Interior awards $8,360 for helicopter service to Tincan and Indian Pass snow sensors

Two of the snow sensors that feed Turnagain Pass avalanche forecasts will get a helicopter tune-up this fall — including the one at Tincan, a name any Southcentral backcountry skier or rider knows well.

The stations are SNOTEL sites, remote automated sensors that beam back snow depth, snow water equivalent, precipitation and temperature — the raw numbers avalanche forecasters and backcountry travelers lean on all winter. Tincan sits at 3,370 feet on Turnagain Pass, right in the heart of one of the state's busiest backcountry zones, and it's one of three stations behind the Chugach Avalanche Center's Turnagain forecasts. Indian Pass, the other station getting serviced, is 25 miles north at 2,400 feet.

Because the sites are only reachable by air, the federal government hired a Girdwood helicopter company, Alpine Air Alaska, to fly maintenance crews in this fall — on-call flights running through the end of October, ahead of the season when those readings start to matter most. It's routine upkeep, but on stations that a lot of people trust with their lives.