly.  So thanks for that. 
  Just a couple of thoughts.  You know, this is, what, the fourth
  or fifth meeting?
          MS. VALENTINE:  Eighth.  
          MR. ANDERSON:  Oh, yeah, okay.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Maybe that you've been to. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Where did they all go?   Well, it's
  about the fourth year that we've been meeting.  And I know
  sometimes people get frustrated that things don't happen very
  quickly, and perhaps if we'd put some big things on the table,
  like closing the McKinley strip or limiting the glacier
  landings or limiting overflights in some manner or another over
  the park, that we might have had faster and more -- what would
  you call it?
          MR. SASSARA:  Spirited.
          MR. ANDERSON:  Spirited.  Spirited action.  And so I
  would say that, in fact, you know, I -- as people know, I sit
  the on National Air Tour Management Plan Advisory Council, and
  in those cases, you know, they're doing things from eliminating
  or prohibiting overflights over national -- over entire parks,
  zero overflights, for example, over Rocky Mountain National
  Park, to severely limiting overflights over parks to trying to
  manage the overflights that they have over parks today.  
          And, in fact, quite frankly, short of the legislative
  prohibition on overflights, that group has been working for 10
  years under a legislative mandate to write air tour advisory --
  air tour management plans for each of the parks that has
  aircraft overflights has not yet produced one plan, not one. 
          There's about 15 in progress, and, you know, Grand
  Canyon's air tour management plan may be one of the first that
  is produced, and that EIS is either out -- I think it may be
  out right now, the Draft EIS is out for comment; is that right?
          MS. HOMAN:  I think it's soon. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Pardon? 
          MS. HOMAN:  I think comes out real soon.
          MR. ANDERSON:  Okay.  But, you know, quite frankly, the
  Grand Canyon was working on air tour management issues when I
  worked there, and I hate to tell you how many tens of years ago
  that was, but it was close to 30 years ago.  So it's not a
  fast-moving process, and it's -- you know, there's various ways
  to go about it.  I mean, obviously, in Rocky Mountain, the
  community got together and said we don't want any air tours
  over the park, and were able to get a legislative prohibition. 
  That's one way to go. 
          The air tour management plans, hopefully, will help us
  work together in providing for the needs of visitors, the needs
  of the industry, as well as for protection of park resources. 
  And, quite frankly, the reason that we're not making progress
  on air tour management plans is because of a dispute between
  the FAA and the National Park Service over who has the
  authority to determine what an impact is.  And FAA thinks that
  they should have that authority.  
          There's a bill in Congress right now that's part of the
  FAA Reauthorization Bill that will clarify that relationship,
  and, if you will, charge the park service and the FAA with
  specific responsibilities and actions to resolve that issue,
  and hopefully to move forward on accomplishing these air tour
  management plans in a timely fashion. 
          Short of that, quite frankly, it won't happen.  I
  really don't believe it will happen.  We have not been able to
  work cooperatively with the FAA at that level to follow the
  requirements of law to get a cooperative management plan for
  air tours in parks.  It doesn't mean we won't keep trying, but
  that's what we're facing.  
          So when we sit up and think about that, it puts what
  we're doing here into a certain perspective.  I walked in --
  and I apologize, I haven't been to the last two meetings,
  that's a fact.  Phillip and Owa (ph) did go to those meetings. 
          MS. GIBERT:  That's okay.  That's okay. 
          MS. BALE:  No, it was great, we like them, too.
          MR. ANDERSON:  Well, you know, I could quit coming and
  you could make even more progress because that seems to be what
  happens.  Anyway, the point is this: that you guys have come
  together and proposed some practices, and not only proposed
  them, but gone out on the ground and evaluated them, and now
  are talking about how do we communicate those, quote, best
  practices to the public?  
          You know what, in every park in the entire National
  Park system, under a legislative mandate to do air tour
  management plans, nobody has done what you've done.  Nobody. 
  And so when you think, well, jeez, it isn't happening very
  fast, or we're not doing very much, well, you know what, nobody
  else is doing anything.  As hard as they're trying, they
  haven't produced a thing.  They haven't made any significant
  forward progress in terms of a product.  And yet the way that
  you guys are structured and the way that people are
  participating in this group, even though it's painful, very
  painful for some, maybe so for everybody, the fact is there's
  positive things coming out of here. 
          I mean, to listen to John today say -- read the
  ranger's journal that says, you know, it may not be perfect,
  but it's the best it's been since I've been here, that's pretty
  significant.  And, you know, the question was, well, Colby, how
  do you propose to deal with this operator who decides they're
  going to find this niche that we've left open and exploit it? 
  The fact is we can't; we don't have the authority to do
  anything about that.  
          And when the air tour management plan legislation --
  when the roles of FAA and park service are defined in
  legislation, we still won't have the authority to do anything
  about it, because it belongs to the FAA.  And can the FAA deal
  with it?  They may not be able to deal with it specifically
  either.  Because it's not really, in that context, a safety
  issue. 
          The operators themselves may be the most effective way
  to go about dealing with those things.  And so we do have to
  work together to be able to make progress, and to have the kind
  of an environment that we have here where people know each
  other, where we can talk to each other candidly, where we can
  share our concerns and our criticisms and our gigs once in a
  while, and people understand that, you know, if you get gigged
  today, you're going to be able to can gig somebody some -- you
  know, tomorrow.  I mean, that's just the way it works.  We're
  all doing the best we can, we're all human, we're all faced
  with a shortage of resources and authorities to get the job
  done, but we're all committed to a better place, and, you know,
  to protecting Denali and the resources and values that this
  park represents. ^C^C
          And I think that's the strength of this group.  And
  perhaps as we move forward here and gain more traction, if you
  will, with these best practices and start, you know, getting
  them out there and to the public, that we'll find that it's --
  that we can take on more things, other things that we haven't
  taken on in the past and come to some, you know, good
  consensus-based solutions that we can help improve the
  condition of the resource or the condition of the visitor
  experience out there at the park. 
          You know, I don't anticipate that Denali or the other
  parks in Alaska in the near-term future are going to have a
  legislative requirement for an air tour management plan.  But,
  quite frankly, if we did, you know, it would be a group like
  this that I would hope would be the group that put that plan
  together.  And I think this group could do it, you know, given
  those guidelines and direction.  I think this group could do
  it.  And I think we -- if we were in that position -- I'm not
  suggesting that's what I want us to do.  If we were in that
  position, I think we could be the first park in the system that
  had an air tour management plan, even without the legislation. 
  I'm that hopeful and impressed with what you guys are doing.  
          So, like I said, I was going to keep it short.  I guess
  I better quit there.  Anyway, thank you for being here, and I'm
  looking forward to the rest of the meeting, because the first
  part's been pretty exciting. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  Thank you, Paul.  The one thing I
  wanted to add to that is that this group is so much more than
  just formal recommendations.  I mean, it's just amazing that
  there is so much stuff that goes along here, and with dialogue
  and, you know, just the whole thing, like with the information
  on the Web site, we don't have any recommendations about, you
  know, thou shalt not advertise footprints or wildlife.  You
  know, we've not talked about that, we've not felt the need to
  make that a recommendation, it isn't a recommendation.  It's
  just something that people are beginning to be more sensitive
  to and are just doing.  And that's not reflected anywhere in
  writing, but it's really valuable, and it's the stuff that --
  that's what makes this group work really well, 
          So anyway I think that's part of it, is just -- because
  it's informal and because it's a good -- you know, a good mix
  of interests, I think it's working.  I agree it's working well. 
  Even though it seems slow, I think it kind of needs to be slow,
  and, you know, I think it's going well.  So anyway, I'm looking
  forward to the rest of the meeting also. 
          So with that, you had a.....
          MR. OKONEK:  I got a quick -- yeah, I got a question
  for Mike first.  On the aircraft charts, when those are next
  printed for the area that includes, you know, the Alaska Range,
  the part where Denali National Park is, can there be a footnote
  put on there that this map is available?  So that people that
  just have the chart know that that map is something that's
  available out there?
          MR. YORKE:  That's a real good idea. 
          MS. FRANKENVICH:  You have that -- were you intending
  to do that? 
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  I'm talking about the.....
          MR. YORKE:  That's a real good idea.  Do you happen to
  have the Anchorage -- their sectional?
          MR. GEORGE:  There is.....
          MR. YORKE:  The reason is, I'm thinking, if you notice
  on the Chugach it says -- and I'm getting a little off the
  subject, but this may give you some confidence, Brian.  On the
  Chugach it says, Chugach National Park, don't drop objects in
  the park, and I think it says contact this or that. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Okay.   
          MR. GEORGE:  Let me read what the margin note -- or the
  note on the chart -- this is a sectional aeronautical chart. 
  Pilots should monitor 122.75 north and 123.65 south - those are
  radio frequencies - in the vicinity of Denali National Park and
  Preserve.  See operations note in margin of chart for further
  information.  
          And then at the very bottom of the chart, there is
  another note:  Flight advisory for Denali National Park/
  Preserve Wilderness Areas and Denali massive.  Heavy fixed wing
  and helicopter activity over Denali National Park and Preserve
  wilderness area and Denali massive surface to 16,000 feet. 
  Okay.  Well, they got most of it.  Operations 24 hour daily. 
  Aircraft operating in the vicinity -- and it kind of repeats
  what it said before, and then it says positional reports should
  be given, and it gives a format. 
          So there is a margin note.  It does not make reference
  to a specific chart, and so I think that's what we should look
  at, as to whether we can modify that margin note to reference
  this and a Web site.
          MR. YORKE:  I think it's a great idea. 
          MR. OKONEK:  And then once they get to that, you know,
  they'll be able to reference best practices.  It will be a
  chain of communication links that will really help.
          MR. GEORGE:  And we might sit down later, because
  actually I'd like to see if we couldn't get a few words that
  actually appeared on the chart itself to at least hint at a map
  or something, because, like I say, going -- it took Erika and I
  a few minutes to go find which of the many margin notes that
  referred to.  So the sooner we can get planted in peoples'
  minds that there might be another chart to look at, the better
  off I think we are.
          MR. OKONEK:  And I think it's very important, not only
  for this best practices, but safety concerns, because there's a
  lot of information on that map that the general aviator needs
  to know before they go into a congested airspace like that with
  all the other scenics going here and there.  
          And then the other thought I had, I think this outreach
  subcommittee is a really good idea.  If we can't do it at --
  you know, here at this council meeting, to work on spreading
  the word for best practices, and I would like to recommend when
  we come up with the best practices wording we want to send out
  to other commercial operators that this Denali map also be sent
  along with that information so that.....
          MS. GIBERT:  That's right up my alley.
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  So that they have -- they've got
  the information right there.  You know, they've got the best
  practices, they've got the map, and then they just have more
  information to give to their pilots and crews and whatnot.
          MS. BENNETT:  When I went online and just typed in
  "flying in Denali National Park," the park service did pop up,
  like the third or fourth hit, and it took two clicks to get to
  the aviation page.  Just for the average individual. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Which isn't bad.  However, whoever your
  Web folks are, may be able to put some more indexing words on
  the specific aviation page to have it go there on the first
  click, which would be better. 
          MS. BENNETT:  Yeah.  
          MR. OKONEK:  Was that a map?
          MS. BENNETT:  The map is in there, best practices
  aren't.  But that would be easy -- that would be fairly easy to
  add. 
          MR. YORKE:  Yeah, Brian, maybe to give you a little
  comfort here, Deshka River, South Central Alaska, a big area
  for kind salmon fishing.  Here's a note right on the chart for
  everybody to see, and it's in a blue box.  Deshka River
  recreation area extensive use May 15 through July 15, see tab
  frequency 22(9).  That wasn't there three or four years ago. 
  Here's one from -- pilots are requested to avoid flight between
  1,000 feet April 15th to May 31st, and September 1 through
  October 31st due to the large migratory waterfowl issues. 
  We've got one out there for MOAs on -- for the colonel here.  
          MR. OKONEK:  Very good. 
          MR. YORKE:  Military operation areas.  So, yeah,
  without a doubt, I think some verbiage should be developed and
  put on the one where Erika and Tom said this is where we start,
  and as Greg is saying here, you know, maybe it will get you to
  think of something else.  And that's a -- I think it's great. 
          MR. LAHAIE:  There used to be a little box that said,
  park -- there's a park boundary blue dot that goes around the
  park.  It used to be on there.  I don't know if it is anymore. 
  And it says, park service requests 2,000 feet AGL.
          MR. GEORGE:  And that's still there, too.  
          MR. LAHAIE:  Okay.  And that would be a great -- see
  best practices, here's the Web site.  For best practices, go
  and guide them to the Web site.  
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah, excellent. 
          MR. GEORGE:  So we're going to need to sit down and go
  over the chart and catch wherever -- you know, a number of
  different places.  Now, we can say that.  I've dealt with a few
  other charting issues in the past.  Charting is five agencies
  that all have to agree because these charts aren't just used by
  civil pilots, they're used by other folks.  So just because we
  think something, they have actually a set of standards, so stay
  tuned; this may take more than one pass to make changes.  In
  other words, they don't just take random changes willy-nilly. 
  It's much more -- you think this is a structured group, you
  ain't seen nothing yet. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  And is that true for this one, too,
  or.....
          MR. GEORGE:  No.  No.  This is put out by the park
  service, and this is much easier to change, and we know who
  does that. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  I notice that this was just reprinted,
  so I assume there's probably a lot of these.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Yes.  
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  .....already printed in boxes? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yes.  
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Because maybe something we could do,
  then, is print a sticker, you know, recommend you look at best
  practices, see this Web site, and put them on the map set.
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, but this is where we need even a
  little more coordination, because it's maybe unfortunate as
  many of those were printed as were at the time because I think
  we do have more information we'd like to add now to get to
  that.  So this is where we really need a little better
  coordination because the FAA is the one that's been actually
  doing the printing.  The park service has generated the map, as
  I understand it, and the FAA has done the printing.  
          So, again, if we can get a little more coordination,
  and now with Mike on board, I think he can help facilitate
  that.  Because, to me, I think we should actually kind of
  shrink printing sizes and -- in order to allow more frequent
  updates.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  You have to have changes.
          MR. GEORGE:  .....rather than, gee, that -- because the
  last one was, like, 10 years before it was reprinted.  And it
  will be a shame to do the same thing.  And that's, again, where
  I'm looking at.  If they're thinking of -- you know, they're
  going to print that lock, stock, and barrel in this bigger
  publication you're talking about, we'd really like to have a
  look at that and see if we maybe couldn't get a little more
  information in there, but we've got to coordinate with the park
  service on that. 
          So, again, all these are great ideas, but it's a
  multiple-agency thing.  We've got to work it through all those
  systems, and that thing takes time, so.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          LT. COL. BABOS:  Brian, just -- obviously the military
  works really hard on trying to get our word out about military
  flying, and Tom George -- you know, Tom and I work very
  closely.  The military, just right now, we have two pamphlets
  that we put out, and we publish 10,000 of these every year. 
  And obviously we have a little bit more resources, we have an
  obligation to the public to make them aware of military flying. 
  And some people say we do a really good job of getting the word
  out, and then other people say we do a lousy job of getting it. 
  And we try very hard, and that's why we work with Tom and other
  aviation -- Airmen's Association. 
          But these are just two additional pamphlets that
  aviator GA pilots should pick up if they're going to be flying
  near military airspace, which anyone basically in the greater,
  you know, bowl between Anchorage and Fairbanks are going to be
  military flying.  We put 10,000 of these out, we send in the
  mail to, I think, currently about 180 people or organizations
  on their request, either 10, 20, 30 to put out at airports to
  try to get the word out, and we have Web pages on this. 
          Another booklet that we put out, again, which is
  required by regu -- we actually have a midair collision
  pamphlet that's put out that's available electronically.  The
  Web page is on the back.  Inside this thing we have links that
  actually are listed links that go to the FAA Web page that's
  helped other people out.  
          But I asked our webmaster, I said, how many people can
  you tell have accessed this online?  And unfortunately it's a
  multilink thing, but he said that they probably average less
  than 500 hits a year from outside people trying to pull up this
  electronic booklet, which has, actually, pictures of -- I
  talked to the other ranger there.  It actually has pictures of
  military aircraft.  I showed it to the ranger, I said, what is
  that?  He goes, that's a Navajo.  I go, no, that's a King Air.
          Okay.  And, you know, you just see that picture right
  there, you can see -- and actually, in this booklet, it's got
  diagrams of what an airplane looks like at a certain mile.  You
  guys can't see this, but at 10 miles it looks like that, at two
  miles it looks like that.  So he asked if he can get some
  copies of this, and I'll try to get him some. 
          But we, the military, suffer greatly, and we try to
  work about trying to get information out, and, you know, I
  don't know how many of these 10,000 actually get into the hands
  of people.  Tom goes up to Fairbanks and says, hey, did you
  guys fly through the military airspace?  And they go, yeah, but
  we didn't even know that there was pamphlets out there.  So
  we're still not reaching everybody that we should.  
          But, again, if they're not interested in trying to find
  it, it's hard to -- you can only push their head in the water
  so much.  So, I mean, I'll be happy to work with you, Brian, to
  work on outreach because the military, by, you know,
  definition, have a responsibility to do that to the max extent
  possible.  And we actually have public relation offices that
  are fully staffed and that's their job, but it's a constant
  battle, as Tom knows, to get the word out to people.  And if
  they're not willing to look, it's really hard to push them. 
  But I'll be more than happy to help you with that.  So just
  some side anecdotes that people are trying to push information
  out.
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, that's challenging. 
          LT. COL. BABOS:  Yeah.  
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  I think Tom had a great, you know,
  suggestion, you post them at where people fuel or wherever they
  access airports, that kind of thing that they're going to see
  regardless and at least let them know they're available.
          LT. COL. BABOS:  Yep.
          MS. RUST:  At least bringing an awareness to the -- you
  should be thinking about this.  But I think people -- some
  people don't even -- they don't think, stop and think about
  what, you know, plan they need to have. 
          MR. LAHAIE:  But I think having it on the -- you have
  to look at what resources -- you know, Charlie brought up a
  good point.  If you're a pilot planning a trip, what do you
  look at?  What are you required to look at?  Where do you most
  likely look at?  Well, if it's not on that map, chances are
  most people aren't going to dig any further.  I think just a
  little box on that map, though, it will raise huge awareness of
  it.
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  So at the -- maybe toward the end
  of day, like around -- if we can get far enough along by, say,
  4:00 or, you know, 4:15, we can either decide to set up a work
  group to work on this more or just talk about it until the end
  of the day.  So I think we need to move on.  But, yeah, there's
  a lot of good stuff here.  Okay.  Great.  It is now noon.  
          So this is probably a good time to take a break.  I was
  going to just -- just a quick public opportunity, public
  comment opportunity now if anybody has anything they want to
  add.  (Pause)  Okay.  So when should we get back together?  I
  guess the options for eating, probably the easiest thing is
  across over at the visitor access center.  Is that still open? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Uh-huh.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, okay.  Back at -- is 1:00 too soon?
          MS. FRANKENVICH:  No.  
          MS. GIBERT:  No?  Okay.
          MR. GEORGE:  Let's go for it. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  1:00.
          (Off record)
          (On record)
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  So we're back in business.  I think
  we're going to start with our remaining park service staff
  reports, starting off with Jared, who I think you most -- most
  of you now know is leaving us, and.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Did we vote on that?
          MS. GIBERT:  No, we didn't.  And that's a problem. 
  Anyway, so he's going to give his sound monitoring report.  And
  I also asked him to -- because he was leaving, to share any
  observations or anecdotes or anything -- any, I don't know,
  recommendations, for lack of a better word, I don't know.  I'm
  not even -- it was open ended that if he's leaving, he's got a
  lot of stuff in his head, and if there's stuff that is in his
  head that would be helpful for us to know before he departs
  rather than trying to figure out us asking what questions to
  ask him, to have him answer questions that he would like us to
  ask him.  So did I say that right?  Anyway.....
          MR. GEORGE:  There's an opportunity you don't get very
  often. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, really.  So go for it. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Do you need the lens cap off? 
          MR. WITHERS:  Yeah, yeah.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  Yeah, quick before Paul's here. 
  And hopefully you can join us tonight for dinner at -- or any
  of the rest of you, for that matter, if you would like to
  further chat. 
          MR. WITHERS:  I would love to.  All right.  Can
  everybody see that?  It's a little bit reflective and a little
  bit small. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Do you want me to cut the lights? 
          MS. BALE:  Cutting the lights is a good thing. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  That would be great.  Thank you, Mike. 
          MR. YORKE:  You betcha. 
          MR. WITHERS:  So all faces are familiar in the room, so
  I'll kind of skip over the background of the sound program.  I
  try to repeat a little bit of that for newer people, but
  everybody here is familiar to me, so -- unless there's anyone
  that wants some details about the program in general, I'll skip
  ahead to the new stuff.  
          All righty.  So take a deep breath, it hasn't been
  mentioned yet today, Backcountry Management Plan.
          MR. GEORGE:  Could you try sharpening that focus ever
  so slightly.  Erika, can you just see if you can sharpen that. 
  I mean, maybe it's my glasses.  
          MS. BALE:  That looks a little better. 
          MR. GEORGE:  That's better. 
          MR. WITHERS:  A little better. 
          MR. GEORGE:  That's probably as good as it gets. 
          MR. WITHERS:  All right.  I made -- I actually made
  printouts of these, but I left them on my desk.  So I do have
  electronic copies on a little thumb drive if anybody is
  interested in seeing all the small numbers. 
          These maps are meant to be kind of a quick look
  overview of how the different sites we've measured across the
  park measure up to the Backcountry Management Plan indicators
  and standards.  They're kind of color-coded for how frequently
  they exceed the standard as we measured them.  There's one map
  for each standard.  
          This map number 1 is for the percentage of time
  audible.  Actually it's for the percent of time audible
  indicator.  And so the standard in the Backcountry Management
  Plan is that indicator.  For the different zones shown on the
  map are 5 percent, 15, 25, and 50.  So what's new for you guys
  here is the 2009 data is now part of these maps.  The last ones
  you saw were only up through 2008.  So these have been updated
  over the winter.  
          And the 2009 sites that are new are this -- we had a
  lot in the Minchumina Basin in 2009.  It was -- you know, it's
  a random sampling, and it just randomly happened to have a
  little bit of clustering on the Minchumina Basin.  So we have
  this guy here, which is very close to the geographic center of
  Alaska, so it's name is Center Alaska.  I can see the numbers a
  little better than you can.  That one exceeded the standard
  23 percent of the time, which is a fairly low level of
  exceedance compared to most of the other points.  
          We saw, as you'll see in some upcoming figures, a
  fairly regular traffic pattern there.  I think it -- I'd
  speculate that it was relative to traffic in and out of
  Minchumina, which I think operates on a fairly regular
  schedule.  Anything from Healy to Minchumina probably would
  have been audible to that site. 
          This one here also was exceeded 18 percent of the time,
  so a little -- these have the same standard between the two of
  them, so this one saw a lower amount of aircraft audible.  They
  were measured at same time of year, during the summertime.  
          This here is Castle Rocks area.  It's a pretty
  recognizable area from a distance.  That one had a pretty low
  level of activity, a 7 percent of exceedance.  So that one's
  just kind of barely in the yellow and almost green.  And then
  also this one here, this was kind of a back-up.  We had
  originally planned to sample on the north boundary at the
  Kantishna River, but there was a big fire there right in the
  center of the sampling spot that summer, so we've moved that
  one down here in 2009 and sampled this site instead.  
          COURT REPORTER:  Instead of saying "here," would you
  actually name those so we can get our minutes accurate. 
          MR. WITHERS:  All right.  So we moved Kantishna River
  down to what we're calling Heron River.  It's just off the
  Heron River.  And that site also experienced fairly low levels
  of activity, exceedance 8 percent of the time.  So by and large
  within the standards, small levels of exceedances at those. 
          This site, which is on Highpower Creek just inside the
  wilderness boundary, has the lowest amount of traffic of any
  site we've measured so far.  And that one was -- that's just to
  put it in a little bit of perspective for you.  That was
  measured in 2008.  That one is a 1 percent.  
          We measured Triple Lakes, which you guys have talked a
  lot about, in 2009, and so it's a good thing you're talking a
  lot about it.  This kind of confirms that it's worthy of your
  discussion, I think.  It is officially the highest level of
  traffic, aircraft traffic, anywhere in the park that we've
  measured, including right on the mountain.  Which surprised me. 
  Joe VanHorn was always saying Triple Lakes, Triple Lakes, it
  was -- and I said, oh, you just live in McKinley Village, you
  think it's loud.  But it is.  It's got -- I mean, it's close to
  an airport, there are a couple major aviation thoroughfares
  through there, so possibly not to your surprise, but a little
  bit to my surprise that it has a pretty high amount of volume.
          MS. BALE:  Jared? 
          MR. WITHERS:  Yeah.  
          MS. BALE:  When you did listening of the actual sound
  tape, did you hear the highway?
          MR. WITHERS:  No.  
          MS. BALE:  Thank you.
          MR. WITHERS:  And I think one of the reasons this site
  happens to measure so loud is it has a lot of traffic volume,
  but it also is a pretty secluded site.  It's kind of stuck down
  in between these two ridges.  It doesn't get a lot of high
  winds like some other places, so there's not very many other
  sounds that are masking, you know, aircraft sounds or other
  human-made sounds that are occurring in that area.  So it's a
  pretty sterile environment, so we're hearing things from
  farther away than we would in other places.  It's kind of a
  double whammy.
          MR. GEORGE:  Before you leave this slide, Jared, your
  comment about the Minchumina, the traffic you're measuring
  there probably isn't necessarily Healy to Minchumina, it's
  Fairbanks to McGrath that.....
          MR. WITHERS:  Oh, really? 
          MR. GEORGE:  .....again, that's an IFR airway, and a
  very commonly used route with a lot of traffic.  So, again,
  you're -- just like you're measuring probably over here at
  Triple Lakes, a lot of that traffic is not directly associated
  with the park; it's a byproduct of the pass through the Alaska
  Range.  I mean, a similar thing is probably true for that 
  Minchumina site, just as an observation.
          MR. WITHERS:  Okay.  That one was in the red at 65
  percent.  And the last, I believe -- no, there's two more. 
  This site is Upper Traleika Glacier.  I had high hopes for that
  one.  It's kind of exactly on the other side of the mountain
  from Kahiltna Pass.  And I'm reluctant to report on it because
  we had such a short data set.  The equipment only collected
  data for three days, so that one shouldn't be taken as a
  comprehensive profile for that site.  And I know from being
  there to set it up that the weather was pretty good at that
  time.  So that could be taken as a measurement of what the
  conditions at that site would be for just flying weather.
          MR. GEORGE:  That period of time, yeah.
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  Do you know what elevation that was on
  on the Traleika?  Was it set down on the glacier itself, or was
  it.....
          MR. WITHERS:  Yeah, it was down on the glacier right
  the headwall.  I think it was 8,500 feet.
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  Yeah, that's pretty high. 
          MS. BALE:  You know, for -- it's interesting to see how
  the very busy south side has fairly low exceedance levels so
  far because the park service recognized that that would be a
  place that would have motorized noise, and so they dialed up
  the standards in the backcountry plan, so.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, you definitely have to look at the
  two together, yeah.  
          MS. BALE:  Yeah, and so, you know, what happens is, you
  traverse from a red zone into an OP-1 or OP-2, I forget. 
  Anyway, you traverse from a high tolerance right at that
  boundary on the Upper Kahiltna to the low-sound tolerances in
  the wilderness part, so you immediately get exceedance there,
  which is what we're working on, I guess. 
          MR. WITHERS:  So the other two are this green one here,
  which is just barely inside the very high corridor.  And there
  was, you know, significant levels of activity there, but they
  were all under the standard. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Where is that? 
          MR. WITHERS:  That's Upper Traleika -- or no, Upper
  Tokositna.
          MS. BALE:  Tokositna.
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  On the glacier itself?
          MR. WITHERS:  Yes.  So moving along, this is standard
  number 2, scary standard number 2.  So what we're gleaning from
  this one, what I think or what I'm gleaning from this is that
  almost every site that's in the low-standard zone is in
  exceedance almost 100 percent of the time.  And I think, at
  this level of the standard, you know, it loses a little bit of
  its usefulness because I think you have to, at this point, be
  striving for an improvement over anything else.  
          And then it reaffirms, I suppose, that Highpower Creek
  is the quietest site that we've measured, is indeed quieter
  than the others in terms of -- this is number of aircraft per
  day occurring.  And that the very high zone down here is -- the
  conditions there are in line with what the park would desire
  them to be.  So you guys aren't spending a large amount of your
  time scrutinizing that high-impact zone, and that would appear
  to be appropriate. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Jared, in all those -- in the main
  park core, all those red ones, instead of a percent, do you
  have how many flights a day?  Is it, you know, 25?  Is it 55? 
          MR. WITHERS:  Yeah, I do. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Since we're over the standard, it
  becomes useful.
          MR. WITHERS:  Yeah, I know.
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, and so I think the comment which, I
  think, actually we made before is we -- I mean, these are
  useful maps to evaluate the standards, but we actually need a
  second set of maps for your same points here which actually
  give, you know, relative numbers of events or whatever the
  measure is so that we can understand where the noisiest parts
  of the park really are.  I think that's a tool, again, we as a
  committee really need to do our work.
          MR. WITHERS:  We've got -- we're getting to you. 
  There's a figure coming up that will, at least for discussion
  purposes, provide some input.  And then we're going to show you
  a fancy new Web site interface that will let you take as close
  a look at all the data as you would like. 
          MR. GEORGE:  All right.  
          MR. WITHERS:  So, yeah, I'll move to the next one. 
  This is maximum motorized sound pressure levels.  So of those
  events that occur, how loud where they?  The breakpoints are 40
  decibels and 60 decibels.  
          Here we're seeing a little bit more variation across
  the park.  Still some red bubbles, I guess, in the -- these red
  bubbles in this area of, I'd say, more frequent backcountry use
  as far as overnight backpackers are relevant to your
  discussion, I believe, because these standards are well tied to
  physiological effects, I guess, or physiological impacts of a
  noise event.  
          And this 40 and 60 represent -- 40 is the point at
  which, you know, a human -- a sleeping human has a
  physiological response to a noise event, so their heart rate
  increases, they generally stay asleep, they generally won't
  wake up, but your state of sleep is affected.  And then 60
  decibels are of a point at which, you know, you would be woken
  up.  And also the point at which, even in awake humans, it's
  difficult to have a conversation when an event of 60 decibels
  is happening.  So that would relate back to the ranger reports
  of, you know, being at base camp and not being able to speak
  with the person next to you, having to wait for a noise event
  to complete before you can continue speaking.  That would be in
  the 60 decibel range.  That's kind of the break point where
  that would occur.  
          MS. BALE:  Jared, question:  What kind of natural
  ambient sounds in the park would reach 40 decibels, dBAs?
          MR. WITHERS:  Wind, quite frequently; water if you're
  close to a stream would certainly be -- I mean, 40 decibels is,
  I would guess, close to this room, the ambient in this room,
  you know, with the faint road traffic and the ventilation
  system and stuff like that.  So it's quiet, but it's not
  silent.
          MS. RUST:  Well, isn't -- 35 is about -- is quieter
  conversation; is that correct?
          MR. WITHERS:  Yeah, that sounds about right.  It's
  tough -- the generalizations are tough because it all depends
  on how far away from the source you are.
          MS. RUST:  Right.  For sure. 
          MR. WITHERS:  But, yeah, that's in the ballpark.
          MR. CUDNEY:  Tom's got an app for that, I can tell.
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah.  There's an app for that.  This is,
  of course, not a calibrated thing, but.....
          MS. BALE:  Oh, are we -- what's our dBAs?  I can't read
  it.
          MR. GEORGE:  60 -- or well, let me quit speaking a
  minute.  45 to 50 is a background of this room right now, just
  as a reference point.  Yeah, there's an app for that. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  I knew you had that. 
          MR. GEORGE:  I've been using this. 
          MR. WITHERS:  So that's a quick look at these
  exceedance maps.  They're available on the Web site if you'd
  like to take a closer dig into them.  And I know that I'm on my
  way out, but I am available to you guys through the end of
  year, so.....
          MR. CUDNEY:  Tell us about this new site that's
  supposedly -- you had mentioned there's a new site with newer
  data on it earlier?
          MS. BENNETT:  Interface.
          MR. GEORGE:  Interface.  He's coming to that, I'm sure.
          MR. CUDNEY:  Okay.  
          MR. WITHERS:  Coming to it, I think.  I'm not quite
  sure what you're asking, but they seem to be.  What are you
  asking?
          MR. CUDNEY:  Well, earlier on you had mentioned that
  there was going to be new data that was available on the Web
  site.
          MR. WITHERS:  Yeah, we'll get to it. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  Okay.  
          MR. WITHERS:  So moving away from the Backcountry
  Management Plan, these -- just an update on this year's
  activity is what I want to give you.  These are the locations
  we're sampling this year.  Some of them are still out
  collecting data, ready to be picked up pretty soon, probably
  next week.  Some have come back, and some have been analyzed,
  so they're kind of in-process.  It's been a good successful
  year.  We've got good data at every site that we've measured. 
          And I wanted to share with you one that I think that
  will be most interesting to you.  Kahiltna Pass, which we've
  talked a little bit about today already in kind of qualitative
  terms, but I'll be giving you some quantitative indicators of
  what may have -- how the conditions may have changed at
  Kahiltna Pass over the last three or four years. 
          So Kahiltna Pass, the site itself is very close to the
  pass.  It's just on the south side of the actual -- you know,
  the ridge of the saddle of the pass.  In 2007, we measured the
  site from June 21st to July 3rd.  This year we measured it from
  June 14th to June 26th.  So 13 days of data were analyzed from
  each year.  They're slightly overlapping, not exactly the same
  days, but certainly in the same season, as far as the climbing
  season goes and the air touring season goes.  
          Let's see, as you know, it's a pretty major aviation
  thoroughfare, also a lot of climbers in the area.  The Lower
  West Buttress route goes right up through there.  
          John left already, but I wanted to give a big thanks to
  the Denali Mountaineering staff.  A lot of work by a lot of
  people went into placing this equipment, maintaining it.  The
  rangers on their mountaineering patrols checked in on it for me
  and called me on the telephone from 14 camp, and then hauled it
  all off at the end of the season.  So they put in a lot of work
  on this, and this data is definitely in large part due to them.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Is this the site you did last year and
  you only got a few days?
          MR. WITHERS:  No, that was 14 camp. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Oh, okay. 
          MR. WITHERS:  And we redid that one this year and got
  some more data, but it just came back a couple of weeks ago,
  and so it hasn't been analyzed yet.  It was up there stuck in
  the weather for, jeez, like a month and a half, I think, before
  it came down from 17. 
          So a quick look, a comparison between the years, and
  from an audibility standpoint, what I want to point out here
  are just that we had similar levels of wind, both in 2007, it's
  the yellow here, and to 2010 is green.  So similar levels of
  audibility of wind, not wind speed, but how often wind is
  audible.  Very close.  You know, these sites are measuring 23
  or so percent of the time, there's actually silence, nothing is
  audible, not natural sounds, not human sounds, nothing.  And
  they're very similar across the years.  
          It looks like we got a little more weather in the form
  of snow and possibly rain.  It's hard to tell the difference
  sometimes by listening.  A little bit more in 2007 than 2010. 
  And so I guess I should say these values are from the
  audibility analysis, which is actually listening to the
  recordings.  This is a human listener listening to 5 seconds
  every 5 minutes over the 13 days and calculating these
  statistics.  
          It's a little bit more prop noise in 2007 than 2010,
  more people being -- mostly human voices of climbers.  The
  station itself was only 100 or 200 feet from the main -- the
  major climbing -- the route trail that goes up to the top
  there.  So the total aircraft was a little bit more aircraft
  audible in 2007 than 2010, and that's regardless of loudness. 
  That's presence/absence, do you hear an aircraft even if it's
  really faint or really loud?
          So then the following data will have been generated
  from the spectrogram analysis, which is the visual analysis of
  audio data.  And you'll see that it agrees with the audibility
  analysis that I just showed you.  This is an average day for
  both years, so what we're seeing is the 9:00 o'clock hour in
  2007 had quite a bit more time audible.  This is still audible,
  not counts or loudness, than in 2010.  A lot of these two hours
  are very similar.  The 12:00 o'clock hour had more time audible
  in 2010 than 2007.  And pretty close from there on out.  I
  guess the evening hour has got a bit of a difference in it. 
  And so this is average, this is an average for each hour of a
  day.
          MR. YORKE:  When you say aircraft sound, are you
  pulling that off that prop model?  I don't understand why you
  could isolate this to just aircraft.  Is it off the one on the
  far right I saw, the other chart on prop?  How are you
  confirming that this is aircraft sound, per se?
          MR. WITHERS:  Through looking at the spectral signature
  of each acoustic event.  
          MR. YORKE:  Okay.  
          MR. WITHERS:  We can fairly easily identify aircraft
  based on the spectrum.
          MR. YORKE:  Thank you. 
          MR. WITHERS:  These are the number of events per day. 
  So as you can see we didn't get the exact same time window in
  both years, and they overlap a little bit in the middle.  The
  mean number of events per day in 2007 was 39.5; in 2010, 32.6. 
  So there's an average reduction there between the two years. 
  Some of this could -- of course, could be weather-dependent and
  dependent on how many planes take off in the first place. 
  Dependent on how many flights go out, you know, in this season
  versus 2007, which there are surely differences.
          MR. GEORGE:  Look at weather in both years and match
  them up with these time frames.  It might be a very interesting
  thing to do.
          MR. WITHERS:  We are seeing an overall -- between the
  two years over the four years, seeing an overall reduction in
  the number of flights audible per day.  This is a closer look
  at the number of flights audible.  This is an average day, the
  number of flights per hour.  It's kind of an interesting
  anomaly here, I guess.  We're seeing over the two years kind of
  a similar schedule of arrivals.  We're seeing, you know, four
  flights on average audible at 9:00 o'clock and then half that
  at 10:00 o'clock, and then again back up to four at 11:00
  o'clock.  
          And then these are a little bit different, but still
  similar.  But the big difference here, you know, I was
  wondering if maybe any of you operators could speak to this, is
  in 2011 [sic], the 1:00 o'clock hour had half the number of
  flights of 2007. 
          MS. RUST:  Um, well, no.....
          MR. WITHERS:  Does that jump out at you as making
  sense, or is it..... 
          MS. RUST:  No, not for the particular time.  I would
  see that weather could certainly play a huge role.  But I don't
  know why..... 
          MR. WITHERS:  Cloudier at 1:00 o'clock than.....
          MS. RUST:  Well, maybe.....
          MR. LAHAIE:  Yeah, it's cloudier in the middle of the
  day.
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  Yeah, a cumulus buildup more likely. 
  Sometimes you just get cumulus buildup on the north side in the
  early afternoon. 
          MR. LAHAIE:  Okay.  
          MR. WITHERS:  But not as much in 2007 apparently.
          MR. YORKE:  You got him there. 
          MR. WITHERS:  That's interesting.
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, that's where, again, weather --
  looking at weather, it could have been a very -- and you got
  two factors: what the operators are actually launching and the
  weather, that a lot of the two are not to get to places. 
          MR. WITHERS:  Yeah.  
          MS. RUST:  Well, and another thing just to think about,
  I don't know that it would affect -- you know, it wouldn't
  affect that particular flight, but just the economy.  You know,
  there's a difference in what we're flying.  Because we have to
  look at kind of the big picture.  I just -- 1:00 o'clock, what
  strikes me as odd about those numbers is 1:00 o'clock is
  typically the busiest departure of the day.  It's one of the
  most popular, so I don't know, but those are things to take
  into consideration.
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  This being the north side, then?
          MR. LAHAIE:  It could be.  I mean, Denali Air was way
  down this year, and they have a -- they leave at noon, they
  have to be there at 1:00 o'clock.  And if more of that traffic
  went to Talkeetna Aero or somewhere else, then their schedule
  is different.  That could account for some of it. 
          MR. WITHERS:  Well, I find that interesting.  There
  doesn't necessarily have to be a verifiable reason.  But
  overall, we're -- you know, we're seeing, you know, seven
  flights per day less in 2010 than 2007 during this time frame
  at this site.  
          And the one that I got most excited about, and I hope
  you will, too -- these are pretty (inaudible) in distributions,
  but what you're really going to want to look at are the
  average -- so this is the maximum sound pressure level of all
  events.  So this is independent of how many events actually
  happen.  So it doesn't matter how many planes took off.  Of the
  planes that we detected at this location, they were
  significantly quieter this year than they were in 2007.  
          I'm going to temper it just a little bit.  I'm going to
  temper it just a little bit, but not too much for you here.  So
  this guy here -- there's an explanation for that, and it is the
  equipment has changed -- our sampling equipment has changed in
  last four years, and the equipment we use today is more
  sensitive than the equipment we used then.  So we were able to
  detect quieter flights.  
          So adding those flights into the average artificially
  lowers the overall average.  You know, we're detecting quieter
  things that could have been happening in 2007; we just didn't
  detect them with the equipment.  So I'm a little leery of, you
  know, calling this it.  But it is "it" in terms of ISO
  standards for measuring sounds.
          MR. GEORGE:  So what does that curve look like -- I
  hate to ask this, but what does that curve look like if you
  take those -- that's it?  There you are.
          MR. CUDNEY:  You've got the sound meter, he's got the
  rest.
          MR. WITHERS:  So this is -- so we left out all those --
  we measured the noise floor of the original equipment and
  excluded any measurements that we detected that were below the
  noise floor of the original 2007 equipment.  And it does cause
  the mean to go up slightly.  But we're still looking at a 7 or
  so decibel reduction on average of the maximum sound pressure
  level of an overflight in Kahiltna Pass.  
          To me, I can't think of -- that would only mean that
  the planes are either flying further away or they're flying --
  so either higher or further offset, or they're at a power
  setting that's quieter. 
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  Well, you know, it could be.....
          MS. BENNETT:  It could be a different airplane, too. 
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  And it could be a turbine.  We're
  running more turbine airplanes through there, and higher, and
  we knew the sound monitor was there.  We didn't, actually.
          MR. ANDERSON:  So we just go around in all the places
  that need to be quiet, and we'll send up sound monitors and
  we'll probably be clear. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, you don't even have to put it up,
  just say you're putting it up. 
          MR. WITHERS:  So this is good news, I think. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, that is good news.  
          MR. WITHERS:  So an overall reduction in the number of
  audible flights, and an overall reduction in the sound pressure
  level of the flights that were audible.  And, you know, with
  some other -- you know, other factors in there, it seems like
  you could probably take that to heart and, like the other
  feedback that we've seen this morning, give yourself a pat on
  the back for that recommended best practices.  
          So just a summary.  I guess I just kind of summarized
  it, but here are the numbers.  Down from 8.6 to 7.1 in
  audibility on average, down from 39.5 to 32.6 events per day on
  average. 
          MS. BALE:  Is that events per day over natural ambient?
          MR. WITHERS:  Yes.  
          MS. BALE:   Or just -- okay.  That's a huge difference
  between the events, though, and the standard.
          MR. WITHERS:  Yes, it is. 
          MS. BALE:  Yeah.  That seems insurmountable almost.
          MR. WITHERS:  Any questions about that comparative
  analysis? 
          MS. GIBERT:  That's good.
          MR. WITHERS:  So I don't know if you remember, but you
  asked, at the last meeting, for Pacman.  The Pacman
  distribution of aircraft audibility by type. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yes.  
          MR. WITHERS:  So jets versus props versus helicopters
  at all the sites we've measured.  The diameter of the Pacman is
  a scale of how many mean overflights per day.  So this gets a
  little bit at your question on how -- what the actual
  measurements are and not just their exceedance. 
          SPEAKER:  Yeah, look at Triple Lakes. 
          MR. WITHERS:  So Tim will be happy that we only see
  very small slivers of red.
          MR. CUDNEY:  I can't even see that.
          MR. WITHERS:  On this, when you get your hands on this
  when it's not on a projector screen, there's N numbers
  underneath all the points that indicate how many days were
  analyzed at each site. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Excellent.  Excellent. 
          MR. WITHERS:  There's Highpower Creek.  That site had
  less than one overflight per day on average. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Excellent. 
          MR. WITHERS:  And it's the only site where we've had
  days with no overflights? 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  I think -- no, that's not true.  It has
  the most number of days without overflights.
          MR. WITHERS:  So Herc (inaudible) is not very popular.
          MR. LAHAIE:  Well, I would say the majority of those
  are your park service planes.  Very few commercial operators
  have any reason to go there, or it'd be on their way to
  McGrath.
          MR. SASSARA:  Do you have them in this group by month? 
  Or this is the whole time.....
          MR. WITHERS:  These are all occurring during the summer
  season, so between May and September. 
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.  Right.  I see that.  I was just,
  you know, by month I thought it might change.
          MR. WITHERS:  I would be able to tell you which month
  these data were collected.  Most of them -- most of the data
  sets are less than a month, so they're not the whole season. 
  So some sites are going to have the May climbing season, and
  some sites are going to have been measured in August. 
          MR. SASSARA:  Gotcha.  Okay.  So it wouldn't matter. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, thank you.  This is very good.  This
  is exactly what we need bothto  evaluate the mix as well as the
  relevant magnitudes, so thank you very much. 
          MR. WITHERS:  You're welcome.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Jared, do you have a general feel for
  the decibel level of a jet versus the props?  Can you
  generalize on that or is it all over the map?
          MR. WITHERS:  Davyd probably could.  Do you remember
  off the top of your head?
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Jets would. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Can you give a generalization on
  how -- the decibel level of the jets versus the props?
          MR. BETCHKAL:  I would say that the jets are slightly
  lower.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  The jets are?
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Slightly lower in general, but --
  slightly.  It's a matter of a few decibels.....
          MS. FRANKENVICH:  Okay.  But both pretty.....
          MR. BETCHKAL:  .....on average. 
          MR. GEORGE:  It depends on whether Scott's fighters are
  flying.  Because otherwise everything is probably going to be,
  what, close to 30,000 feet. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Well, except for when they're bush
  flying on the mountain.
          MR. GEORGE:  We'll talk about that later.  Put them on
  our list of people we need to talk with. 
          MR. WITHERS:  So that's the little nuggets of data I
  thought that you guys would be interested in today.  There's
  lots more for you, as your time permits, on the Web site in the
  form of long reports and upcoming Flash-based kind of
  interactive data viewing applet that you can load.  Davyd's
  going to talk about that and give you a little demo in just a
  minute.   
          And I wanted to just give a little indication, I guess,
  of -- you know, since I'm on my way out, what my
  recommendations for the Denali sound program will be and where
  I think things will go, you know, both here at Denali and
  nationwide.  You know, on a societal level, noise issues aren't
  going away.  I mean, we're growing, as a population; we're
  coming up with new things all the time that make noise, and
  people are becoming more and more sensitive to noise issues in
  urban areas and in national parks, almost everywhere.  And so
  this is -- I don't see this as a problem that's ever going to
  be solved and walk away from.  It's going to be part of our
  lives. 
          On the NPS level, Paul talked about this a little bit
  earlier, at the national office, they're spending the lion's
  share of their time working on air tour management plans for
  various parks.  They're doing quite a bit of research -- or
  encouraging of research, specifically having to do with looking
  at noise impacts to wildlife, which is something that people
  want to know more about, but there's not a large research base
  over it now.  
          There are some acoustic indicators that they're working
  on that are hopefully going to be able to speak a little bit
  closer to these impacts to wildlife, which in the National Park
  Service, I think, it's going to be a pretty important thing in
  the acoustic world.
          MS. GIBERT:  When you say acoustic indicators, are you
  talking about something besides decibel levels?
          MR. WITHERS:  Something in addition to decibel levels. 
  Or something that incorporates them.  You know, things that --
  the things that are on the horizon are things like reduction of
  alerting distance.  So if you take an organism that hears,
  which is almost everything on earth, in some condition, under
  some acoustic condition, and you add in some additional source,
  be it a plane or, you know, some -- anything, wind.  I doesn't
  have to be a mechanized source.  But you introduce some
  additional sound source to that scene, and that organism's
  ability to detect things by hearing reduces by a measurable
  amount.  
          And so what we're waiting on is the research to define
  what the functional consequence of that reduction is.  You
  know, if it -- and it quickly comes into play for animals, you
  know, foraging.  A foraging ground squirrel, it realizes how
  far it can hear, and if it can't hear as far, it spends more
  time up looking around and not with its head down finding food. 
          And then for predators, you know, they -- most
  predators rely heavily on hearing for detecting of their prey. 
  And if you introduce a sound source while they're hunting, then
  they can't hear as far and they're not as successful, probably,
  at catching food. 
          MR. RODRIGUZ:  Could be an eagle's disadvantage.
          MR. WITHERS:  It could.  That one I was pretty excited
  about.  One of these -- some day when it, I think, refined and
  ready for the spotlight.  It's good to have indicators that
  have a measurable functional consequence, and that would be one
  of them.  
          Here at the park, we are -- as of the end of this
  season, five years through the 10-year acoustic inventory of
  Denali, we're going to be putting together a -- we're starting
  to get enough coverage now, as you're seeing on these maps that
  I'm putting up.  We've sampled kind of every major area of the
  park, and we're getting to the point where we can start to make
  inferences of the acoustics on a park level.  You know, we're
  not going to have really fine-scale results, but we're starting
  to get to that point.  
          Before the end of this year, we're going to publish an
  interim parkwide acoustics report based on all the inventory --
  all the points we've inventoried so far, so look out for that. 
          What we've been doing so far is, you know, largely we
  measure a site, we generate a site profile for that site,
  report on it.  We haven't done a lot of comparing sites to each
  other, comparing different properties at different elevations
  or different places in the park.  So that's kind of an
  exciting, I think, analysis that hopefully you guys will find
  useful in the upcoming months. 
          Andrew is going to touch on this as well, but we're
  working with Colorado State University.  The agreement was just
  finalized last week to start work on a social normative study
  of acoustics for Denali Park visitors starting next summer.  It
  will be a three-year study, and that will be -- starting work
  real soon, and putting -- starting to put together a study
  plan.  We'll be working with -- the guys from Colorado State
  have done this type of study at several other parks.  They'll
  be modifying it for Denali's special needs.  But they've had
  good success with this type of study that they've done before. 
          And it seems like there's interest from both the -- at
  the FAA and other Colorado State faculty in joining in, I
  guess, and adding resources to the study to do some modeling
  exercises that they seem pretty excited about.  So it's looking
  like it's going to be a -- the most comprehensive social
  acoustic study that's happened in a national park that I've
  seen.  So big hopes for that. 
          And then we've started down the path, we're at the
  trailhead of the path, on establishing a protocol and a network
  for long-term acoustics monitoring in Denali.  We got funding
  and procured some equipment to establish two permanent -- or,
  you know, long-term sound monitoring sites that will reside in
  the same place in the park for the foreseeable future.  They'll
  provide year-round data for those interested in wintertime
  activities, and then they'll -- after their first year, will be
  providing indications of trend, which so far the inventory
  style sampling that we've been doing hasn't provided very much
  of.  
          So I'd say in the next year or maybe two, depending on
  how much compliance we have to go through to site the
  equipment, that's a data stream that could feeding your guys's
  conversations pretty soon, I guess, before you guys are all
  going your separate ways, hopefully.
          MR. GEORGE:  Could you elaborate just a little bit on
  this.  Just the fact that it's -- by permanent, you mean
  year-round, and so the trend would be just because you'd have,
  instead of these little 30-day or 15-day windows, you'd have a
  longer period?  What's different?
          MR. WITHERS:  It would be -- we try not to use the word
  permanent when we're putting equipment in the.....
          MR. ANDERSON:  Don't use that word. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Longer term. 
          MR. WITHERS:  But long term as in years.
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, okay.  
          MR. WITHERS:  You know, 20, 50 years. 
          MR. GEORGE:  But it would be year-round.
          MR. WITHERS:  Yeah.  A long time. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Okay.  All right.  Thanks.  Because, yeah,
  I mean, like the question that was asked earlier about, well,
  what month were these things in?  Because you've got chunks
  here and chunks here, probably by the time you devolved it to
  the month, the pattern would be so hodgepodge it wouldn't be
  very meaningful.  So, yeah, some fixed-site locations that went
  on over a longer period of time would certainly more helpful to
  understand the seasonal and periodic nature of sound.
          MR. WITHERS:  Yeah.  And these comparative studies, you
  know, we -- well, and anecdotally we talked to the folks that
  have been here since the sixties or seventies, and has talked
  about the way it sounded 20 or 30 years ago.  We don't have any
  measurements of that, so we don't know if that's what they
  remember or the way it really was and how different it actually
  is.  Yeah.  
          MR. ANDERSON:  It seems to be getting better every
  year. 
          MR. WITHERS:  So yeah, that -- I mean, it's -- I'm sad
  I'm leaving you guys.  It's been great working with you.  It's
  been the first, you know, anything like this that I've been
  involved with.  So it's been a great learning experience for
  me.  And I won't say it as well as Paul did, but I think you
  guys are -- I'm really impressed with how much you guys have
  gotten done, and just the level of conversation, getting
  everybody in the room talking about it, and getting the
  operators involved in the discussion through the aviation work
  group.  Kind of just getting everybody on the same page is
  really valuable, I think.
          MR. CUDNEY:  Thank you for your help.
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, and putting up with all our
  persistent questions about how this fits together and
  generating other products, so that's.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Especially Tom's questions.
          MR. CUDNEY:  And since you're moving back east for a
  woman, I guess it's okay, right? 
          MR. WITHERS:  So I'm going to turn it over to Davyd,
  and he's going to demo the application that he created this
  summer. 
          MS. BALE:  Jared, does the council have any input with
  respect to the permanent -- or pardon me, long-term sound
  stations?  Or actually I should ask Paul, perhaps.
          MR. ANDERSON:  I don't know at this point.
          MS. BALE:  I know that you have some guidance, so.....
          MR. BETCHKAL:  So, as Jared said, we are starting to
  accumulate a lot of data around the park.  And as it was
  before, it was kind of scattered about in many different
  databases, and so part of what we wanted to was kind of
  concentrate it into one location.  And so part of what I did
  is -- with Jared's help, I sat down in Flash and we made an
  interactive map that you can kind of start to explore some data
  with.  
          And so you start out on this page, and, for instance,
  you can -- I think Triple Lakes might be a good spot to start. 
  You move the mouse over and you can see, and then you open it
  up, you get a picture of the site, and you get our natural
  audibility data, the biophony, geophony, and the exceedance
  levels, including the natural ambient levels in all 50.  And
  then -- and they've all got a description kind of down here in
  the bottom, so if you need clarification on what's going on. 
          Then we've got the motorized sound for Triple Lakes,
  the motorized percent time audible, the number of events per
  day over the sampling period, and the (indiscernible - papers
  shuffling) of those events.  And throughout the whole thing,
  you're able to access the location and the time of a set
  sample.  So it's the latitude, longitude, elevation.  Kind of
  an assessment of what the ecological conditions are like, and
  the sampling period. 
          And then for some sites, Triple Lakes is one of these,
  you can listen to a sound clip from the site.  I don't know if
  this thing is hooked up to a loud speaker or not, but I can
  play one clip from here.  
          We've also got, for some locations, this is the lower
  east -- Toklat, for example, which we're sampling there.  We've
  also got percent time audible, events per day, and the number
  of -- the max SPL for this.  And so you can kind of navigate
  around.  
          And then there's also an interactive component to the
  Backcountry Management Plans, so if you need a refresher on
  that.  And I'm still working on -- I don't know if I'm going to
  be able to get this to work, but right now I'm still trying to
  figure out a way to link to the summarized version of the
  Backcountry Management Plan on the Web site right from that,
  but right now it's a little bit of a worrisome thing to get the
  link to work properly, so -- but for right now, that's
  essentially how it works.  There's also contact information in
  the bottom.
          MS. BALE:  Fabulous.  
          MR. GEORGE:  It's all pretty good. 
          MS. GIBERT:  So is that -- so this process is only for
  looking at the individual sites; is that correct? 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  That's correct.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Although, I feel like you can kind of
  flip through them, you know, if you want to say, for instance,
  Highpower Creek, and you want to flip back, you say, all right,
  well, I looked at Highpower Creek's geophony, and now I want to
  go and I want to look at what -- Heron River's geophony  You
  know, it's not, like, side-by-side comparison, but you can do
  it relatively quickly, and I think that's one of the strengths
  of it.
          MS. GIBERT:  Right, right. 
          MS. BALE:  Is that each and every site as far as has
  been monitored?
          MR. BETCHKAL:  We need to put a caption on the top for
  when it is.  It's actually every site from 2006 through 2009. 
  So this year's sites aren't on it yet because we haven't
  finished the analysis.
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah, very good.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, that's great. 
          MR. OKONEK:  And then where do you access this,
  which.....
          MR. BETCHKAL:  We haven't got it up on the Web site
  yet, but we're in the process.  I've got to go talk with the
  Web authors.  And it should be on the soundscape page.
          MR. WITHERS:  So does anybody have any suggestions.....
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Yeah, feedback.
          MR. WITHERS:  .....or feedback on anything you would
  like to see added?  This is kind of the data.....
          MR. BETCHKAL:  The test run.
          MR. WITHERS:  .....and the report goes live on the Web
  site in the next couple weeks. 
          MS. GIBERT:  The data that were in the little -- the
  Pacman data, is that the breakdown of different types of
  planes?  Is that sorted out by site as well?
          MR. WITHERS:  No, it's not, but -- and so all this data
  that's in the applet is also available in the reports, which
  are also on the Web site.  And the reports have a more in-depth
  narrative and a lot more plots per site, if you're interested
  in a closer look. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. WITHERS:  It's just a little bit more tedious to
  flip through because they're large documents, it's a point-and-
  click type interface.  So you'd be able to find that sort of
  information in the reports.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. WITHERS:  Do you think it should be in the applet? 
  Would you like to see that? 
          MS. GIBERT:  Well, I was -- like when we were talking
  on the phone, you mentioned that there was a site that -- I
  don't know if it was -- I'm guessing it was Triple Lakes, that
  where even if you only factored in jets, it exceeded the
  backcountry management standards.  Was that Triple Lakes? 
          MR. WITHERS:  That's -- yes, Triple Lakes, plus many
  others.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  Oh, and others, too?  Okay. 
  Anyway, that was interesting to me.  I mean, I went like, wow,
  you know.  And so that particular data set might actually be
  something that would be worthwhile if it's not too time
  consuming to add to this set. 
          MR. WITHERS:  Okay.  
          MR. BETCHKAL:  I could almost see, for instance,
  somewhere -- maybe not up on this bar, but down here where you
  could have like a mouse over, and then this area possibly you
  could have that pie chart show up, I don't know.  I could see
  what I could do.
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  Or right on this format here, just
  a place where you could just click to get the complete data
  set.
          MR. BETCHKAL:  As Jared said, the reports is an
  excellent way to see the entire data set.  Although, it would
  be -- I guess it would be interesting to be able to download
  individual pictures just by clicking on it.  I haven't figured
  out how to do that in Flash yet.  I'm still learning. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  But, like, if you could go right
  from here, since you're at this Highpower Creek site, if you
  had an easy way, instead of going to each individual report,
  you could go directly to that data site that's in a report, you
  know. 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Oh, yes, I see what you're saying.
          MR. OKONEK:  And just for -- you know, for the next
  step, if somebody is really digging for the data, it would be a
  really easy way to get to it. 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Okay.  So we need to get to that
  specific -- the 2008 report?
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Okay.  
          MS. BALE:  Can you scroll through text there? 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Yes.  
          MS. BALE:  There's more written.
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Oh, yes.  So there's a site summary, and
  then there's kind of a description to help people navigate on
  the page. 
          MS. BALE:  Okay.  And it's usually styled -- for each
  site it's styled in the same way, starting with the most common
  sounds? 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  It's exactly the same way.  There's
  slightly different information, whether or not there are
  vehicle sounds or snow machine sounds, that kind of thing.  And
  then there's a sampling equipment we use for the site -- I
  forgot to mention this, but -- and what type of data we
  collected out at the site, which does vary slightly from setup
  to setup.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, this is amazing.
          MR. OKONEK:  Wow, fantastic.  That's really great. 
  Good work.
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Jared's idea, so.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  On the three exceedance maps that was
  compiled that you showed earlier, are they accessible here or
  somewhere else?
          MR. WITHERS:  Through the Web site they are.  They're
  not part of this little point-and-click interface right now. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Okay.  
          MR. WITHERS:  But those are the additional things that
  you can get on the Web site.  They're just links on the page.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Okay.  And how do you get to this
  site?
          MS. GIBERT:  It's not posted yet.
          MR. WITHERS:  It's not on there site.
          MR. BETCHKAL:  It's not up on the Web site yet.  We're
  still kind of trying to get it.....
          MR. GEORGE:  It's a work in progress.  
          MR. BETCHKAL:   Yep, just kind of finalize, and then
  we'll get it up. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Okay.  So how about ability to pick one of
  these data sets and be able to gen-up one of your spectrograms?
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Spectrograms?
          MR. GEORGE:  Pick a day and show a 24-hour.....
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  
          MR. BETCHKAL:  That's a good -- that's a really good
  point.  That will be an interesting facet to it.  And an
  additional tab that you could click and perhaps pull up an
  example spectrogram.  So like I said.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Oh, no, I want to go to the data.
          MR. BETCHKAL:  You want to get every spectrogram.
          MR. GEORGE:  I mean I don't know hard it is to just
  generate it.  It's possible to generate it on the fly.
          MR. WITHERS:  Not in a Web environment, but -- I mean,
  that's a good idea.  I haven't thought of that.  And that's
  something that I think that could be accomplished on the Web --
  you know, through the Web for sure.  I don't think it would
  work well as part of this framework, but that could be a
  separate project. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Because if somebody wants to really study
  what's going on, you know, and to try to understand, and
  especially like to correlate with weather or operations, that
  display, at least to me, looks more meaningful or gets you
  closer to that than just -- these curves are still a
  generalization that is not easy to sit down and actually try
  and understand a pattern of use and time.
          MR. BETCHKAL:  It's true.  But if you do spend the
  time, it's a powerful (inaudible). 
          MR. GEORGE:  Exactly.
          MR. BETCHKAL:  And more powerful, perhaps, than looking
  through days and days of spectrograms.
          MR. GEORGE:  Yep. 
          MS. BALE:  Davyd, the little logos that are the
  mountain, and the little logos that are the planes, I know you
  clicked on them, but can you.....
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Certainly. 
          MS. BALE:  What's the association? 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Which one were you.....
          MS. BALE:  The mountain is -- well, I guess we could
  just click.....
          MR. BETCHKAL:  So, okay, the mountain is a natural.....
          MS. BALE:  Why planes and why mountains? 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  I kind of went through them quickly. 
  I'm sorry.  If you roll over, you can see, actually, that
  little text that pops up there.  It will tell you natural sound
  sources buffering.  I'm sorry.  I kind of -- I got a little
  speedy there.  So natural sounds versus geophony.  And it's a
  little hard to read, perhaps, but.....
          MS. BALE:  Okay.  Biophony or geophony.  Sorry about
  that. 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Geophony.  That's all right. 
          MS. BALE:  Can you give a quick.....
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Okay.  Biophony is the distribution of
  biotic sounds.  So you're looking at percent time audible at
  the location for each day. 
          MS. BALE:  Like bird calls or frogs or something? 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  It's bird calls, insects, mammals, and
  in this site which is somewhat unlikely.....
          MR. OKONEK:  Wood frogs. 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  .....wood frogs, yeah. 
          MS. BALE:  Not that common.  
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Or somewhat uncommon.  And geophony is
  similar to that, but it's -- it sounds that are abiotic, so
  wind, rain, avalanches.
          MS. BALE:  That makes perfect sense now.
          MR. GEORGE:  Earthquakes, volcanoes.
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Yeah.  This one is a little bit trickier
  to explain, but it's the amount of every hour that the sound
  pressure level exceeds a certain percentage, so L-50 -- for
  instance, the green line is the amount of time in any hour that
  the sound pressure level exceeds -- or 50 percent -- it's the
  sound pressure level at which is exceeded 50 percent of the
  time in that hour, so half the time the sound pressure level
  was over a 23 decibel level. 
          MS. GIBERT:  So that's your mean?  That's your mean?
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Yeah.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MR. BETCHKAL:  It's the median, I think.  It's the
  median.
          MS. GIBERT:  Median.
          MR. WITHERS:  So this data, the exceedance levels are
  something that they're more of an acoustic geek type of metric;
  that they're oft dealt with in aviation noise planning and
  transportation noise arenas.  We haven't really spoken of them
  much in this forum, and they don't -- and our park plan -- or
  policies and Backcountry Management Plan don't touch on
  exceedance levels.  So for this group what's probably the most
  interesting and hard to tell in this example is the difference
  between the green line and the red line, which are in the
  middle. 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Oh, yeah.  There's almost -- let me get
  a better example, perhaps, of that.  Oh, that's actually.....
          MR. WITHERS:  So there's usually not that much of a --
  not that large of a difference, but that -- the difference
  between -- in decibels between the red line and the green line
  is that the red line is the median sound pressure level, and
  the green line is the natural ambient sound level.  So that's
  an approximation of what the median would be in the absence of
  human-caused sound.  So that's kind of a measurement of how
  much the presence of human-caused sound is elevating the
  ambient conditions.
          MR. OKONEK:  I'm confused, but that's okay, 
          MS. GIBERT:  And what do you call this one again?  
          MR. BETCHKAL:  The hourly ambient levels. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Hourly ambient levels, okay. 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Or exceedance, hourly exceedance levels. 
  And then another you're probably familiar with, and that's
  the.....
          MS. BALE:  Standards, uh-huh.  
          MR. BETCHKAL:  .....aircraft percent time audible for
  every day.  The aircraft number of events for every day, and
  the aircraft maximum sound pressure level over the period of
  measurement.
          MS. BALE:  So do you need a Core Duo processor to look
  at this?
          MR. BETCHKAL:  I'm hoping that it's not going to be too
  huge.  Right now the file size is about 10 megabytes, so it
  could take some time to download it on -- we have yet to test
  it on the Web for some reason.  And on the computer, when I run
  it, it's got a loading screen, and you didn't even see the
  loading screen when I just opened it, because running off the
  computer, it just, you know, it's loaded, but the Web site does
  take time.
          MS. BALE:  I might just prefer to work it on the Web as
  long as -- because wouldn't you want to have the ability to add
  information to it so.....
          MR. BETCHKAL:  I believe that's how I'd like it to
  work, too, is if you click the link it will open up in a new
  page or new window.  And you can just run it right off your
  browser, and hopefully that will work out, you know.  But
  anymore questions on this, the applet?
          MR. LAHAIE:  One quick one on exceedance, like go back
  to that Highpower Creek if you could. 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Sure.  
          MR. LAHAIE:  So is that the exceedance on normal sound?
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, try to run that by us one more time.
          MR. LAHAIE:  You might explain that, what it -- I'm not
  sure what is that exceeding.  Because this is one of quietest
  places in the park, right? 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  So if you look at the Y axis, which is a
  little hard to see, you can see, for instance, 21 decibels
  is -- a little bit over 21, probably about 22 decibels is that
  bottom line, and it's hard to see the color here, but that's
  the L-90, and that means that -- and it's pretty steady across
  the day, but say for the zero-hundred hour, you look at it and
  you say, that's -- so 22 decibels, that level, sound pressure
  level was exceeded 90 percent of the time during that hour on
  average.  So that means the sounds were louder, the ambient
  levels, including -- or all sounds were over that 22 decibels
  90 percent of the time.  There are some times that are higher
  than that, but not many.
          MR. LAHAIE:  And so the sound standards that -- these
  are established, or they're being established?  As far as,
  like, in the park?  I mean, is it even based in reality of this
  is the reality, and yet we're setting the standards or the
  standards.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, these don't have any standards. 
  This is not standard related. 
          MR. LAHAIE:  Okay.  It's just.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, just data. 
          MR. LAHAIE:  .....it's just acoustic data, okay.
          MS. GIBERT:  So on that little green line, it looks
  like it -- and there's one with little spikes where there might
  be a little bit of red, is that what that is? 
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Here?  Yeah.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  So that's the only place -- so
  there's only a tiny part of the time where manmade sounds or
  aircraft sounds pushed it a little bit above the normal green
  level, is that what that says?
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Yeah, the short answer is yes. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Green meaning the median?
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MR. BETCHKAL:  Yep.
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. YORKE:  Most of the time you have.....
          MR. BETCHKAL:  And in addition to that, I would -- if I
  was looking for information on aircraft sound, I really would
  look more at these graphs, because they're just clearer.  You
  know, the information is easier to interpret, and for that
  reason you can get more out of it.  I do feel like the percent
  time audible, you can see that most days it's still over the
  standard, and the number of events are usually over -- over or
  at the standard, which is kind of unusual for this one, if you
  remember the second standard. 
          MS. BALE:  One.
          MR. BETCHKAL:  One overflight a day.
          MS. BALE:  I think that's kind of interesting. 
          MR. GEORGE:  I kind of wonder if the North Pole would
  exceed the standard of one a day, just as a random curiosity.
          MR. ANDERSON:  The guy that's doing the work in Denver,
  Kirk Jernstrom (ph), has located the quietest spot on Earth,
  literally. 
          MR. GEORGE:  And? 
          MR. ANDERSON:  I don't know much about it, but he's got
  records from it.  And I guess what he's -- I mean, what his
  data is -- part of what we're talking about is noise is
  becoming a more prevalent problem, is that he's got 30 years of
  sound data for these different locations, and not only has he
  identified the quietest, but also some of the noisiest spots on
  Earth, and also the trends over time in actual scientific
  measurements of human-caused sounds.  He's helping to do an
  analysis of this whole soundscape program for us as well.  And
  there was something I was going to tell you about him, but I
  can't think of what it was.  When I remember it, I will.
          MR. GEORGE:  Okay.  Sure.  Yeah, sure.  I can wait. 
          MS. BALE:  Is there a chance of getting him up here
  sometime, like for the -- maybe the spring meeting?
          MR. ANDERSON:   Sure.  
          MS. BALE:  That would be great.  Because I -- he was
  there.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, at the workshop, two years ago or
  whenever that was.
          MS. BALE:  .....and he was pretty -- he was good at
  explaining pretty heavy things, as I recall.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, okay.  Yes.  Yes.  
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Is it time for an air break?
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  I would just like to formally
  congratulate or thank Jared for -- well, not just Jared, the
  whole park staff, but especially for Jared, since he's leaving,
  just to acknowledge his tremendous work and helping us
  understand this stuff.  And I just wanted it on the record. 
  Thank you.  Okay.  Five minutes. 
          (Off record)
          (On record) 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Miriam asked me to come speak to the
  commission.  And my name is Andrew Ackerman.  I'm a social
  scientist with the resources division.  I guess I'm the latest
  member of the resources staff.  It's almost been a year since I
  came on board, and I've been trying to get up to speed on a lot
  of issues.  One of which is soundscapes.  Fortunate to have
  overlapped with Jared for the last year, and so I've picked up
  on whatever I could related to that program.  
          But in addition, since my area of specialization is in
  social science, I've been looking at past research and
  assisting with current research and future research in the area
  of soundscapes, visitor experiences in the backcountry and
  associated with soundscapes.  
          So I'm going to present today on past research and some
  early findings from research that we just did this summer. 
  First I'm going to say just a few things related to these
  studies.  So they're -- I'm going to present some findings from
  the 2000, 2005, and 2010 seasons.  These are not my studies;
  these are other researchers who have done all this work.  And
  some of this work you may already be familiar with.  If you
  were involved at all in the 2006 Backcountry Management Plan,
  then you likely came across these at some point.  I know both
  Tom and Brian have asked me for information related to these
  studies, and I think I provided them with some.  But we'll go
  through it kind of quick. 
          These are -- I'm going to do a synopsis of each one so
  you're not getting nearly all the detail that you could get if
  you take a hold of these large documents and read through them. 
  But that's probably a good thing, you know.  Don't want to get
  into that. 
          A couple of disclaimers.  One, these studies are -- you
  know, the 2000, 2005 studies are dated.  You know, it just so
  happens that they're nice five-year increments here.  But they
  also were all done in a way that they were designed to
  generalize to the larger population.  They have a study area --
  I should stay kind of near to that or -- yeah.  They have a
  study area that was well defined; they have a study design that
  was intended to sample enough visitors that you could
  generalize to the larger population, at least within that study
  area.  
          So I'll get into this here and we can talk more about
  that.  But there's always limitations on those studies, and I
  can talk about those, too, if you're interested.  So aircraft
  noise and presence were pieces of these studies, both in 2000
  and 2004.  It was actually 2000 was the year that this study
  was done on the north side here.  The data was collected that
  entire summer season, as well as 2004 was when the Watson Study
  collected data on the south side with the flying and
  recreation. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Was that Allen Watson?
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Yes.  Allen Watson out of Montana.  And
  the 2000 was a combination of a few researchers from the
  University of Washington, and a couple researchers from the
  University of Vermont.  So in 2000, the study area was OP-1,
  essentially, the north side of the range.  Possibly some of the
  hikers in that area went into OP-2 and the B zones, but their
  main goal here was assess backpackers' encounters with
  aircraft, and -- actually it was to assess backpackers'
  experience in general, but related to noise and aircraft, was
  to assess backpackers' encounters with aircraft and their
  experiences in encountering aircraft. 
          And then in 2004, they were looking at, like I said,
  the south side OP-1, but south of the range, specifically areas
  where people are flying in.  The popular area is the
  West Buttress, Ruth Glacier.  But they also looked at a lot of
  other less heavily used portal areas that are defined in the
  Backcountry Management Plan.   
          And they did interviewing and surveying.  A lot of
  their surveys were mail-in type things, and they were looking
  at not only climbers, they looked at people who were doing
  flightseeing, folks who were doing the air tour glacier
  landings, they even were interviewing the air tour operators,
  and maybe some of you were involved in getting interviewed as
  part of that effort.  And, again, their main goal there was to
  get enough information that they could help inform the 2006
  Backcountry Management Plan.  In fact, that was -- due to the
  timing of it, it was very much oriented in that way so that
  they could come up with -- the Backcountry Management Plan
  would have standards that were defensible and more
  scientifically oriented to the conditions on the ground.
          MS. RUST:  Excuse me, I was just wondering, so you said
  they did interview.  Maybe I forgot.  I'm just wondering
  what -- I'm just curious.
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Interviewing the air tour operators? 
          MS. RUST:  Uh-huh.  
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Yeah.  They interviewed probably only a
  couple.  I mean, the interviewing is not nearly as
  comprehensive as the sampling of the larger population.  So I
  can tell you exactly how many interviews they did and who they
  interviewed, but, no, not off the cuff.  
          But in general -- I don't want to go too far into this. 
  They were doing both surveying and interviewing efforts, so
  they were getting both kind of the quantitative responses from
  people as to what they heard, you know, how many events, and
  they were also getting a qualitative.  So starting off with the
  2000 study, the findings were from that that most parties, or
  70 plus percent of them were not surprised to hear
  aircraft.....
          (Noise from airplane)
          MR. GEORGE:  Right on cue. 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Yes, siree, you too can enjoy your
  national park in peace and solitude. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  And so like me, they were not surprised
  to hear that aircraft, so 75 percent of those sampled preferred
  to hear or see no aircraft.  Well, you know, 25 percent said,
  you know, they don't mind seeing aircraft at -- certain levels
  of aircraft, and I'll show you a graph on that.  60 percent of
  the backpackers did hear or see aircraft at some time during
  their hike, and that's 60 percent of those that -- you know, 60
  percent of those sampled.  66 percent of the parties classified
  the maximum aircraft noise as background noise where you could
  still talk, but then they also had additional amounts that were
  saying that they found the maximum noise was conspicuous, and
  you had to speak louder in order to be heard.  
          Over half of the backpackers reported some annoyance,
  and 45 percent reported detraction from their experience. 
  Interestingly, they've measured -- you know, they did a
  statistical analysis and were looking at what types of factors
  most affected the experience or the satisfaction, and it wasn't
  so much number of overflights that you could see or the
  closeness or, you know, a variety of other things.  It was the
  actual loudness.  And in this study, they're describing it as
  loudness in terms of a very coarse scale of 1 to 5, and I'll
  show you the scale that they developed.  It's not tied to any
  decibel level.  
          So the findings in this study were that you decrease
  loudness, and that should decrease impact on visitors in
  general.  And that would be a more effective way than actually
  reducing the number of planes or even the duration that that
  sound is existing.  Average daily maximum loudness was the
  strongest predictor of annoyance, which was right in line with
  that loudness.
          LT. COL. BABOS:  What does the asterisk mean on that
  one?
          MR. ACKERMAN:  So the asterisk is that 28 percent of
  the respondents saw no aircraft, so when you factor -- when
  you're looking at those percentages, those people who saw no
  aircraft aren't factored in.  And this just follows up on what
  I just told you.  If you look there, the red outlined row, when
  they started ranking the different variables, you know, time of
  encounters with planes, the number of encounters, their
  expectation of whether or not they're going to see planes, or
  loudness.  And loudness ended up being the number one factor
  affecting their level of satisfaction with their overall
  experience hiking in Denali.  
          Backpacker expectations, just kind of stepping back,
  one of the first questions they asked people, and I alluded to
  it in the opening slide, is, you know, what did you expect when
  you came to Denali?  Did you have expectations that this was
  going to be a place where you wouldn't see any aircraft, or,
  you know, what?  And a large percentage thought they would see
  zero, but then, you know, a lot of people were pretty
  realistic, too, as far as thinking that they'd see a couple of
  planes while they're here.  But, you know, it drops off as you
  get up higher.
          MR. GEORGE:  And those people, as I recall, typically
  lived in Alaska that had the higher expectation in seeing
  aircraft. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Yes.  It's interesting when you compare
  the difference between Alaskans and non-Alaskans, and that was
  the non-locals.  And this is visitor preferences.  Again, I
  mentioned it in the first slide, 75 percent of the folks
  preferred to hear or see no aircraft.  That's kind of like,
  what is your ideal situation when you're coming to Denali
  National Park?
          LT. COL. BABOS:  And we prefer to have no rain.
          MR. ACKERMAN:  That, too.
          MR. ANDERSON:  We prefer to have no -- not too hot, not
  too cold.
          MR. GEORGE:  And actually no mosquitoes, too.
          MR. ANDERSON:  And no mosquitoes, yeah, that's true. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  This was average number of aircraft seen
  per trip day, so this is actuals of what people came back.  And
  they way they're reflecting this data, in case you're
  interested, is they had the trip diary, which is, you know, a
  survey form in the form of a booklet, and each day they were
  recording their observations as they were in the backcountry. 
  And then they -- the way they analyzed this was they brought
  them back, and then they averaged everybody's days and came up
  with an average amount seen per trip day.  
          So here we have, you know, the top -- the highest
  percentages are -- they vary from, you know, 1 to 2, 12
  percent, 4 to 5, another 12 percent, and then 10 or more, a
  good chunk of the population also experienced kind of those
  high levels.  Again, remember, this is the north side of the
  park.  This is the people who are predominantly in these
  popular backcountry units here. 
          MS. GIBERT:  And were -- those respondents, were they
  supposed to be actually counting over the course of the day or
  estimating at the end of the day?
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Yes.  So at the end of each day, they
  would summarize how many times they experienced those events.  
          Here's maximum daily time that aircraft was either seen
  or heard.  So we're getting a time duration that they were
  heard or seen.  Most of the folks fell between the, you know,
  1 second to 5 minutes, but as you go up, you know, a pretty
  good chunk in the 5-minute to, I guess, 25- to 30-minute range.
          MR. GEORGE:  And, again, these are just people's
  recollections; they're not making -- measurements are not being
  made to come up with these numbers? 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Correct.  Right.  And that's a good
  point.  I mean, I should distinguish between sound recordings
  and, you know, obviously to what people record.  You know, it's
  almost.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Perceived. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  .....try and compare them.  Yeah, it's
  perceived.  And it's also -- there's a recollection, you know,
  recall issue.  That's one reason why we use -- we like to use
  the trip diaries, but trip diaries also make people have to
  think about it a lot, which then gets into, are you sensitizing
  them?  There's a whole variety of things that we have to think
  about when designing these studies.  But, essentially, these
  are people's perceptions, and supposedly if you get enough
  people across a sample that you're going to start to get, you
  know, a good indication of what people are experiencing out
  there. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Andrew, what time period was this
  done?  I mean, was it like one week, all summer?
          MR. ACKERMAN:  This was all summer, actually.  I think
  it started early in the season and ran all the way through
  August.  And I know this -- with the next study I'm going to go
  over, the fly-in rec study, that was from April until
  September 30th.  So, yeah, the entire peak season with a little
  bit of the shoulder season.  
          This one, the average loudest aircraft per trip day,
  and this is where it gets -- I told you earlier there's this
  coarse scale that they estimated, you know, given, you know,
  these five levels, which of the following best describes how
  loud the sound of the aircraft was at the loudest point during
  your trip?  So they gave them this five -- 1 through 5, you
  know, 1 being I couldn't hear the aircraft, 5 being it was
  overwhelming where you couldn't even hear someone shouting type
  of thing, so -- and interestingly, these do kind of correlate
  with Jared. 
          You know, Jared mentioned how 40 decibels is about when
  you start to see physiological impacts to humans, and, you
  know, a conspicuous sound where you would have to speak loudly
  to be heard.  That's about, you know, in that range of, I
  guess, 40 to 60.  Isn't that about right?  Anyway.  And a lot
  of the responses here came back that they were in the, you
  know, 3 to 4 conspicuous sound where you would have to speak
  loudly to be heard.  That was probably the -- you, this shows
  that 66 percent or more were experiencing, at the loudest
  point, an aircraft that had that kind of impact.  It was a
  conspicuous sound where you would have to speak loudly to be
  heard. 
          MR. GEORGE:  I'm confused.  Isn't the 3 to 4 range
  5 percent on this?
          MR. ACKERMAN:  3 to 4 would be -- right.
          MR. GEORGE:  And 67 percent is the 1 to 2 range?
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Yeah, this.....
          MR. GEORGE:  So what -- I mean, these things don't seem
  to line up. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  This red bar right here should be
  encapsulating number 2 and 3, so if you were to add up the
  percentages.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Oh, 2, 3, and 4?
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Yeah.  It should be adding up all those
  to come up with a 93 percent, because, yeah, the most dominant,
  66 percent was experiencing between 1 and 2.  So either I
  couldn't hear any aircraft or it was background sound.  So that
  was the most common response.  But then between 2 and 3, 26
  percent, you could have a -- you know, people have conspicuous
  sound where you would have to speak loudly.  And then you're
  right, 5 percent would be the -- those who experience a
  dominant sound.
          MR. GEORGE:  So I guess I'm not sure what message
  you're sending us with the 93 percent there. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  So 93 percent is the bulk majority of
  the people were in this area of background sound to dominant
  sound.  It wasn't -- yeah, it wasn't anyone who was -- you
  wouldn't say that most people were experiencing a quiet
  environment, I couldn't hear any, or I couldn't hear the
  aircraft at all.  And you wouldn't say that most people were
  hearing overwhelming sounds.  I guess that's what I'm getting
  at.
          MR. GEORGE:  Okay.  
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Percent that were annoyed by aircraft
  and the effect of pretrip information.  They did an experiment
  in this study where they actually had an information treatment
  group.  They gave them a little paragraph on aircraft in Denali
  at the beginning of the study saying, you know, that aircraft
  have started -- have been in the park, they fly, you know,
  across these areas of the park, and they were trying to find
  out if that information would affect people's responses.  And
  their hypothesis was that if you give them the information that
  they will be less annoyed by seeing aircraft, their results
  were just the opposite. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, I wish to take exception with you
  and I'd like to read two of the bullets that were in that
  survey -- three of them.  "In recent years, use has increased
  to the point where there could be dozens of flights a day
  passing through this corridor in good weather.  Given the long
  day length, much of the summer flights -- or during much of the
  summer flights can be very early or very late.  Aircraft are
  requested to stay 2,000 feet above ground level, but there is
  no requirement to do so and they frequently fly at less than
  the recommended level -- this recommended level."  And finally,
  "Alaska has been excluded from any laws that would allow
  restrictions on air traffic over national parks."
          Now, tell me what about that makes you think that they
  wouldn't be biased against aircraft if that was part of their
  going-in information?  Nowhere does it say anything about
  aircraft being used by the park service to manage the land or
  anything else.  So, no, I'd argue, in fact, that they proved
  exactly what they set out to prove.  You give people
  information that's negatively biased and they have a negative
  perception.
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Right, yeah. 
          MR. GEORGE:  So be very careful, please, in how you use
  this study without citing all of the caveats. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Well, Tom, all I was saying was that
  they had a hypothesis, and their hypothesis was wrong.  So
  either they misinterpreted what -- and this is not my study.  
          MR. GEORGE:  Oh, I'm well aware of that.  I mean, I was
  well aware of this study from the beginning. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Yeah.  And I'm just saying that they
  gave people information, and they thought, regardless of what
  the information was, they thought by giving that particular
  paragraph that you just read, that they would have responded in
  a certain way.  It was a hypothesis, they thought.  But
  obviously you would have had just the opposite hypothesis.  You
  would have said, given this information, they're going to
  respond this way. 
          MR. GEORGE:  So in other words, I think it depends on
  exactly what information you give them. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Exactly. 
          MR. GEORGE:  So, again, that's why I -- I can't agree
  with the findings of this report in this regard. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Right.  
          MR. CUDNEY:  But, also, you have to also look at some
  of the user groups that are doing -- taking these surveys, that
  are going actually in the backcountry.  The percentage is not
  going to be, honestly, an aviator, an aircraft owner, a general
  aviation user.  It's not going to be that person.  So they're
  not going to have -- just like Tom says, they're not going to
  have a perception already going into this thing, well, yeah,
  I'm in such-and-such a region, but oh, yeah, there's tourism
  flights going; oh, yeah, it's the summertime, it's the time
  when everybody's here.
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Right.  Yeah.  
          MR. ANDERSON:  Though it's interesting, and I agree
  with everything you're saying, Tom, but there wasn't one
  statement that was made to these people that wasn't absolutely
  fact, so don't -- while you're talking about it, the
  information that was given, wasn't all of the information that
  was available, but none of the information that was given was
  in any way misconstrued.
          MR. GEORGE:  I tried to think about it and actually --
  and we can carry on a discussion later, because I guess have a
  question about a couple of those things, but in general, yeah.
          MR. ANDERSON:  We're not repeating that study. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah.  Good. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  But just to set the record straight. 
  And secondly, you know, you're right about this that they're --
  that most of the people that are flying around in airplanes
  aren't in the backcountry, but the fact of the matter is,
  there's lots of people in the backcountry who fly around in
  airplanes as a part of their experience.  And so, you know,
  trying to generalize too much on either side can cause us
  problems, and it takes away from what it is we're trying to get
  at, which is how do we minimize these impacts for the people
  that are most impacted and still continue to provide the kind
  of service and experience that we want to provide for the
  visitors that are using it.  That's really.....
          MR. CUDNEY:  I think my argument is I'm -- I'll be very
  careful how I say this.  The people that are -- because when I
  was younger I was one of those.  I mean, that's where I started
  doing it, I was a backcoun- -- that's what I did at the time,
  and that, let's just say, group or demographic is not going to
  be the person that's going to come up to me or Suzanne and pay
  for a helicopter tour or an airplane ride.  They may have come
  up here on Alaska Airlines.  Yeah, I'm -- and as a whole -- go
  ahead.  I'm just.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  I mean, on my first year in Alaska,
  you know, 24 years old, you know, probably showed up with about
  $50 in my packet, you know, worked for $5 an hour at the
  McKinley Chalet, and at the end of the summer, I took my hard-
  earned $100, which I think is what it was, and I took a flight. 
  I mean, I was both a backpacker and the flightseeing, and that
  flight was awesome, and every visitor that comes to visit me, I
  say take a flight, and I was also a backpacker.  
          I mean, I think our visitors are both, they're on the
  ground, they're in the air.  And we have to.....
          MR. CUDNEY:  I think also, then, with that, then maybe
  on some future studies there may be room on this survey to say
  have you taken a flight? 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Yeah, that's a good idea.
          MR. CUDNEY:  Have you taken an air tour?
          MR. GEORGE:  And my point in wanting to probe at this
  is, again, I think there is value in education, you know, for
  the general backpacking community, and this study kind of
  suggests that there isn't, and that's why I am concerned if
  we're putting too much stock in the study. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  But what -- you know, I would not say
  that.  See, I wouldn't draw that conclusion at all.  I would
  say exactly the opposite, and I think, you know, you hit the
  nail on the head, don't lose the point you just made.  They
  gave them information that said, however you look at it, you
  know, aircraft are creating a hell of a noise problem around
  here, and you can expect that to be the case.  Did you see that
  that was the case?  Damn right we did, it's a problem.  
          I think that you educated them, as you said, to have an
  expectation that was confirmed when they had their experience. 
  Had you educated them a different way, you probably would have
  gotten a different kind of a reaction.
          MR. GEORGE:  And that's what I'd like to see going
  forward, is to actually not just stick with this one answer,
  but to actually now lay out a more carefully designed study to
  try and figure that out, figure out how to use that -- these
  various tools most constructively. 
          MS. RUST:  And I think the process is important, that
  where we can all sit around the table, all of us, and say,
  yeah, these are good statistics.  I mean, that's where we
  should -- that's where when you have studies that have -- seem
  to present a bias, however you want to say it, seem to present
  things in one way and perhaps lead or maybe don't lead, but I
  would like to see that as our goal.  
          I mean, and I think we've talked about that, what, a
  year or two ago?  I think we should all be able to get around
  the next study and say, wow, this is good information, instead
  of nitpicking how things were said.  Because -- but, you know
  what, I have to say that sometimes we're blind to the fact that
  this does lead people in a certain direction, and that if we --
  you know, that if you have more input or a different process,
  we might come up with a better product at the end. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  I would bet -- you know, I wasn't here
  for this study at the park, but I would bet you, especially
  given the hypothesis, that they didn't have -- it didn't really
  register with them that the information that they were
  providing might have the opposite effect than what they
  expected.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Oh, I quite agree. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  .....until afterwards when they looked
  at it and they went.....
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Which is -- from a researching
  standpoint, that's an okay thing, as long as you can -- when
  you get the opposite results, you can say, oh, this is -- we
  misread this whole thing, you know. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  As long as you recognize the cause, as
  opposed to -- well, and you could just say, well,
  information -- providing information doesn't, in fact,
  necessarily increase enjoyment, and stop there instead of --
  maybe it's a different question.  It's what kind of information
  you provide. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  And they did talk about that in the
  study in their synopsis or their conclusions that, you know,
  this type of information, you know, may be looked at in the
  future as something that you wouldn't want to buy, like, in
  that frame -- the frameworks, but maybe some other type of
  information.  
          MR. GEORGE:  Okay.  Well, sorry to slow you down.
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Yeah, but -- yeah.  
          MR. ANDERSON:  Yeah, but we have fun talking about this
  every time a tech comes up, so.....
          MR. ACKERMAN:  I just wanted to touch on -- what was
  your name again? 
          MR. CUDNEY:  Tim. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Tim?  Tim, you made a good point about
  different types of user groups having different expectations
  and different experiences, and I think that that is something
  that is real.  Even though you'll have variation within certain
  subpopulations of users in the park, and there's crossover from
  backpackers to, you know, air tour -- you know, people who take
  flights, but I guess the point is it's good to study certain
  groups to kind of know where their average is.  And I think
  we're going to try and to do in the future, too, to find out,
  you know, a little bit more about the different user groups,
  and if we can kind of segment them and, I'm going to show you
  another study which is on the south side users, and their
  responses are very different from the north side.  
          All right.  That brings us to this study, the '05 fly-
  in rec study with Allen Watson.  So here we have the study area
  that was the -- like I said, the south side glaciated areas, 30
  percent visitors stated that the number of planes landing did
  not matter; 50 percent -- these are the scenic air tour folks
  said that -- 50 percent said that the number of overflights did
  not matter to them really.   
          When you get to the multiday folks, climbers, more
  likely to report number of planes detracted, but not a majority
  of them.  Still we're right around 50 percent.  More detraction
  as they moved away from the landing zones.  That's an
  interesting finding, I think.  They're not so much concerned
  about what's going on at the landing zones.  Although, I think
  there's probably an upper threshold for everything.  
          They also reported that the average number that they
  were experiencing of 8 to 10 landings a day and 10 to 12
  overflights was getting towards their maximum tolerance.  Sound
  of aircraft taking off and landing, again, had a greater
  influence.  So we're back to this whole thing of loudness or
  sound being highlighted both in the south side study and the
  north side. 
          Climbers identified the number of aircraft passing over
  as negatively affecting experience, but they most often
  reported that as negatively affecting their experience when
  they were seeing at least 16 a day.  So just those people that
  experienced those high-peak days were reporting that it was
  detracting.  
          So I think you see here, like I said, there's a
  difference in these user groups.
          MR. GEORGE:  And, again, to put this in perspective,
  these are climbers interviewed at what days of their visit when
  you were collecting this information? 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  They were getting it at base camp and
  back in Talkeetna. 
          MR. GEORGE:  So at the end of their trip? 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Uh-huh.  Right.  
          MS. GIBERT:  And it wasn't just climbers. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  And it wasn't just climbers.  It was
  scenic.....
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  The south side. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  .....air tour folks.....
          MR. GEORGE:  So the scenic air tour, those would have
  been placing people at Talkeetna, then? 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Right.  
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Placing at Talkeetna or going up on the
  glacier.  
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah.  
          MR. ACKERMAN:  Yeah.  Here's influence of amount of
  different variables on their experience.  So looking at amount
  of airplanes, you know, amount of -- and there's other things
  that are not really related to sound or aircraft on here, like
  number of climbers at the landing zone, or large groups of
  climbers.  This is a little bit hard to read, but essentially 
  that red line going through the middle is the zero line, and to
  the right is saying that it improved their experience, and to
  the left saying it detracted from their experience.  And the
  narrower bars are the multiday, or the climbers, and the fat
  bars, the darker fat bars are the day users.  
          So you can see if we're just looking at airplanes on
  glaciers, really, as far as multiday day users, they're split
  50/50 as far as improving and detracting.  The number of
  airplanes didn't really stand out in any one direction or the
  other.  But with the day users, number of airplanes actually
  improved their experience.  I guess that makes sense if
  you're.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, you wouldn't go out there without
  it, so you have to view it somewhat positively. 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  You have to be able to get there.  And
  aircraft overhead, you can see that a lot of it is on the
  positive side for both the day hiker -- the day users and the
  multiday users. 
          And here is influence of the conditions on experience,
  and essentially the top half of this graph is the multi and day
  users, and the bottom half is just the multiday users only. 
  And if we're looking at plane sounds, landing, it does --
  again, that middle -- the middle area I didn't put the red line
  in there, but anything to the left is detracting, anything to
  the right is improving.  And you can see that for multiday
  users, plane sounds and airplane sounds overhead do detract
  predominantly from their experience, but it's still, you know,
  a little bit -- there's some on the side of improved, but in
  general you can say that it's detracting.  But that's the
  sounds. 
          And then a few remaining stats on number of planes and
  interview responses.  So with this Watson study, 90 percent of
  the multiday users saw three or fewer planes on their least
  busy day, and over 15 planes on their busiest day.  And I think
  that was used -- that statistic there was used to kind of frame
  some of the standards for the West Buttress area -- overlay
  area, as well as by the Ruth Glacier when they were developing
  backcountry management standards, the least a number of
  encounters.  
          And then from the qualitative interviews that they did
  in this study, very few day users reported any negative
  experience even having to do with the sound or the number of
  flights overhead.  And number of people in the same area was
  the only thing that came out as a negative from the multiday
  users.  They did mention overflights in their interviews, but
  for the most part they realize that it was a positive thing,
  they need the aircraft to get in to have access to the areas
  that they're interested in.  They did say that if these levels
  were to continue to increase, it likely would affect their
  sense of solitude and mountain experience. 
          So to get to the present day, if we haven't used up too
  much time.  This study done this summer was done by UAF,
  Pete Fix did this survey of backpackers here on the north side,
  and day hikers.  And he was utilizing the current indicators
  and standards in our Backcountry Management Plan to ask people
  what they were experiencing in the backcountry.  So only those
  folks who went off into the wilderness area, so they were
  predominantly OP-1 folks.  
          And we just -- I just got some of the data back
  yesterday, literally, so it was -- one of the questions was
  having to do with natural sound disturbance, so how many
  encounters did you have with motorized sounds?  It didn't
  distinguish between aircraft and buses or any kind of a
  motorized sound.  It just said, how many did you experience?
          Some of the early results that I'm getting back --
  first of all you should know that of the day hikers that were
  surveyed in this study, we got a strong response rate, like 440
  folks completed it.  With the overnight folks, it was a much
  less response rate.  144 folks returned them -- it was a more
  rigorous survey instrument.  
          But some of the results are, they were -- with the day
  hikers, they were encountering about three, three plus
  motorized encounters on their day hike.  But the range was
  pretty huge.  It went from 50 all the way down to zero, so just
  dependent on probably where they were in the park.  And we do
  have locational data on where they hiked, so we might start to
  analyze that to get exactly where the -- these high peaks are.
          When they were asked a question about percent of time
  motorized noise was audible, they were given four breaks, zero
  to 20, 4 percent; 25 to 49, 50 to 75, et cetera.  So 83 percent
  of the day hikers were only experiencing motorized noise zero
  to 24 percent of the time they were hiking.  And then from
  there it went down significantly to about 11 percent were
  experiencing motorized sound, 25 to 49.  
          With the overnighters, they were broken down by day
  and, by the way, we interviewed them, we did both -- I mean, we
  gave them surveys both pre and post to see kind of the
  difference.  It turned out -- the results came back almost
  identical as far as the averages.  The mean for those people
  who took the survey with them before they left and answered it,
  was 3.6 on the first day, 3.6 encounters with motorized noise. 
  And those were who returned -- who did the survey when they
  returned were 3.5 when they returned.  So pretty much the same.
          But then an interesting finding here was on day 2, the
  amount of encounters of motorized noise went up to an average
  of 4.5, even though the range was less.  So they're getting
  further away from the road, and their motorized sound are going
  up.
          MR. GEORGE:  They're more sensitized, yeah.  
          MR. ACKERMAN:  But anyway -- and.....
          MR. GEORGE:  That was the pre.  What about the post on
  that one?
          MR. ACKERMAN:  On that one the post was lower
  significantly.  It was only one, and they had a max of -- a
  much lower max as well. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Wow, interesting. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Andrew, could part of that be that day 1,
  that they don't spend the whole day out in the field,
  they're -- a lot of the day is spent near the access center and
  on the bus and..... 
          MR. ACKERMAN:  They're instructed to only answer based
  on once they get into the wilderness area.  So not even their
  time spent within 150 feet of the road or at, say, Eielson. 
  They're not supposed to be answering it at that point.  Only
  when they get into the wilderness area.  So whether or not they
  stick to that -- I think there's recall error -- there's a
  little bit of recall error for people who don't it fill out
  every day, so if they come back after five days out there and
  they're trying to remember exactly what they experienced,
  that's an issue.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Also your point was that on day 1 they
  might only be in the field for half -- in half a day, where the
  other days they're measuring for the ful:.CDSPS159.CDSH 
          I mean, it's the world we live in it, it's what's going
  on.  We're in a very high-pressure -- you know, it is what it
  is.  I mean, it's the same thing when the GCI aircraft went
  down in the Wood-Tikchik area.  It's the first time that the
  director of the NTSB ever came out to an accident, because it
  was such a high profile, and it had a rippling effect
  everywhere.  So, I mean, we're in that game.
          MR. ANDERSON:  I can -- to add to that, there was an
  National Park Service plane with three -- or a contract plane
  with three park service employees on board was lost two weeks
  ago.  The search is scaled back, and they didn't find any clues
  whatsoever.  They had a standdown yesterday, and we're going to
  see some significant changes in our aircraft program here at
  Denali and elsewhere around the region as a result of that. 
  Including we won't be flying on anybody's aircraft that doesn't
  have an AFF capability on it.
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Doesn't have what? 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Automatic flight following capability.
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Every five minutes.
          MR. CUDNEY:  Yep, and that's -- you know, we learn --
  unfortunately we learn.  That's how we -- years ago that's how
  we changed a lot of our safety cultures.  Things happen.  It
  forces you -- propels you into that next level of safety or
  safety culture.
          MS. RUST:  But I think just to add to that, as Greg was
  talking, I think that we have to remind ourselves, and we do in
  our business, that the safety is the first order of business,
  and that we shouldn't feel bad making the decision to fly where
  it's best.  We may have to explain to someone, but that's the
  right choice always. 
          MR. SASSARA:  How can this group engage in the
  conversation around safety when the responsibility rests with
  the pilot?  I mean, ultimately the pilot who is in control of
  the aircraft that day is the -- you know, and is the one that
  we rely upon and who we empower to make those decisions.  I
  mean, what -- I mean, this is sort of an open question, it's
  not leading anywhere for.....
          MS. RUST:  Well, I -- one thing I'd like to answer is
  we create a culture of safety in our organizations, and as we
  sit down and explain the importance of missing Beth Pike's
  house, you know, getting around Ed's house, going here and
  doing this, pilots take that direction, and they take it as
  that's an important thing for us to do.  And at the same time
  they have to balance and always be thinking about the safety of
  their flights.  
          And there are cultures.  I mean, we create that culture
  in our different businesses of what our expectations are.  And
  so it's an organizational thing.  I mean, but it's like that in
  any business.  You have somebody who is working for you
  building, and they can follow certain procedures or not even
  though they're your best practices.
          MR. GEORGE:  So I think the point is there's a lot more
  than just a pilot that goes into that.  It isn't just the
  pilot.  The pilot is always going to be at the scene of the
  accident, unfortunately. 
          LT. COL. BABOS:  First one there.
          MR. GEORGE:  And the pilot does have decision-making
  that they -- and judgment that they have to apply.  But it's
  influenced by a lot of other factors, too.  What the
  government -- how the government regulates things, how the
  companies define and specify.  So it's all of the above.  It
  isn't just the pilots, so I don't think that to hang it on just
  the pilots is.....  
          MR. SASSARA:  No, I didn't.  I'm going in a little
  different place with this, which is I got -- well, I used to
  work for Era, and there was tremendous pressure from the
  customer to cheat.  The oil companies were always pushing Era
  to cheat, you know, and it was like -- it was constant, and you
  could see that you could get put into a situation where you
  were going to -- well, we can be -- Era could do IFR sling
  loads, and so they were always -- the pilot -- the customer
  wants to go as part of the crew so they don't have to pay for
  another flight.  Those kinds of pushing, you know, and I can
  see the customer and the management, you know, and the
  management questioned on Alaska Airlines when it went down off
  of California.  You know, it was the pressure to get to the
  next place, right, so I got it.  
          But how can we influence, or what should the
  conversation be here regarding safety?  Because a lot of times
  we just throw out safety, but we don't go -- we don't really
  analyze what it means and what our responsibilities are here. 
  You know what I mean?  We just -- we put it out there, and a
  lot of times in my business, it's, you know, all the safety,
  safety, safety stuff, but a lot of it is just bullshit
  basically.  They're not really getting into what the root
  causes or -- you know, it's a placebo.  So what -- how can we
  meaningfully -- have a meaningful conversation about safety in
  this thing?  You know, I'm serious. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, I think we are and we continue to
  be -- the point Greg made about geographically where he flies
  is one example of that and where he needs to fly -- oh, my God. 
  That noisy train.  Jeez.  
          (Train in background) 
          MR. GEORGE:  That's a big part of it.  So I think the
  answer is, in fact, it's almost always present and being
  brought up, and one specific example as a -- especially in this
  best practices arena as we're talking about whether or where to
  try and alter behavior and looking at, you know, what this is
  going to do in terms of putting people in a mountain pass that
  doesn't have the room to turn around or whatever.  
          So I guess I am missing the point in terms of what, if
  anything, we need to do different, so..... 
          MR. LAHAIE:  Or are you just saying that you're -- are
  you afraid we just keep throwing out this safety thing when
  it -- or what do we mean by the safety thing? 
          MR. SASSARA:  That's part of it there, and that -- you
  know, I -- and sometimes in my business, safety is an excuse
  not to do something.
          MR. LAHAIE:  Sure.  
          MR. SASSARA:  It's a placebo put in front of it again,
  and not really investigating what it means and how you would
  put up real measures to deal with it.
          MR. LAHAIE:  Right.  Well, I could put together a list
  in my mind of direct things that -- you know, FAA and my
  training, what the aircraft manual says this is what you should
  do.  You full throttle, you full prop, you wind that thing up,
  you scream it down the runway, and you use full power, and I --
  and then I have to come along and say, okay, you can't do that
  all the time, or we can if you have to, but when you're not
  fully loaded, when you have a little leeway, dial your prop
  back.  You know, right after take-off, get that prop back so
  it's going to bring the decibel levels down.  You know, go a
  little wider, do what you can.  But now if they run into the
  trees and they come back and say, my boss told me to wind that
  prop down and I -- you know, so now they're fighting a safety
  checklist which they should be doing versus, oh, I think I
  can -- I'm going to try to be a little quieter today.  If they
  end up in the trees, then, you know.....
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.  
          MR. LAHAIE:  .....then it's -- so I -- but it's -- and
  that's been the toughest thing for me to say, this is really
  important to keep things quiet, but on the other hand, don't
  get into this routine of dialing your prop back so when you
  really need that power you don't use it because you're afraid
  of making to much noise.  
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.  Right.  Yeah, okay. 
          MR. LAHAIE:  And I've heard people say that, say, why
  did you go way over there?  I didn't want to go right over
  headquarters, and they just beat the hell out of themselves and
  their passengers, and it's like, yeah, but, you know, I told
  you, it's a judgment thing that you got to -- so that's the
  tough things, like they don't want to make the noise, but
  sometimes they just have to.  And so how do you -- and
  that's.....
          MR. SASSARA:  Well, I appreciate that.
          MR. LAHAIE:  And, geologically, you know, it's -- all I
  can do is give you the image of, like, surfing.  You know, I
  surf a lot in Hawaii.  You only see the surfers going out in
  one spot, and you see them coming back in the other.  You don't
  see them in anywhere else in the ocean because it's crazy. 
  You're not going to be able to go that way or come back in this
  way.  
          And the same thing with -- you know, sitting there at
  Polychrome, it looks all mountainous to you, why do we have to
  fly right there?  Well, if you're in the air, there's really
  only one smooth way up and smooth way down on a lot of days,
  and it's super dangerous anywhere else.  But you guys can't see
  that.  So that's where we maybe need to show you guys when
  weather gets really humming when it starts blowing more than 30
  knots over the range, there's only a few altitudes and -- you
  know, I look at them as flying columns where I see smooth air. 
  And unfortunately it pulls you right down over the road
  corridor on the latter part of the trip.
          MR. OKONEK:  I think most of us recognize that, and
  what we're trying to come with are when conditions allow, fly
  here.....
          MR. LAHAIE:  Sure.  
          MR. OKONEK:  .....to least impact those on the ground. 
  I'm not -- I don't want to be in an airplane that's flying
  through all the turbulence on the downwind side of the range. 
  I've been there, done that, I have no interest in doing it
  again, and most people here know that.  I don't want to go over
  Kahiltna Pass at 15,000 in the clouds when I can go through at
  13,000 with lots of visibility, you know.  
          We're not trying to force planes to fly where it's
  unsafe, but we're trying to figure out a way that people can go
  on scenic flights, enjoy the park, and people can have a good
  experience on the ground and manage the uses, so.....
          MR. LAHAIE:  And I think in general that's what's
  happens, and I really see even operators who I thought
  originally they weren't really jumping on board, I see almost
  everybody doing a great job of really working to stay away from
  the sensitive areas.
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  And I think it's been a -- yeah, I
  think it's definitely starting to work.  People are seeing
  that, wow, we have impacts; whether I agree with it not, I'm
  going to try to operate accordingly and -- yeah. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Well, I think the other part of it is the
  general public that hasn't been sitting through these kind of
  meetings, you know, part of the education process is with the
  public to get them to understand that -- you know, that there
  are some suggested ways to go about doing business, but that
  safety does trump that, and that, you know, if there is some
  extra noise somewhere or if you're -- you know, if you're not
  where you think you -- where you think you're going to be going
  that it's, you know, probably okay.
          MR. SASSARA:  How big do you think this business is
  going to be with the flightseeing in 50 years?  
          MR. CUDNEY:  What's that? 
          MR. SASSARA:  How big is this business or this -- you
  know, the commercialization of the air over Denali going to be
  in 50 years?
          MR. CUDNEY:  I -- well, I can't speak for
  everybody.....
          MR. SASSARA:  I mean, what do you guys think that's
  going to -- what's the future state?
          MR. CUDNEY:  We need to see -- I mean, speaking from --
  we need to see a pretty substantial economic turnaround.  We're
  not going to be where we were in the early -- in the late
  nineties and the early -- pre-9/11.  I mean, and, you know,
  everything costs more.  Our economy is still struggling, and
  I.....
          MR. SASSARA:  But that's a short -- that's a short --
  these are -- this is like happening in this next quarter type
  stuff.  I mean, it's like saying -- it's like the oil argument,
  well, the price of crude today.  Well, who cares?  We're
  looking at here.  So, I mean, what do you think? 
          MR. CUDNEY:  Well, let me.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, actually, just -- Joan just sort of
  looked at the -- we've got to be careful we don't get too.....
          MR. SASSARA:  I'm sorry, all right. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  It's a great discussion and maybe we
  should put it on the agenda for another time.
          MR. CUDNEY:  It's a very good point.  
          MS. GIBERT:  But it's a very good thing. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  But I want to say something real quick
  here before we get.....
          MS. GIBERT:  I'm going to make a note. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  About a month ago there was a considerable
  amount of air activity in the backcountry, Paul, and help me
  where they were looking for that lost hiker?  What area was
  that? 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Oh, out at Eielson. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  Okay.  
          MR. ANDERSON:  Yeah.  
          MR. CUDNEY:  So there was a considerable amount of
  activity out there, and I respect the park service, and
  obviously we have a -- I think a pretty good rapport, and I
  called and offered some gratis flight time and talked to
  dispatch, and basically they said, you know, we appreciate it,
  but there's already aircraft there.  And I said, fine, if
  there's too many aircraft there, I don't want to be there,
  because there's a lot of activity going on.  So obviously we
  put safety as a platform, and, you know, here -- I don't know,
  gosh, how long the poor guy was missing, but you spent a fair
  amount of resources.  
          It's the same thing that happened three years ago when
  the young gals from Princess got lost, and a tremendous amount
  of resource where we did get involved, and we got involved in
  it as much as we legally could to help them without going, you
  know, through the government hoops to have an actual government
  employee -- park service employee on board.  But there was a
  tremendous amount of resources going out, but at the same time,
  you know, safety was never ever, ever, ever sacrificed or
  jeopardized.  
          Same thing in all of our flights, you know, whether
  it's a weather minimum or whether it's just, you know, product
  integrity.  There's a lot of days that we can fly, but if we
  can't show people something, it's like, what are we doing?  Why
  are we going out?  And, obviously, you can balance the two
  between quality of product and, like, well, okay, we're going
  to make revenue, you know, because we got to go, go, go, and we
  all suffered that this year.  
          So I think I compliment everybody that we still don't
  lose focus of a safety culture.  And everybody does it
  different.  You know, Denali Air will on a lot of days, but I
  won't fly because they'll fly higher and they may punch out of
  the clouds, which I don't.  But it's also -- you know, it's --
  we all hold our safety culture as the number one platform of
  priority to operate in this business and to survive, because if
  we start having wrecks, we won't be sitting in this room.  I
  guarantee you I won't be sitting in this room; we'll be done. 
  So anyhow, there.  Sorry. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Madam chair, I'd like to suggest that we
  move the Kantishna visit report up ahead of other things just
  so we -- I mean, part of this meeting to me is we're kind of
  bringing ourselves up to speed and.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, and it's already almost 4:00. 
          MR. GEORGE:  .....that's an element -- I think it's
  more important to hear that than it is to go over our
  brainstorming list.
          MS. GIBERT:  You think so?  Okay.  
          MS. BALE:  Is that okay by you?
          SPEAKER:  It's okay.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  Okay.  
          MS. BALE:  We have to do a little tech stuff first. 
  (Discussion regarding technical/lighting issues)
          MS. BALE:  So we're sure that we want to do this rather
  than consider the brainstorming list?  Because I could
  certainly do this at the beginning of the next meeting. 
          MR. GEORGE:  No, no.  We need to hear it now. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Let's hear it, Nancy.
          MS. BALE:  Uh-huh.  Because I don't -- I never did get
  in touch with airport manager from out there, so, you know,
  some of those issues, you know, and maybe Paul would be able to
  give us some intelligence.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Oh, who's the airport manager at
  Kantishna.....
          MS. BALE:  Oh, here we go. 
          MR. GEORGE:  .....for Kantishna? 
          MS. BALE:  It's coming on.  
          MR. GEORGE:  You've got him in the room here, Nancy. 
          MS. BALE:  Huh?  I've got who?  Paul? 
          MR. GEORGE:  You've got the airport manager.  
          MS. BALE:  Well, actually I've got the little AirNav
  Web site that says that the airport manager is somebody from
  DOT. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, a minor problem. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Well, that's just a -- we won't deal
  with that. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, we don't want to go there.  It's
  Paul.
          (Discussion regarding technical issues)
          I just wanted to -- I ran into some guides in
  Kantishna, and I asked them -- I told them when the overflights
  meeting was going to be, and they just gave me some input,
  which isn't directly related to Kantishna.  Now, should I just
  save that input for the next meeting, because it deals with
  hiking in the core of the park, the midzone, you know.  So
  maybe it isn't -- it's input I gathered in Kantishna, but it's
  not about.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, start with Kantishna and then
  migrate out.
          MS. BALE:  Okay.  We might get it.  Okay.  So this is
  kind of interesting.  I spent three days in Kantishna, and one
  day was my day to kind of do a soundscape walkabout, and that
  was the 28th.  I landed on the 27th, and Tuesday, I think it
  was, the 28th, I took an eight-mile hike, and I'll show you
  where I went.  
          Let's see, this is the best one to show you on.  You're
  just going to have to pardon my Pentium III processor.  It just
  takes awhile to load everything up.  I think it will get faster
  as it goes.  Okay.  Here we go.  Good. 
          I just wanted to show you on this map, because we can
  zoom in to the area where I was.  And for anybody who doesn't
  know, those red zones are some lines that Joan and I and
  Amanda Smith developed for common hiking zones.  And where I
  went was in unit 42, and it's a fairly hiking zone, also.  I
  need to get on the other side here.  
          MR. GEORGE:  Do you want a pointer? 
          MS. BALE:  Oh, yeah, do you have a pointer?  
          MR. GEORGE:  Right there. 
          MS. BALE:  Great.  Then I won't have to move back and
  forth between the keys.  
          MR. GEORGE:  The button in the middle is the light
  sabre. 
          MS. BALE:  Is this yours, Tom? 
          SPEAKER:  Don't touch that one. 
          MS. BALE:  The middle button, okay.  
          So, you know, there's a lot of -- actually, the park
  service Web site has a great little planning your hike for
  units 41, 2, and 3.  And I believe all three of those zones,
  41, 2, and 3 are a 12-person, 12-party max.  And people, of
  course, come out the park road and get off on the Kantishna
  bus -- I think there's three or four shuttle buses to Kantishna
  a day.  Not the tour.  I think there's at least three a day to
  Kantishna.   
          They get off that, and they walk up either -- you know,
  they can walk up Moose Creek like this and go up into the
  Spruce Creek drainage.  That's a common one.  Or go up
  Glen Creek.  You can't drink the water, though.  And actually
  there's a big warning on the park Web site about that.  People
  used to walk through Camp Denali and go up onto the ridge
  behind camp, but of course, that's discouraged, but people I
  think still do it to a degree.  You can go up Quigley Ridge,
  which is right here.  And Wickersham is -- Wickersham Dome is
  right here, and then you can walk on the road that
  Sonny Kragness built back toward Yellow Creek, and you can
  visit all the way out to Mount Kankone, if you have two or
  three days.  So those are common hikes.    
          Then you can also stop here by where North Face Lodge
  is and go up the back of Mount Busia, or Busia as some people
  call it, and then up and around Mount Brooker.  Very pretty. 
  Or you can walk down to the mouth of the Muddy on the other
  side and come back via the campground.  Those are all really
  fun, and great hikes and good views, and pretty much treeless,
  very brushy some of them, but pretty much treeless, so, you
  know, you're exposed to the elements, and wind and water are
  the big elements of your natural soundscape.  
          And then the airport is right about where the A of
  Kantishna is, right, Greg?  Or a little bit further up?  Yeah. 
  So that's where it is.  And a southern take-off kind of goes
  through a little bit of a narrow valley and then out this way. 
  And then I know a lot of the times Greg takes off and goes
  around the other side of Mount Brooker.  
          So those are the -- so what I did was, I was staying at
  Camp Denali, which is just north of Moose Creek here, and I
  walked up on the camp ridge and walked to the high point of the
  camp ridge.  And then I crossed the headwaters of Eureka Creek
  and went over to the Yellow Creek Road and walked down to the
  Quigley Ridge and came down and walked back to camp that way. 
  So it was a pretty big tour. 
          And now I'll show you what happened on it.  Uh-oh,
  there we go.  I called it my Kantishna day of listening.  And I
  was going to do it all three days, but then I got to blueberry
  picking, and I was kind of listening while I picked, but, you
  know, I just decided this was the only day where I really kept
  reasonable track.  
          And Jared gave me these great five-minute by
  five-minute sound listening, and he gives you a little key so
  you can put numbers of the various sources of sound that you
  heard.  And I listened for 15 minutes.  So mainly from the
  A-frame at camp, the main sounds that I heard were the creek
  below 21, which is the wind, 28, which was insects, and 40,
  which was natural other/unknown.   
          I did hear a bus one time.  That was when I was down at
  the Kantishna airstrip.  I had -- at the Kantishna airstrip for
  my listening, I had water sounds, which was Moose Creek again,
  bird sounds, twittering birds of various kinds, and it wasn't
  in the high point of bird sound, but they were still singing,
  insects, which was mosquitoes and gnats, the wind, and then
  there was a bus that came through on the way down to where it
  stops near.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Nancy, that was 15 minutes of
  concentrated listening like we did with Jared here a year or so
  ago?
          MS. BALE:  Yeah.  Actually it was 10 minutes.  I only
  took 10 minutes.  And the sounds of my hands slapping
  mosquitoes was the other thing.  
          So, anyway, this is my eight-mile hike.  I experienced
  eight motorized noise intrusions during approximately eight
  hours of hiking.  And two of them -- two of the prop planes
  were more in the morning.  There were three jets that was
  high-altitude jets like Alaska Airlines or whatever, and there
  was one military aircraft that I just -- I thought I heard some
  afterburner noise.  I was at the top of the camp ridge, and I
  just heard this whoosh, and then it disappeared, but there was
  a lot of wind, so they weren't.....  
          MR. GEORGE:  Did you see it?
          MS. BALE:  .....they weren't strafing Moose Creek or
  anything like that.  And, of course, the two periods of
  attentive listening that I just described, and the natural
  ambient could be described by the following words:  People was
  a part of my natural ambient, some bird and insect sounds, rain
  part of the day, water and -- that was Moose Creek mainly, and
  wind.  
          And just as part of some other indicators of the
  backcountry unit that I was in, I encountered two overnight
  camping parties, and one day hiking party.  And there were no
  signs of campsite disturbance or human waste, but there were
  some signs that humans had lived there, because there was that
  road that Sonny built, there were signs of mining that you
  could see here and there, tailing piles, and the Red Top Mine
  building was kind of falling down, and a gate that Paul Scheer
  put up on Red Top Mine Road to close during hunting season if
  he could, and various other types of human signs, but there
  wasn't waste or trash, which was great.  
          The trails have been formed along the ridgelines, and I
  have a couple of pictures to show how social trails have formed
  along that ridge behind Camp Denali, and I worked there
  starting in 1974, and social trails were not on top of that
  ridge at that time, but there have been a lot of people walking
  on that ridge since then, but still the overwhelming appearance
  of that ridge above camp is that it's wild. 
          So the backcountry standards for this unit, let's go
  and.....
          MR. GEORGE:  You mentioned that you heard a bus?
          MS. BALE:  Yes.  
          MR. GEORGE:  Wouldn't that be a motorized intrusion?
          MS. BALE:  Oh, okay.  
          MR. GEORGE:  You're picking on us airplanes again. 
          MS. BALE:  Let me put that in there.  One bus.  I saw a
  bus and didn't hear it, too, one time.  
          MR. ANDERSON:  What color was it? 
          MS. BALE:  Green.  They don't bring the yellow buses
  out there.  What was its tail number?  
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  It was a white Navajo.
          MS. BALE:  So anyway, just to go over, we've all seen
  this before.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Nancy, and what was the weather that
  day as far as flying?
          MS. BALE:  It was partly cloudy.  I'll show you some
  pictures. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Oh, okay. 
          MS. BALE:  As you know -- well, maybe you don't know,
  when the Backcountry Management Plan was going into effect, the
  park service originally wanted to have Kantishna be a red zone,
  which is really a high -- I'm having a hard time pulling this
  down.  
          MS. GIBERT:  That's okay, we can see that.  That's
  good.  
          MS. BALE:  Okay.  Anyway they wanted to have Kantishna
  be red like these ones that -- this is basically where there is
  expected to be some surface noise from snow machines, and here
  is for aircraft.  And we argued -- we, DCC, the local
  environmental folks, argued that we didn't think that Kantishna
  was yet a red zone, which allows, you know, high levels of
  human encounters and high levels of unnatural sound
  disturbance.  
          And we didn't think that it should -- we thought that
  we should make every attempt to keep Kantishna a blue area,
  because the vision for Kantishna is not the same as the vision
  for the east end of the park.  It's for a more quiet
  recreational experience, a more quiet lodge experience where
  you feel like you're enveloped by the wilderness, you know,
  even though it's not in the strict Big W wilderness, you are
  very close to Big W wilderness there at Wonder Lake.  
          And where you are is -- the character of the lands,
  apart from the damage from mining, which now is being grown
  over by alders and other various brush piles and so forth;
  aside from that, it's still a pretty natural setting.  So we
  argued for that, and the park service bought our argument, so
  that means it is the medium or Area B sound disturbance.  So
  now we'll just go there and have a look and see what that is
  going to look like.  
          That's B here, right?  So here is trail and campsite
  disturbance, low; encounters with people is medium, and so on. 
  So those are -- that's the standard for B which is blue.  So to
  actually get the indicators, it is this one.  Descriptors. 
  Okay.  Let's see.  Maybe this isn't the one.  Okay.  I probably
  can get it from my backcountry book.
          MR. GEORGE:  What are you looking for?  Just the
  parameters?
          MS. BALE:  On my hike, were the standards violated?  So
  in B, the natural sound disturbance is defined as medium, and
  so the maximum number of natural sound disturbances per day
  that are allowed is 10, and I had 8.  I can't speak to the
  dBAs, because I didn't have a dBA meter.  And the maximum
  percent audible per hour is 15 percent at the hour for
  non-natural sounds.  And I think that on my hike that day, I
  didn't exceed those standards.  
          The only other standard that I paid attention to was
  encounters with people.  And on the medium zone, the encounters
  per day is supposed to be two.  So I had three encounters.  One
  encounter was with a rather large group of Camp Denali hikers,
  and the other two encounters were with backpackers that had
  gotten off the shuttle bus and were hiking up Quigley Ridge. 
  So I actually partially exceeded that on that trip, so that's
  just, you know, something to be aware of.  And we'll just.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Did you sense that that was.....
          MS. BALE:  I think it's a common occurrence, I think
  probably.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, but did that seem like that was too
  many -- more than you wanted to see, or was that -- did that
  bother you that you saw three?  
          MS. BALE:  No.  
          MS. GIBERT:  No, okay. 
          MS. BALE:  That's Camp Denali, so you can go by pretty
  fast.  They had harebell out there then, so I was taking
  pictures of flowers, too.  You can see it's brushy with some
  trees, mostly open tundra.  We'll get to some scenic pictures
  soon.  The whitish gentian was out, which was -- is quite a
  beautiful late-season flower.  This is looking out toward the
  north.  This is the Quigley Ridge Road with Paul's gate.  
          There's the Kantishna airstrip.  It's 1,800 feet, Greg
  informed me.  And there is Kantishna Air.  There's cones across
  the Quigley Ridge Road because they're putting -- they were
  putting new culverts in, and I'm assuming that's all done now. 
  Yeah.  
          There's the biggest blueberry in the world.  And that's
  Fannie Quigley's cabin.  That's the destination for the
  Kantishna experience, which is a tour that was instituted a
  couple of years ago.  One of the hiking routes that goes up
  between backcountry lodge.  This is looking up the road from
  the airstrip area up to Greg's areas.  This is looking toward
  Wonder Lake from the A-frame at Camp Denali, and then going up
  the ridge above Camp Denali.   
          So that was my stills of the trip.  I have some video
  also.  But I just wanted to show you something else I found
  that I thought was pretty cool.  I went up on this Web site
  called AirNav, and you can find out information about
  airstrips.  So I looked up the Kantishna airstrip, the Stampede
  airstrip, and the McKinley Park airstrip on those, and it gives
  you sort of general information about each one in the form of a
  Web site, and then you can contact whoever you need to contact
  if you have -- to get more information using that.  
          And then I put up a little time line about aviation on
  the north side.  I found out some interesting things looking
  back through Bill Brown's History of the park book, and then
  Frank Norris's two-part book on the administrative history of
  the park, which is a great book.  It's two volumes.  It has a
  lot of history of the superintendents throughout park history,
  what they did, what the policies of the park were, what the
  infrastructure growth was, aviation, just a whole lot of
  information and some good old pictures that my friend
  Jane Bryant helped them to collect, so.....
          MS. GIBERT:  While this is loading, on the -- when you
  mentioned the -- when you did your -- it was eight hours you
  were hiking, you had four -- it was like four prop planes?  
          MS. BALE:  Uh-huh.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Were those all landing/take-off, or were
  any of those just kind flying by? 
          MS. BALE:  They were pretty much planes that I think
  were associated with the Kantishna airstrip, and they were both
  going toward the mountain and coming back from it.  And one of
  them that I heard was going through the canyon south, you know,
  kind of over Busia Mountain.  The other one I didn't hear, it
  might have been going around Mount Brooker.  
          So this is the AirNav.com site.  I'm sure many of you
  are aware of this.  There's probably a whole lot of other sites
  that talk about airports, but let's see about ownership here,
  let's -- or managership.  It says State of Alaska DOT.  
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  The park service and the State of
  Alaska are in.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah. 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  .....professional
  disagreement.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, they both claim it, and they've just
  worked out a management scene and left the dispute aside. 
          MS. BALE:  And then is this fellow, Jay, the person of
  interest for.....
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Yeah, he's the main contact,
  although I think he's just retired.  There's no new manager. 
          MS. BALE:  So that's basically -- you know, basic
  information, no amenities, here you go, 1,800 feet.  And then
  the Stampede strip was also listed as 1,800, and I think the
  park strip here is listed at 3,600.  Does that sound right to
  you folks who use it?  The McKinley strip here? 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Yeah.  
          MS. BALE:  Another interesting thing that you may not
  be aware of is that there was another airstrip out Kantishna
  way years ago that was on the south side of Moose Creek not too
  far from where North Face Lodge is now.  Let's see what it
  says, how long this strip is.  3,000 they say, but, you know,
  your ownership is uncontested on this one, Paul.
          MR. SASSARA:  Tom, is that a Web site that's utilized? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Pardon me? 
          MR. SASSARA:  Is that a Web site that's utilized from
  aviation -- in our -- aren't you?
          MR. GEORGE:  I mean, some people would look at it, but
  there's a government.....
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Yeah, AirNav, it's very popular.
          MR. GEORGE:  There's a government site that provides
  the same kind of information that's the actual official one
  that's.....
          MR. YORKE:  And the salmon has got it all in there. 
  It's one of the eggs. 
          MS. BALE:  And I thought you might like to see Greg's
  site since I did some research with Greg and he wad kind enough
  to answer some questions for me, and I know we had been going
  to talk a little bit about flightseeing routes and such like,
  so I'm not sure that this is going to capture it, but he does
  have a map on his Web site that shows all of his routes.  And
  this may be updatable, Greg.  You're the one who is here to
  tell us whether there may be some changes that you've made, or
  because of weather this summer you flew differently, but that's
  basically..... 
          MR. LAHAIE:  Yeah, those are all the proposed.  That's
  perfect weather flying routes.  That's where we try to go.  But
  it was varied quite a bit.
          MS. BALE:  Yeah.  And Greg was very kind to answer some
  questions that I posed to him, so I'll just read you his
  answers, and he's here to change any of them he might wish to. 
  I asked him how long the strip was, how long have you been
  operating as an aviation business in Kantishna?  1992 was my
  first year flying privately in it as a business, and flew
  privately in and out of there since '87.  Moved into the new
  facility that you saw in that slide in the summer of 2001.  
          He's not aware of any other commercial operators that
  have operated out of Kantishna.  I understand that Don Sheldon
  might have brought climbers over in the old days to climb the
  Muldrow Route, and then we know Lowell Thomas was helping out
  at Camp Denali periodically in the eighties. 
          MR. LAHAIE:  I mean, Jim Okonak was in there.  I think
  all the operators dropped folks off now and again, but no one
  actually operated out of it.
          MR. GEORGE:  From there. 
          MS. BALE:  From the airstrip.  And as far as the pace
  of growth in Kantishna, he said there were slow increases in
  use of the airstrip from 1992 to 1998, and fairly steady to
  stable since.  The lodges have added rooms and humans, but
  growth has ended and I don't expect any great increases. 
          The state maintained it through mid to the late
  nineties, then signed an agreement to disagree as to ownership
  but let NPS take on maintenance.  Not sure of their agreement. 
  Brushing has been done by NPS crews and local concerns when
  needed.  FAA came out and studied the airstrip for improvement
  in 2002, spent loads of money studying it, and did not improve
  it.  It was an all-out full upgrade to state standards or not
  at all with local NPS opposition to large upgrades.  They left
  it as it was.  NPS maintains the state might pitch in funds. 
  We get visits from the state and federal highways folks, and
  Brad Evoll (ph) is a contact for that.  
          And I asked him what percentage use the Kantishna
  airstrip has, and he gave me these figures.  Of course, they're
  approximate.  85 percent Kantishna Air, about 8 percent NPS, 5
  percent private, and 2 percent Talkeetna or other commercial
  operators. 
          How many days or what percentage of days in an average
  season are no-fly days, and Greg said two to five days a season
  is the max.  It's unusual to have weather or smoke so bad we
  cannot fly some time during a normal day.  
          Some of the challenges facing Kantishna: winds, short
  field, the trees, and approaches have been open and improved
  over the years, so that has added a high degree of safety.  We
  operate conservatively when winds are a problem.  We bump
  passengers and lighten our loads.  Very few public airports in
  Alaska are under 3,000 feet long.  The state still lists
  Kantishna as one of the few hazardous airstrips, and it says so
  on the map.  This keeps many from not landing there.  Plus,
  many pilots state that when they call NPS for information,
  they're told that the public is not allowed to land in
  Kantishna.  
          How many of the above patterns of aviation demand and
  use at Kantishna have changed over the years?  Stable patterns
  and demands in terms of the use of Kantishna Air, NPS, and
  private. 
          What changes and use patterns do you see or anticipate
  in the next years?  I see the inevitable pattern of increased
  cost reflected in higher pricing, and allowing only the
  privileged being able to afford to fly in and around the park. 
  Tour operators and hotels are seeing us as a great opportunity
  for large commission incomes, boosting their prices 30 percent
  higher than they need to be.  Higher prices should dampen
  growth, though; operators might be able to fly less and make
  more.  
          And long-range challenges according to Greg are global
  warming is effecting the volatility of weather patterns, winds
  and forecast conditions, making it more challenging to plan for
  alternates or having to divert while in flight due to
  unforecast conditions.  The weather patterns around the area
  and the mountain are very unstable and change more than ever,
  quicker than ever.  After 25 years of flying here, I thought I
  was getting good at understanding the weather, but it is
  getting more difficult every year, although the weather
  products we use have gotten much better, i.e. maps, satellite
  images, weather cams, remote WX stations, and so on.  
          So thanks, Greg, for all that great information.  And
  what I'd like to do is get in touch with the state guy and
  maybe have him come to the next meeting and talk to us if
  there's any issues about maintenance, or just talk to him
  offline and come to you guys and give a report next time. 
          MS. RUST:  I just want to add something, just a
  perspective.  We used to go into Kantishna a lot until the park
  service told us that we took visitors -- actually, Jim started
  way back when, but we took visitors to the lodge, and then we
  took climbers.  Do you remember?  Yeah, we went in there a good
  bit.  You probably saw us a lot more probably, what, five years
  ago.  And then the park service -- we'll have to remember this,
  Paul.  Do you remember? 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Yeah, the 1996 -- or.....
          MS. RUST:  What year? 
          MR. ANDERSON:  .....the 2006 backcountry plans froze
  commercial use at Kantishna at current levels. 
          MS. RUST:  Yeah.  So that it was saying that we
  couldn't -- we could only do so many landings there.  And then
  come to find out, because land there was any of the backcountry
  lodges' clients, and we weren't limited, but we weren't told
  that for about -- so it took us about two years to figure it
  out.  
          So, I mean, that certainly -- I mean, it was something
  that we did very regularly and flew over, and it -- I see more
  interest -- some interest in it now, people flying into
  Kantishna flying from our site.  But it certainly has changed
  just because we told people we couldn't take them.  And it was
  just a need to clarify what the park service was saying; is
  that right, Paul?
          MR. ANDERSON:  Well, you had 12 flights, 12 landings
  for the season which you didn't use from that period forward,
  from 2006 on.  You didn't use 12 landings a year and haven't
  used 12 landings a year since then, which is for commercial
  purposes, not related to access to inholdings.  There is no
  limit on the number of flights for access to inholdings.
          MS. RUST:  That was the thing, we just -- but we
  started telling people who were going to inholdings, you know,
  into the lodges, that we couldn't take them.  So that -- and it
  just made it that.....
          MR. ANDERSON:  Yeah, that's not the case.
          MS. RUST:  That we didn't.....
          MR. ANDERSON:  You have -- you can take them to
  their.....
          MS. RUST:  What I'm saying is we told people. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Okay.  
          MS. RUST:  When we had the misunderstanding, we told
  people we couldn't take them, and that was for a couple of --
  it took us about a year to sort it out.  
          MR. ANDERSON:  To figure it out, yeah. 
          MS. RUST:  It took us -- so definitely there was -- I
  guess it's just a perspective that we were in there more often
  back, you know, a number of years ago. 
          MS. BALE:  Well, I was surprised that Greg had named
  that NPS use of this strip is only 8 percent because of total
  percentage use, because when Guy was here last meeting, it
  seemed to -- from the maps that he showed us, it seemed the
  park service used the Kantishna strip a lot for things like
  refueling, especially if they were doing fire studies.  But is
  it just sporadic like it occurs like a big push for maybe a
  week and then nothing for a long time?
          MR. LAHAIE:  Yeah.  Or wildlife surveys are run for two
  or three days, and then you don't see another park plane for a
  week and a half. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah.  Remember those maps that we saw
  were aggregated over an entire season, so.....
          MS. BALE:  Yes.  Right.  But they did seem to focus in
  on using the Stampede airstrip or.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Oh, or at Kantishna. 
          MR. LAHAIE:  And it might be more than that.  I mean,
  there's a lot of work being done out there with (indiscernible)
  this year that -- you know, but if you do the number of
  landings and take-offs and then in comparison, I think they're
  supposed to be low.  
          MR. CUDNEY:  There actually is a fair amount of demand
  for folks that want to go to the Kantishna area and do not want
  to take the bus, because they call us all winter long.  Of
  course, we can't do anything, but it surprises me, they don't
  want to dedicate that time because they just want to get to
  that location.  And, of course, there's the opposite when they
  need to come out in a hurry they're just taking the bus.  So
  it's.....
          MS. BALE:  Well, what we're told, and Greg clarified
  this for me, is people will often fly in and bus out, or
  they'll bus in and fly out.  So that's getting to be -- and
  that type of access, is that maybe a newer thing?  Or has there
  always been a demand for people who bus out? 
          MR. LAHAIE:  There's always been demand, it's just 
  there hasn't been the buses in Kantishna.  That's a fairly new
  addition.
          MS. BALE:  Yeah.  Well, and then the inholders with
  their day tours.
          MR. LAHAIE:  Right.  
          MS. BALE:  Have they utilized your service for a long,
  long time? 
          MR. LAHAIE:  Yeah.  
          MS. RUST:  I want to just add, I did a flight with
  Greg, and actually I flew in one day and then came out on the
  bus, and it was just great.  I mean, it was a great experience. 
  I thought -- I mean, I was -- one, I was impressed with their
  operation, but I was really impressed with the product, because
  I thought, wow, this is great.  I mean, what a great trip to
  come in, see it from this perspective, and then to see it, you
  know, on the road.  And I was toting a bunch of kids, and
  they -- I mean, it was great.  
          MS. BALE:  Well, my general impression, going to
  Kantishna -- and I've been there, I have -- the first time I
  was in Kantishna was in -- way back in '72, I think.  And
  although the infrastructure, the built environment out there
  has changed quite a lot, I was happy on this hike.  Whenever I
  go out there now, I feel like it's going to be noisy, there's
  going to be people all over because, from my viewpoint, it has
  changed a tremendous amount in the, what, 40 years that I've
  been going there.  
          But I found it -- to go up above camp and make that
  long hike around, I was pretty sleepy, and, you know, as we saw
  with, what is it now, 9 or 10 motorized intrusions, I guess
  we're just about at level for that management unit, if you
  include the two-bus things -- well, one of the buses, though, I
  didn't hear, I just saw it, but -- so 9 is still under the 10
  intrusions that are allowed in a medium, so -- you know, and
  the percent time audible for non-natural sounds, that was
  probably within that 15 percent window.  And, of course, I
  don't know about ambient. 
          One thing is that if you're up at the top of
  Eureka Creek looking down toward Kantishna and a plane takes
  off and they're going down through the canyon, not going around
  Brooker, you're going to hear them for a couple -- maybe even
  three minutes before they go out of your earshot.  
          But, you know, I think that that one metric that Andrew
  mentioned to us about how loud it is may be more meaningful to
  you when you're hiking in the backcountry, at least when you're
  hiking.  When you're camped in your tent, then perhaps the
  number of intrusions would also be meaningful, speaking as a
  backpacker.  But when you're hiking and kind of breathing hard
  and making your own little noise, I think the loudness of the
  non-natural sounds is more important to you than the number. 
          But, anyway, I did this little north side aviation time
  line.  It's not complete, but I just wanted to see -- I looked
  in through all those books that I mentioned, when did it start,
  what did it look like?  So in the 1920s, actually, there were a
  bunch of prospects in areas of the park that don't have strips
  in them now.  One of the most important one was Copper
  Mountain, which is now Mount Eielson, and there was an airstrip
  there.  And quite a lot of ore got taken out of Copper
  Mountain.  
          In 1925 through '27, the road commission completes the
  600-foot airstrip on the south side of Moose Creek near the
  present location of North Face Lodge.  So that's -- you can
  still see a little line on the tundra that reflects that strip. 
  It's a nice flat place to land, or more or less flat.  
          In the 1930s, flightseers from Fairbanks began to use
  the McKinley route, and they didn't land necessarily, but they
  flew from Fairbanks and flew around the mountain.  And the
  gravel strip at Savage Camp at the east end of the park was
  established and provided the concession-operated tours out of
  there, and that was quite an extensive gravel strip.  I don't
  know if any of you have been out to the Savage River on this
  trip, or intend to go, you can drive that far, there's a new
  rest stop on your left, and there's a road access to that rest
  stop, and there's a small structure there and restrooms, and
  that's at the site of the Savage Camp.  So the airstrip was
  down in that area.  
          And then in '32, the Carpe/Koven expedition used air
  transport and glacier landings for the first time.  And also
  the local entrepreneur, Maurice Moreno, who had the Moreno
  Roadhouse, built a 700-foot airstrip near the railroad depot,
  forbearer of the present park strip. 
          In '35, one of the earliest aerial surveys of park
  wildlife was performed by Superintendent Harry Liek and game
  warden pilot Sam White.  And that Liek is spelled wrong there. 
  I think my spell check went in and took his name and made it
  into "like."  But it's actually L-i-e-k.  
          In 1940, the inception of air patrols over the park's
  remote section, so the park's been using aviation for science
  ever since day one.  
          In '38, the park road was completed by the Alaska Road
  Commission extending 90 miles to a point north of Kantishna,
  and already there were airstrips out here to service mines, but
  the end of the road then became -- began to become the
  Kantishna Airstrip.  
          In the forties and fifties is when glacier landings,
  especially on the south side began in earnest, and when
  Brad Washburn did a lot of his work off glaciers, and when the
  Stampede airstrip was constructed by Earl Pilgrim to move ore
  out of his mine.  
          And in 1943, the Army engineers enlarged the Moreno
  strip to 3,400 feet.  Now, it's interesting they say that's
  only 3,000 feet now, so I'm not sure about the discrepancy,
  but..... 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  I wonder if the park road took
  some of it?  
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  I bet it did.  
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Yeah, they had to go around north
  side of it. 
          MS. BALE:  Yeah, that's possible.  Yeah.  In '54,
  Don Sheldon made the first commercial flight from Talkeetna to
  the Kahiltna and -- you know, so how many years is that?  56
  years. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yep. 
          MS. BALE:  Right.  In '66, a 1,300-foot airstrip is
  constructed along Glen Creek, which is east of -- where the
  park road crosses Moose Creek, it's east and up the creek about
  six miles.  And the Kantishna strip was widened and lengthened
  at that time and then in 2002 the State of Alaska developed
  this Kantishna Airport Master Plan, but the controversy ended
  and its being shelved.  And I looked all over the Internet for
  a copy of that master plan, and all I found was references to
  it, but I suppose there's a copy somewhere on a park service
  shelf? 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  I have a copy of it. 
          MS. BALE:  Do you?  Oh, I'd be interested in looking at
  that. 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  It's a great big, expensive
  beautiful volume.  It's really neat.
          MR. GEORGE:  The state DOT probably has it in
  Fairbanks, too.
          MS. BALE:  So that's all about my day of listening and
  my little research on Kantishna.  I've got some video, but, you
  know, I don't know if you really want to watch it.  It's just
  jumpy little video from my push-here-dummy camera, so -- I took
  a picture of a plane landing at the airstrip, but, you know,
  like I said.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, we better see that at least.
          MS. BALE:  Okay.  Let's see here.  It will make you
  airsick just watching it.  Oh, this is a nice -- you know, one
  thing I really love about Kantishna -- and this is going to
  take forever to load in my old Pentium III -- is the
  ridgelines, and the wonderful expansive views.  Let's see, I
  wonder if I'm going to be able to make that big.  Okay.  Come
  on now.  There we go. 
          And so I was up on the ridge behind Camp Denali, and,
  you know, this is a day that Greg was able to fly.  Probably a
  lot of days looked like this this summer, didn't they?  
          MR. LAHAIE:  Uh-huh.  
          MS. BALE:  But there were a lot of holes, and I really
  actually like these kind of days because you get that great
  curtain.  This is Moose Creek, but looking up toward Glen
  Creek, you have to keep going and going before you see it.  And
  then this is the social trails that have formed in the last 30
  years there on top of that ridge.  It's used commonly by Camp
  Denali, you know, once or twice a week.  They take groups of 8,
  10 people up there.  And then if you hike all the way up, you
  get to that little bump at the very top, and then you could go
  down the back, and Glacier Peak there is in the distance, and
  the headwaters of Eureka Creek are there in the distance, so
  you go out down the back and, you know, take a big old hike. 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  You had some of the better weather
  this summer. 
          MS. BALE:  I thought -- I was very happy with the
  weather I had while I was there.  Yeah, very happy with it. 
  Now, let's see, and I'll just show you a picture of the
  Yellow Creek Road, and the back side of Eureka Creek.  There's
  Mount Brooker right there, and the airstrip is tucked down
  below it, and Wickersham Dome there.  And you can see -- can
  you see the road, the old Red Top Mine Road there?  It's just a
  little kind of.....
          MR. GEORGE:  On the right. 
          MS. BALE:  .....comma on the ridgeline of
  Wickersham Dome right there.  So I was up on top here, and then
  I hiked to my right, and then down that road, and then
  Quigley Ridge goes down into the creek.  And then there was a
  plane going over then, so I was trying to see it, so -- we
  don't need to keep going with this one.  And then here's an
  airplane landing at the strip. 
          Now, I was picking berries at the time, so I was
  fumbling around with my berry bucket, and I'm making excuses
  for myself, it's pretty jumpy here in the beginning.  There is
  a friend of mine, Louise Gallup, had an old mining claim on
  Friday Creek, which is right before the airstrip, and so I'm up
  on the kind of flat place right next to her cabin, and there's
  a piece of the creek you can see, that kind of silvery stuff
  coming through.  And the wind was blowing a little bit.  Do you
  know who that is, Greg?  
          MR. LAHAIE:  That's one of ours.  I can't tell.
          MS. BALE:  Uh-huh.  So, anyway, the end of the strip is
  in those trees.  You can't see it, so you'll just see the creek
  beyond, and then a little bit of the strip, and if you keep
  looking you'll see the plane emerging at the other side. 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  I never heard a thing, it's
  awfully quiet. 
          MS. BALE:  There it is.  See, there's berries on those
  bushes.  That's what I was really interested in. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  Thank you.  That was good. 
          MS. BALE:  Yeah, you're welcome. 
          MS. GIBERT:  So it is now 4 -- a little after 4:30.  I
  don't think we have time to tackle the brainstorming list, but
  what I'd like to do is pass it out, and I can also e-mail it,
  but I can pass it out, and we can have it ready to talk about
  at the next meeting.  And then what we probably ought to do now
  is figure out how we're going to deal with the working group
  for the outreach, how we figure out about outreach and mapping
  and all that stuff, and schedule some future meetings, and get
  that done before 5:00.
          MS. VALENTINE:  So, Sally, what did you capture as the
  working groups that were suggested? 
          MS. GIBERT:  Well, there was kind of -- there was one
  for -- you know, kind of the general outreach, you know, how we
  get out the word about best practices and the council and the
  ongoing work that we're doing, and then a segue to that is, you
  know, how do we interface with the publications that are about
  ready to move forward.  And what was the deadline for.....
          MS. VALENTINE:  September 20th? 
          MS. GIBERT:  It was September 20th?  Yeah,
  September 20th.  So the first thing is, you know, what do we
  need by September 20th?  And that goes -- and that -- so that
  will go in the -- what do you call that report? 
          MR. YORKE:  I don't know what they're going to call it. 
  Let's just call it Alaska Aviation Handbook, if we could call
  it that. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. YORKE:  Just for something.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. YORKE:  And not to take the thunder away, but I
  think we're looking at for the best practices in there to
  include them on that page.  And in there interim here, not to
  belabor it, but I've looked through here and there are some
  issues in here that kind of go after the same things you're
  talking about.  They talk about Dutch Harbor and Kenai and
  Juneau, but I think if you would like to get your best
  practices in there, I would encourage you to do that.  You know
  how the government works; once you're kind of in there, you're
  in -- you know, what I'm saying, Tom?  You're in there and then
  we can revise it and that January. 
          MR. OKONEK:  And at the very least, get our Web page
  information where they can get to it, and the information about
  the map in there.
          MR. YORKE:  Yep.  That may be a tall order, but I think
  we can probably -- if you can get that direction, we can get it
  there. 
          MR. GEORGE:  I think there is some Denali information
  in there already.  
          MR. YORKE:  There is. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah.  So does that include the Web site? 
  So we may be closer.....
          MR. YORKE:  Than you think, huh? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah.  So we'll study that. 
          MR. YORKE:  Yeah, and Erika did some research.  The map
  is on the NPS site.  I can get on our site,
  faasafety.gov/goflyalaska.  I can do that. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, it would be probably better instead
  of putting -- duplicating that map and putting it on your site
  and therefore having it obsolete when the park service changes
  it to just link so there's only one source.
          MR. YORKE:  Easy. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, that'd be the easiest thing now.
          MR. YORKE:  Yeah, I agree.  Nicely said. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Anyway, so I see that as sort of one
  working group to deal with that both at September 20th and
  whatever subsequent steps we might want to take for outreach. 
          MR. GEORGE:  I don't think we need a working group just
  for that.  I think that is one piece of the outreach when we
  figure out which working group. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, it's one piece.  Right, right. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, so I think if you define the bigger
  outreach working group, we can just include that rather than
  creating a separate working group. 
          MS. GIBERT:  I agree. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Okay.  
          MS. BENNETT:  But dissemination, how do we disseminate
  the information?
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  You want to just call it an
  outreach work group, though, for simplicity?
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, an outreach work group sounds good. 
  That's real broad and.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  And that can -- and then one of the
  outcomes of that work group is going to be meeting the
  September 20th deadline with whatever is ready.
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, or reviewing what's there already
  and seeing if we need to add to it or modify it.  Okay.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  So do we want to identify who wants
  to be on that work group, knowing that in the -- like with the
  aviation work group, what we've done -- or what we've tried to
  do anyway is whenever that work group meets, let other council
  members know as soon as possible so that they can come if they
  want to, but not necessarily -- or it could be like a
  teleconference, too, it doesn't have to be a meeting.  But it
  would identify kind of a core group that kind of, you know,
  stays on it on a regular basis.  Does that make sense? 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Yes, it does.  So who's going to lead
  it?
          MS. GIBERT:  So who is going to -- yeah.  Well, who
  wants to be on it, first of all, specifically? 
          MS. VALENTINE:  I can be on it. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah, I'll be on it. 
          MR. GEORGE:  I can help with that.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MS. VALENTINE:  Scott, was your hand up? 
          LT. COL. BABOS:  Yes.  
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Somebody needs to be very creative
  in their power building and all that. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Tom, do you want to be on it? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah.  
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  I think it's a great -- this is a
  great tool that can be utilized across the board. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, Brian, Scott, yeah.
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  I think here we have a chance to
  get some information out.
          MR. YORKE:  And there's no cost to you except time. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MR. YORKE:  And you're going to have to do time and it
  will pay for itself.  
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, and everybody will know about it. 
  So okay.
          MR. YORKE:  It's golden, you get it together.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. GEORGE:  And so you got Mike's name on that. 
          MR. YORKE:  Yep.  You get it together, and I'll take
  care of getting it done.  How's that sound? 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  So it's Erika.....
          MS. RUST:  Mike, Scott, Tim, Tom, Erika, and Charlie.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, I think Miriam needs to be part of
  this. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Actually, Paul's got a better idea.  
          MR. ANDERSON:  That was a nice segue. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah.  
          MR. ANDERSON:  Rut-roh.  
          MR. GEORGE:  What's the better idea?
          MR. ANDERSON:  We will assign our public affairs
  officer who is in charge of outreach to work with the group, if
  you'd like. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Oh, good. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Oh. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Sure.  
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Who is that? 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Chris Fister. 
          MS. RUST:  Chris who? 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Fister, F-i-s-t-e-r. 
          MS. GIBERT:  She's the one that sends out all the press
  releases. 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Yeah.  
          MR. GEORGE:  And she's based here in the park? 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Yeah, at headquarters. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. GEORGE:  You skated on that one. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  I know I did, but you've got a few more
  that you're forming, so.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MS. BALE:  I would like to help, I just got to think
  about my timing.
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, again, the meetings will be
  published to the whole council, so.....
          MR. YORKE:  Maybe just as a quick reminder, that would
  be next monday.
          MS. BENNETT:  So this first meeting is going to be
  pretty quick.
          MR. YORKE:  Yeah.  When you said you had some developed
  and.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Well, we're going to start by looking at
  what you guys.....
          MR. OKONEK:  Like we should have our first meeting
  starting at 5:00, you know.  We could.  We're right here.  And
  just make some decisions. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, actually you could.  You could.  And
  I'd pay for that, yeah. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay, Sally, the next working group.
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  Yes, I know.  Okay.  What other
  working group suggestions were there specifically? 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  There was an -- so the fact
  sheet became a working group.
          MS. GIBERT:  Oh, the fact sheet was a working group. 
  That's going to be a working group of everybody as far as I'm
  concerned. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Right.  But it probably just needs
  somebody who is ultimately responsible.
          MS. GIBERT:  That will be me. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Sally.  She always volunteers.
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Let's see, the fact sheet, can't
  we combine a lot of that?
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, well, this will -- yeah, this is a
  part of the outreach, yeah, definitely. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  But it almost -- yeah. 
          MS. GIBERT:  But it's a tight little stand-alone type
  thing. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  The only reason I asked for that is
  because it was a direct recommendation in our last meeting that
  the council gave to the park service that we let it -- you
  know, we can track it as a discrete like yeah. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, in order for you to comply, we need
  to help you do that, so, yeah, okay.  And we don't want to just
  let you have complete editorial license.  I got that. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  So, Sally, you're going to
  arrange just -- it sounds like this messaging or outreach work
  group is pretty critical.  And then the only other piece that I
  captured in the discussion today was Tom made a comment after
  the discussion regarding the map that's passed around and how
  important it is to have things on the map.  There were
  suggestions about things to go on the map, and then Tom
  commented on.....
          MS. GIBERT:  On the park map or the sectional?
          MR. GEORGE:  The sectional. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  The sectional. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MS. VALENTINE:  How it really requires six or seven
  other agent -- that it isn't a simple -- did I catch that
  right? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, you're right. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  
          MR. GEORGE:  I mean, still we need to just compile what
  we think and lob it in.  I just want to caution the group this
  is something that is just not up to us to define what language,
  so whatever we put in, what comes out the other end might look
  a little different.
          MS. VALENTINE:  So do you see that as a task for the
  outreach group?  Or do you see that as a separate effort? 
          MR. GEORGE:  I think it -- well, we'll make that a
  separate effort. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  
          MR. GEORGE:  And Mike and I will.....
          MR. YORKE:  Yeah, this is a regulatory device.  This is
  an informative device.  We can't get that inform- -- we can't
  get that in seven days in this regulatory device, but we can,
  this, by other means.  And I think Tom's on track, it will take
  some working to do that.  We have a group called, AWO, All
  Weather Operations Group, and they're tied in with mapping
  people, so I can get contacts to get there. 
          MR. GEORGE:  So we'll draft.....
          MR. YORKE:  They put this thing every six months, and
  again, Tom said, you know, topped this off in the work group
  area and not take up everybody's time, but it's a great idea,
  Brian, and I don't think it's -- I think it's going to get done
  because it's that good of an idea.
          MR. OKONEK:  Well, that's fantastic it's printed every
  six months. 
          MR. YORKE:  Yeah.  
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah.  
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  That one is? 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  So, Tom, that's a separate like
  work group, then?  You and Mike on that? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, call it a task or something and
  we'll just put our names on it. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  Sally, are you comfortable with
  that?
          MS. GIBERT:  I got that.  Yeah, yeah. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  Those were the only three that I
  was -- I captured. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, okay.  And I think there would be
  more had we gotten into the brainstorming that the -- but we
  didn't get to that, so.....
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  
          MS. GIBERT:  I think maybe what we ought to do is right
  now shift to scheduling our next meetings and try and come up
  with some dates for multiple meetings. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  I'm sorry.  I was distracted.  I want
  to throw out one other idea that might -- it's okay if we just
  table it until another meeting because we're getting pretty
  busy here.  One of the things I'm interested in working on
  next, and I was hoping under the brainstorming, is the area I'm
  interested in working on next is coming up with some best
  practices for the north side.  And my thought was maybe here we
  could just kind of brainstorm, throw out some ideas, and get a
  smaller group to kind of hash out and see what works. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Well, the other option is to set up a work
  group to do that. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  If folks are interested, I'm
  interested in heading up a work group on that.  If it's too
  much right now, I can wait and we can wait a few months, but,
  you know.
          MS. VALENTINE:  Joan, I'm sorry, could you clarify. 
  When you talk about best practices, just like what has been
  implemented in terms of flight behavior?  You would want to see
  something similar here?
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Similar to what we've accomplished for
  the south side to start looking on the north side.  Do we want
  to fly over the road, do we want to fly south of the spine, do
  we want to fly higher, do we want to avoid here?  
          MS. GIBERT:  Again, the kind of stuff that Greg was
  talking about.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  It's not a simple -- I think it's not
  a simple three people are going to meet and come put with an
  idea.  I mean, it's going to take some, and I -- because I
  don't see a simple, elegant solution, but I think we need to
  start working on that whether folks are ready to do that or
  not.  I mean, you know.....
          MS. RUST:  Joan, would that come under the aviation
  work group? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Is there any reason not to just do it
  through the aviation working group? 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  It could be the aviation work group. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah. 
          MS. RUST:  Then we might want to just have a meeting
  and set that as our focus.
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Sure.  
          MS. RUST:  And then we could work together to.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Yeah, that would be, instead of a
  separate work group. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Right.  
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  But it doesn't need to necessarily
  involve all the south side operators, I don't think; it would
  focus more on the north side operators.
          MS. RUST:  But when we've approached these issues, we
  have tried to approach them, both sides, but I think we've.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  That would be a perfect forum
  because.....
          MR. GEORGE:  I think actually it does.  I think you
  really want all the principal operators there, because these
  people do -- it isn't as ridgedly defined as that.  So I really
  think you do want all the operators. 
          MS. RUST:  Okay. 
          MS. GIBERT:  And I guess if you set the agenda as north
  side, then automatically you're going to attract north side
  interests more than some of the ones you've had before. 
          MS. RUST:  And actually we -- Tom and I were talking
  about, you know, that should probably happen sooner rather
  than -- is that what.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, if we can come up with a time that
  works before everybody splits to parts south.  Oops, they're
  already going. 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Yeah, he's -- I think he said
  aloha when he left. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, well, that's -- and he's one of the
  principal people in our meeting, or somebody from the
  organization here. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  
          MR. GEORGE:  But, yeah, I would.....
          MS. GIBERT:  So the aviation working group is going to
  see what it can do to initiate discussions on the north side? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah.  Well, and review the other things
  that are there right now, again, just to.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, right. 
          MS. BALE:  I do think that if people -- you know, if
  pilots come and make great suggestions of things they're
  already doing, I think it's okay for us to recommend things
  that people are already doing, because if -- we should
  recommend everything that people are already doing, like more
  silent props and that because it's a standard for other parks
  or whatever, and that's pain-free.  
          So I guess I'm feeling like I'd like to start compiling
  all those things in one document.  There's things we're working
  on and the things.....
          MS. RUST:  Yeah, it might be a better way to present it
  as an idea, because -- and then what happens in that group,
  like to sit down and work through it.  Like, okay, this can
  work because we can do these thing, this doesn't work as well,
  this isn't going to be something that works for these reasons. 
  And so if we present it as an idea, I think the operators may
  be more receptive. 
          MR. SASSARA:  Right.  And the other thing is we may --
  some things take time to mature and there might be, you know,
  weather or technology or some -- but if we have a -- start
  growing a list of these ideas or initiatives that might happen,
  you know, that we come back to, we don't lose them, you know,
  in a couple years and say, why didn't we think of that?  Well,
  we did.  But some place to keep those ideas. 
          MS. BALE:  And that -- well, that's what this list is.
          MR. SASSARA:  We can come back to them and say, you
  know, now it's time we should consider this because these
  conditions have changed or something like that.  But it's in
  our record.  It's in our record right now because we've had it
  in these discussions. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, but it's pretty varied.  You have to
  go through an awful lot of material to fish them out.  Yeah.  I
  mean, as Nancy said, some of them are in the brainstorming --
  our informal brainstorming list, but that's not a public
  document, nor should it be. 
          MR. SASSARA:  What about that as an internal -- like
  we -- if we just said, okay, these are the ideas that I have
  now, and we put them just like a virtual whiteboard that we --
  some document that we hold on to and have them for our next
  meeting.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  Well, that's actually what
  brainstorming -- that brainstorming document is.  Those are the
  ideas that we generated from the very beginning when everybody
  was just throwing ideas on the table, you know, and so --
  anyway, so they've just been sitting there for two years, and
  then what I did this summer is I -- just based on -- I just
  kind of went, well, we did that or we didn't do that or we
  didn't do that exactly, but we did this or there's been some
  talk about that but it's not done yet, or whatever it says. 
  And so that's kind of the current version of that, but there
  are a lot more things -- ideas that are not in there that have
  been discussed or even been implemented that aren't actually in
  that list.  So that could be maybe a starting point for putting
  more stuff in there that we've talked about but isn't
  necessarily a recommendation. 
          MR. SASSARA:  Would you mind redistributing it to
  incite us to add..... 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Current stuff or more.....
          MR. SASSARA:  Oh, yeah.  Sort of update it as an
  activity, and then we give it back and say, okay, so we haven't
  lost these things. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, exactly.  And the one thing that I
  would caution about that document, because I know it was a
  caution that came at the beginning of it, is that it's not --
  they aren't recommendations, and they're just ideas, and not to
  get too excited about them, and to not have expectations come
  out of them that are going to -- if people are afraid of
  something or there's something in there that they really have a
  problem with, you know, take a deep breath, you know.  And so
  they don't have any special status, and that's the only way a
  list like that can work.  
          That's why I passed it out in hardcopy as opposed to,
  you know, blanketing it all over.  It's not on the Web site,
  you know, and it won't be on the Web site.  Anyway, so I think
  we need to keep it as sort of an in-house very informal working
  document, and just be cautious with where it goes and how it
  gets used.  But, yeah, I think that -- I think that there is
  more stuff that can get put on there.  
          MS. BALE:  Do we have a minute before we set dates?
          MS. GIBERT:  Not much, but go ahead. 
          MS. BALE:  Well, I'm just wondering, Charlie, you had
  asked that question, and then it was decided that we do
  Kantishna instead of the brainstorming list, so that question
  was deferred to after Kantishna.  You and Tim were having.....
          MR. SASSARA:  You mean the future state question? 
          MS. BALE:  What?
          MS. GIBERT:  The future, how we use our time, because
  that was the next thing to do.  So, anyway, so we'll basically
  defer that to the next discussion, which we may actually be
  further informed by additional work group. I mean, it could be
  stuff that even further updates it, because it's going to be an
  ongoing process, so -- okay.  So I will send it out, resend it,
  and I might format it differently so it's not dependent on
  color.  Right now it's color-dependent, which is, if you print
  it on a black-and-white printer, it's messy.  So I'll do
  something with it so that it's easier to deal with as a
  black-and-white document.  
          Okay.  Next meeting.  Miriam, should we try and
  schedule a season's worth of meetings, if possible.  Or at
  least talk about.....
          MS. VALENTINE:  Well, let's at least get the next one.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, okay. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  We usually -- early December has been
  working well for people. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MS. VALENTINE:  Before the holidays.  It's usually
  that -- oh, that will not work for Paul, but it's usually that
  first week of December.
          MR. CUDNEY:  That would be the 2nd if it's a Thursday. 
  We've got.....
          MS. VALENTINE:  And we've been kind of rotating down,
  so we would think about having that maybe in Anchorage.  And
  then the spring meeting in Talkeetna.
          MS. GIBERT:  Nancy, do you have any in-service days in
  early December?  No?
          MS. BALE:  No.  I'm just -- I know I sent you those
  dates.  I also brought my school calendar.  I'm just looking
  for it. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  I have one, too, if you can't find it.
          MS. BALE:  Oh, do you have a school calendar? 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Yeah.  
          MS. BALE:  I think December is a pretty dry time
  because we get all the.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  There's several in October, but
  nothing in November, and then December 17th which is right
  before Christmas. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, that's no good. 
          MS. BALE:  I'm sorry.  I had a problem.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  You know, we had -- I have on my
  calendar we had tentatively set an overflights Anchorage
  meeting, I have on my calendar October 22 and October 29th, but
  that's way too soon now, it seems, with all this other stuff
  we've got going on.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah, no, I.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Because there were in-service days.
          MS. GIBERT:  I had that on my calendar, too, as a big
  question mark.  It isn't necessarily bad to consider something
  that quick, though. 
          MS. BENNETT:  Well, the notification.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Huh?
          MS. BENNETT:  The notification.
          MS. GIBERT:  That's true. 
          MS. BALE:  Is that a -- how long do they need? 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  And I feel like the outreach group has
  a lot to do right now, so a lot of people are already going to
  already be engaged.  It might be a little too much. 
          MS. GIBERT:  True.  
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  I think early December is good.
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Just a little bit of trivia, that
  December 2nd is the 30th anniversary of ANILCA.
          MS. BALE:  Boy, those five years went by quick. 
          MS. GIBERT:  So is there.....
          MR. GEORGE:  The third Friday?  Paul's got something. 
  Where do you have to be Paul?
          MS. VALENTINE:  Paul is going to.....
          MR. ANDERSON:  Chile. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Yeah, Paul's out of country. 
          MR. GEORGE:  We can come there and meet. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  I bet they have air traffic problems.
          MR. ANDERSON:  I'm going down to southern Chile for a
  wilderness management and a park development program. 
          MR. OKONEK:  When are you leaving?
          MR. ANDERSON:  Right after Thanksgiving. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Oh, okay. 
          MR. GEORGE:  And when do you get back? 
          MR. ANDERSON:  Oh, I don't know, maybe sometime next
  year. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Okay.  So juggling the meeting a few days
  either way isn't going to make a difference anyway.  I got
  that. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  So, Nancy, what day -- is there a day
  that's easier for you? 
          MS. BALE:  Well, Friday is probably better just
  because -- well, it doesn't matter in Anchorage, though,
  because I don't have to drive.  So I don't really care. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  It doesn't really matter? 
          MS. BALE:  Unh-unh.  
          MS. GIBERT:  So Friday might be better? 
          MR. CUDNEY:  Friday, yeah. 
          MR. OKONEK:  Friday?  The 3rd?  That's the 3rd? 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Sally, are you okay with just choosing
  that one, and then seeing how it goes?  Or do you want to also
  then set a tentative date for the spring meeting? 
          MS. GIBERT:  Well, I'm thinking we should maybe have --
  I think it wouldn't be bad to try and have three meetings
  before next summer.  A total of three meetings, so one now, one
  in the middle of winter, one in the spring.  Does that seem
  like too much to you guys?  Because I get worried about loss of
  momentum if we don't do anything as a whole group until, like,
  April.  I'm worried about that, so.....
          MR. CUDNEY:  So December, and then April versus
  December.....
          MS. GIBERT:  Or December, you know, February, April, or
  something. 
          MR. CUDNEY:  Okay.  
          MS. GIBERT:  No, no, no.  We already did with -- this
  is October.  Yeah, that's four meetings.  Never mind. 
          MR. OKONEK:  December and then one earlier than this
  last.....
          MR. CUDNEY:  Than the May date, so.....
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  We'll develop something that we
  want to have for the year, and so we want to have time to
  implement it. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Yeah.  Right.  Right.  
          MS. VALENTINE:  So what John Leonard was discussing
  today about, like, the timing, if we want to do that monitoring
  again on the mount -- the lead-up time, so the mountaineers are
  on the mountain by, like, you know, mid April, if you have
  anything you want to do to influence what they're doing.....
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  It will be more like May, first of
  May, because there's -- you don't put the rangers up there
  until the first of May on the mountain.  
          MS. VALENTINE:  Yeah, but, you know, it's all of the
  lead-up to it, which is kind of what he was talking about. 
  It's not like -- you know, like, if you want full attention,
  having it before mid April, you're going to get full attention. 
  After that.....
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, they're gone. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Yeah.  
          MR. GEORGE:  And hopefully this is something we can do
  in the December meeting.....
          MS. RUST:  Yeah.  
          MR. GEORGE:  .....because we're not going to have any
  more information between December and April, really.  We've got
  the information we need.  We just have to figure out how to
  present it and what -- to ask park service. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  So given that, Sally, what --
  when was that meeting that you want?  January, February, March?
          MS. GIBERT:  So like early April or late March? 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Nancy, are those testing days?  Are
  those good days for you or are those bad days?
          MS. BALE:  No, April is a dry hole, but just if it's a
  Friday, if we're somewhere else besides Anchorage, that
  probably is better for me.
          MS. GIBERT:  What about March, except for spring break?
          MS. BALE:  That's the only.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  I'm going to be gone all spring break.
          MS. GIBERT:  Oh, okay.  Yeah, no, spring break is bad. 
  Yeah.  
          MS. BALE:  Spring break is bad. 
          MS. GIBERT:  No, that's.....
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  When is it? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Yeah, when is your spring break?
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  It's usually right around Iditarod
  time. 
          MR. GEORGE:  Okay.  So what about later in March like
  the week of the 21st or something like that? 
          MS. GIBERT:  What was your idea? 
          MR. GEORGE:  The third week or.....
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  The fourth week? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Or actually the fourth week.  Yeah,
  there's five weeks that month.  That's pretty exciting. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Probably about the fourth week of March. 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  The 25th? 
          MR. GEORGE:  Now, and again, we're talking Talkeetna
  here, right?  Is that the intention? 
          MS. VALENTINE:  And the only problem about March in
  Talkeetna is meeting space because everything is still closed. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  What about Wasilla like where we had
  that first one? 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Oh, there you go.  We could do Wasilla.
          MR. OKONEK:  Yeah, that worked well. 
          MR. COOMBS:  We could meet at my place at March if it
  wasn't (indiscernible).  We've got a big old church and you can
  do PowerPoint and all that. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  Okay.  
          MR. COOMBS:  I just need to know the date because we
  run (inaudible). 
          MR. GEORGE:  Is the wood-fired oven bakery open that
  time of year?  I mean, you got to have sustenance. 
          MS. BALE:  I think they're open all year. 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  The bakeries are open because
  people are hungry. 
          MR. GEORGE:  I'm good then. 
          MR. COOMBS:  The 25th?  I'm going to have to
  research.....
          MS. BALE:  March 25th, okay. 
          MR. COOMBS:  On the 25th.  But the 24th it would be
  fine.  It's just that weekend.
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  And then the location is to be?  
          MS. BALE:  At Colby's house.  
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Is that Talkeetna then?
          MR. OKONEK:  Well, we're still -- I think that's still
  going around.
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Well, we got the date, so that's a
  good start. 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Wait, we do?  What date did we say? 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  The 25th? 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  No. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  The 25th doesn't work for Colby. 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Colby's options are? 
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  If we want to go Talkeetna.
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  24, 28.
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  24 and 28.
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Okay.  
          MR. COOMBS:  Anytime that week. 
          MS. GIBERT:  So is one in favor of 24, any -- is there
  any reason not to use that one, the 24th? 
          MR. OKONEK:  It's fine with me. 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  So far. 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Let's get it on the books.
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  24.
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Okay.  Colby, schedule us in. 
          MR. COOMBS:  I'm putting it in.  It's across from the
  Catholic church. 
          MS. RUST:  I like that because it's right around the
  corner from my house. 
          MS. GIBERT:  So what kind of a place is this? 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  It's a church. 
          MS. GIBERT:  What's the name of the church?
          MR. COOMBS:  Well, it's called the AMS Mountain Shop
  and across from the Catholic church.  It used to be an old
  church.
          MS. GIBERT:  Oh, oh. 
          MR. COOMBS:  We call it the church because it was the
  church. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  Okay.  
          MR. COOMBS:  We don't like change in Talkeetna.
          (Discussion regarding the name of the church)
          MR. COOMBS:  AMF Mountain Shop.  And I have a .pdf map
  of it I can send to someone to distribute. 
          MS. GIBERT:  Okay.  Cool.  
          MR. GEORGE:  What kind of working group?
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  And what was the decision on the
  December date? 
          MS. GIBERT:  December 3rd. 
          MS. VALENTINE:  December 3rd. 
          MS. GIBERT:  December 3rd in Anchorage somewhere. 
  Okay.  So we accomplished all of our formal objectives? 
          UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:  Yes.  
          MS. FRANKEVICH:  Oh, are we getting together as a group
  for dinner? 
          MS. GIBERT:  Right.  But we can adjourn before we talk
  about that.  Okay.  So we're adjourned.  Okay.  Thank you.  
          (Off record)
                        (END OF PROCEEDINGS)
                       C E R T I F I C A T E
  UNITED STATES OF AMERICA  )
                            )  ss.
  STATE OF ALASKA           )
          I, Crystal D. Scotti, Notary Public in and for the
  State of Alaska, residing at North Pole, Alaska, and court
  reporter for Liz D'Amour & Associates, Inc., do hereby certify:
          That the annexed and foregoing Denali National Park
  Aircraft Overflights Advisory Council meeting was taken before
  Teresa Larabee on the 10th day of September 2010, beginning at
  the hour of 9:00 a.m., at the Murie Science and Learning
  Center, Mile 1.5 Denali Park Road, Denali Park, Alaska,
  pursuant to Notice to take the same; 
  
          That this Advisory Council meeting, as heretofore
  annexed, is a true and correct transcription of the testimony
  of said witness, taken by Teresa Larabee and thereafter
  transcribed by me;
          That the original of this meeting has been filed with
  the person requesting transcription of same, that being
  Ms. Miriam Valentine, P.O. Box 588, Talkeetna, Alaska, as
  required by the National Park Service;
  
          That I am not a relative or employee or attorney or
  counsel of any of the parties, nor am I financially interested
  in this action.
  
          IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and
  affixed my seal this 14th day of November 2010. 

                                _________________________________
                                Crystal D. Scotti 
                                Notary Public in and for Alaska
                                My Commission Expires:  9/15/2010
  
  S E A L