A legal battle between neighbors leads to confusion along road to popular Alaska glacier

GLACIER VIEW — A blue "GLACIER ACCESS" sign along the Glenn Highway marks the road to Matanuska Glacier. The nearly 30-mile-long ice sheet about two hours from Anchorage is billed as a classic Alaska tourist destination — one of few major glaciers in the world visitors can drive to and explore on foot.

"Yes We're Open" signs mark the private road that snakes down a steep bluff and across the Matanuska River to the privately operated Glacier Park Resort.

[The price of ice: Matanuska Glacier land owner requires $100 tours for first-time visitors]

But the welcoming messages soon give way to warning, with "No Trespassing" signs at a bend before the bluff. Another sign warns the road is unsafe.

The newest one, brown like a state park sign, says "NO GLACIER ACCESS" in big white letters and warns drivers they're entering a private easement for authorized users only and all others are trespassing.

The dueling signs mark the most recent skirmish in an ongoing feud between Glacier Park operator Bill Stevenson and neighbor Mark Wayson.

Residents say the grudge between the two strong-willed neighbors is partly the usual "small-town stuff" and partly the result of booming traffic to the glacier. Glacier Park Resort owns land around the glacier and charges $25 to $30 per person to pass a gate, plus a $100 guide fee in winter for first-time visitors.

Wayson began threatening to post the newest sign in March to ramp up his protest of the roughly half-mile of road that crosses his property on its way to the resort.

Stevenson filed a civil complaint later that month asking an Anchorage Superior Court judge to grant unrestricted access to the road once and for all.

Stevenson isn't looking for monetary damages but instead wants the court to declare that commercial easements from 1977 and 1979 "allow for anyone wanting to visit Glacier Park to travel on the established road," his attorney said in an email.

The warning signs are "false and deceiving" because they say there isn't access and also intentionally mimic a state sign, wrote Stevenson's attorney, Chadwick McGrady. "(T)he sign will no doubt cause and has caused a calculable loss to Glacier Park."

Stevenson wants Superior Court Judge Frank Pfiffner to issue a preliminary injunction ordering the sign removed or modified. A hearing is scheduled for late June.

Wayson said he mimicked the state partly to protest the blue glacier access sign on the highway.

He tried unsuccessfully earlier this year to get the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities to remove the glacier's "recreational and cultural interest" highway sign from the Glenn. Wayson contends it attracts visitors down a sub-standard road to a private business and not a public access point at all.

"It's obviously confusing," he said.

Wayson, a retired police officer, owns 23 acres overlooking the glacier. He's the only nearby landowner not connected in some way with the Kimball family that founded the resort with land homesteaded in the late 1960s. The road crosses Wayson's property via the easements granted long before he moved there from a remote property outside Fairbanks in 1989.

Wayson says he knew about the easements, but back then the road handled traffic only in the summer. A 36-page response to Stevenson's complaint says the park now attracts year-round visitors through "the monopoly (Stevenson) has created that controls the public's access to the Matanuska Glacier and a huge section of the public domain."

Wayson claims in the filing that Stevenson has widened the road, eroding the bluff on which Wayson's home sits and damaging wetlands on his property. He contends it's also led to an unsafe road that puts him at risk for liability.

Wayson also says the easements don't apply to people driving off property owned by the glacier resort.

Cook Inlet Region Inc. owns the ground between the resort parking area and the glacier plus a square mile of the ice. For decades, visitors walking to the glacier toe have been trespassing on CIRI land. Negotiations between the Native corporation and Stevenson are ongoing.

[Companies look for solution to 'trespass' issues at increasingly popular Matanuska Glacier]

Wayson says he doesn't want to block the road — and can't, legally. He wants the road made safe and the resort to start using another route for glacier visitors.

Stevenson, in the complaint, accuses Wayson of harassing business patrons, impeding road maintenance, and "appearing at or near the easement undressed and nude."

Glacier Park customers claimed "they have seen a naked person on property Mr. Wayson owns," McGrady wrote in an email earlier this month, adding that Stevenson wants an assurance that people on the property are clothed in view of the road. "Since families frequent the glacier, their experience should not be disrupted by nudity."

The nudity contention rankles Wayson, who describes it as "a written act of defamation" in his response to Stevenson's complaint. The shower he uses in summer is located in trees well away from the bluff overlooking the ice. His court filing indicates he covers himself with a towel before and after using it.

He also contends that rather than harassing clients, he's helped them out of the ditch or fielded complaints about the resort's "access rules and prices, and glacier-guiding monopolies, and/or seek an alternate route to the glacier."

A trial is scheduled for next year.