By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times
The Dept. of Natural Resources and Alyeska Resort held a public open house Saturday, March 7 at the Hotel Alyeska where the public had a chance to preview the Ski Area’s new Ski Area Master Plan.
Alyeska has a long-term lease with the State of Alaska to operate a ski area on state owned land. The land encompasses approximately 1,000 acres of the Ski Resort on the upper slope of Mt. Alyeska. The State owned land runs to the boundaries of the Chugach National Forest. The hotel and daylodge are located on private land and chair 6 is located entirely on State owned land. Any development on the State owned lands must be presented in a Ski Area Master Plan and be approved by the Dept. of Natural Resources.
The lease of the State owned Lands to the ski area took place in 1993 when Seibu Alaska owned Alyeska Ski Resort. Cirque Properties and its affiliates bought the resort from Seibu Alaska nearly three years ago. Alyeska’s current principal owner, John Byrne, has ambitious plans to expand the ski area, including potentially the backside of the 3,939-foot Mt. Alyeska
“The whole point that we’re here is that he’s (Byrne) got plans to expand into new areas,” said Mike Sullivan, the lease administrator for the Dept. of Natural Resources since 1997, “and he has a proposal to build a tram to the peak and introduce skiing into the Virgin Creek drainage bowl, which is about 475 acres.”
The plan is wide in scope and includes a multitude of projects including upgrading chair lifts, building new trails, constructing a new parking lot near the base of the existing tram, expanding ski terrain, and building a new tram to the top of the mountain.
Some of the more immediate plans potentially include replacing chair 4 with a detachable high speed chair, reconfiguring the base of chair 6 so skiers can access it from both sides, and developing trails to allow skiers to hike up to ridges on the mountain to reach more terrain.
“A lot of this could have been done in the past,” said Sullivan, “but you need a lot more ski patrollers. Seibu opened the North Face, which was a big deal, but John has taken that and wants to build and expand and go even further. There’s not a lot of area because there’s only one mountain and it’s not that big. If it were a series of peaks like some ski areas then you can go across the peaks. But here you are restricted by lease boundaries.”
Since Byrne took over three years ago, a team of planners have been at work on the Ski Area Master Plan. During the planning process, the Resort also consulted with local organizations like the Department of Natural Resources, Girdwood Trails Committee, the US Forest Service, the Municipality of Anchorage, Planning & Zoning, the Platting Board, Girdwood 2020, Girdwood Board of Supervisors and the Girdwood Land Use Committee to incorporate their vision.
“The Master Plan needs to be updated with significant changes being made,” said Chris Cushing, Principal Director of Mountain Planning for Snow Engineering, a national ski area planning firm. Cushing has worked with the respective owners of Alyeska Resort for 20 years. He said the last Master Plan completed by the Resort was in 2000.
“This isn’t just a PR piece,” said Larry Daniels, Vice President of the Alyeska Resort Development Company. “This plan is important to understand how to develop the right amount of square footage that can be supported by skiers.” He said the crown jewel of the plan is building a tram to the top of the mountain, but when and if it will actually be built, Daniels couldn’t say at this time.
The Ski Area Master Plan covers 10-15 years of development. It was completed on Dec. 5, 2008 and submitted to Dept. of Natural Resources in January 2009.
“When DNR releases it, then it’s done,” Daniels said. “We expect approval within the next few weeks.”
Seibu Alaska bought the Resort from Alaska Airlines in 1980, and Daniels said he’s been involved in five Master Plans since that time.
“This is the most balanced plan,” he said. “No other plan looked at the summer.”
Developing the mountain for summer recreation is an important part of the plan. Expanding hiking trails on the mountain and possibly opening up terrain for mountain biking are all projects planned to make the Resort a year-round recreational destination.
But Daniel’s said the emphasis is on expanding winter skiing to the outer areas.
Building a tram to the top of the mountain and allowing skiers access to the Virgin Creek basin is an innovative idea, Daniels said, that allows skiers an opportunity to ski the backside of the mountain.
“The concept we see in Virgin Creek is much like Turnagain Pass,” he said. “Skin up and ski down. But with the new tram, you may ride to the peak, put on skins and don’t come out for several hours. You can take the lift up and ski out, but you can also have it as a back country experience and spend some time there. I never even imagined that myself.”
“We put a lot of thought into the master plan,” said Di Hiibner, the Ski Area General Manager. “There’s been a lot of revisions. We wanted to get things right at the get go. We’ve thought about all the issues before we build lifts and night lighting stations. If we do build the tram, we’ll have to rethink our snow safety.”
Enhancing the experience of future skiers is a priority in the plan, she said. The key is to add faster chair lifts to allow skiers a top to bottom ski experience.
Potentially replacing chair 4 with a faster chairlift is an important upgrade, she said.
“Not a lot of people ride chair 4,” she said. “Chair 4 travels at about 450 feet per minute compared to 1,000 feet per minute for chair 6.” She said Chair 4 could be upgraded in the summer of 2011.
The Resort also plans to install a roll-secure device to allow the current tram to safely operate in winds up to 50 mph.
“Currently it gets shut down with 38 to 40 mph winds,” she said.
Another project completed prior to this ski season involved taking the bubbles off of chair 6 to allow the lift to operate in higher winds.
More work is planned to re-grade and fill the top and base of chair 3 and widen the terrain from the top of chair 7 to chair 3 to alleviate congestion of skiers.
On the mountain this summer, projects include: adding fill around chair 3 and chair 7, as well as replacing night lighting, but most importantly constructing more hiking trails as well as extending Winner Creek trail from the Daylodge to the Hotel.
“Basically clean-up the mountain,” Hiibner said. “Reveg it. The mountain got pretty torn up with all the projects. We want to do some beautification. And a lot of lift maintenance.”
Adding parking spaces closer to the hotel is another project on the horizon. Thirty-five parking spaces are planned to be added near the base of the tram. Unlike other parking areas around the resort, which are free, this prime parking will cost a daily fee of between $5 and $10.
Technical advances are also being implemented, such as high tech ski passes with embedded computer chips that allows for automatic payment. It is called direct to lift tickets that automatically charges the user’s credit card for the price of the ticket, depending on the times of day. The chip will also record the number of days skied. There is a $5 one time fee to acquire the pass.
The resort is also planning to implement a season long vertical contest for its season passholders with a men’s and women’s division, where the winner will receive a free season pass for the following season.
Another recent upgrade includes the installation of a real-time video camera at the top of Chair 6, which provides views of Turnagain Arm.
Summertime projects are in the works to enhance hiking opportunities on the mountain. A downhill mountain trail was built, the Blueberry/Pancake Trail, about 6/10 of a mile. It starts at chair 7 and continues under the tram line to the Blueberry Hill ski run. There is currently no lift access to the trail, but that is in the works as well, said Brian Burnett, Mountain Services Manager.
Trail work this summer will continue on the North Face Trail, he said, which will connect the Hotel to the Roundhouse. Trail work will start with the construction on the lower Winner Creek Trail from the Hotel to the Daylodge.
“We’re working with the Heritage Land Bank to realign lower Winner Creek trail and will also be constructing benches and working on improving drainage,” Burnett said.
“We’re working hard to construct trails that are sustainable with adequate drainage and which complement the existing Girdwood trails system,” he said. “We will also continue to enhance trails that we’ve already constructed.”