Alyeska’s Blueberry Pancake Trail lets mountain bikers take to the mountain

Crews worked 4 months designing and constructing trail

Karen Garcia/Turnagain Times A boardwalk on the Blueberry Pancake Trail.

By Karen Garcia
Turnagain Times Correspondent

Alyeska Resort’s Blueberry Pancake Trail is the first of what trails supervisor Warren Rowe and his crew hopes is the first leg of a vast trail system for mountain biking and hiking on Mt. Alyeska.
Rowe, 36, is in charge of designing and building trails on Mt. Alyeska, and a crew of nine people (seven men and two women) work with him 10 hours a day, Monday through Thursday, constructing and improving the trails.
“We build probably 150-200 feet of 100 percent complete trail a day,” Rowe said.
However, it’s fair to say Alyeska is still in the early stages of trail development.
Rowe describes the majority of the mountain paths as “barely improved goat trails” that are “bumpy, rooty, muddy, and wet.”
And this is where Rowe’s vision comes in.
His goal is to provide smooth, dry trails for both the locals and tourists to enjoy, modeling his work after successful resorts such as Mammoth Mountain in California and Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia.
The realization of this vision has begun with the creation of the Blueberry Pancake trail, which is a loop-oriented path just less than a mile in length. With a zero to 15 percent grade, Rowe describes it as a generally easy ride.
The trail received its name because of the abundance of blueberries along the sides of the trail, as well as the original intention that it be completely flat.
The vast majority of the trail winds through beautifully forested area mainly along the base of Mt. Alyeska, and sporadically switches between three different kinds of terrain: wood, stone, and dirt (although the dirt portions are very few and far between, and will eventually be converted to either stone or wood).
Creating such a complex trail isn’t as easy as just throwing some stone on the ground and calling it a day; the Blueberry Pancake trail required an unprecedented amount of effort from Rowe and his crew.
“Everything has to be imported,” he said. “Everything in the woods has to be taken out, all the vegetation, all the duff (which is shed foliage in various stages of decomposition), all the water, all the mud. So we remove it.”
Water, however, is the main issue that has to be tackled because it is the hardest to control.
“Water is going to be our biggest challenge in Girdwood,” Rowe said. “So if I can learn how to move it, control it, channel it, and get it off my trails, then I can tell the rest of my staff how to do the same thing.”
Rowe has engineered a variety of tricky techniques for manipulating the flow of water, from underground drainage systems to four-foot deep ditches on either side of the trail in particularly difficult areas (the ditches are filled with stone and are completely undetectable).
Exercising further ingenuity, Rowe created a wide array of systems for transporting heavy rocks up to secluded areas of the planned trail. One method used is the “squirrel trail” process, which is a sort of pulley-system design that pulls rocks up the hill as a four-wheeler drives down. Another technique is dropping bags of rocks from the tram above at approximate points on the trail.
“There really is a lot of engineering to it,” Rowe said.
Work on the Blueberry Pancake trail began last year in the middle of May and was 95 percent completed on Sept. 15.
The remainder of the trail work is primarily focused on making the trail smoother and easier to ride.
Rowe says it should be 99 percent complete by the end of this summer.
“Most people still probably don’t know this is here,” he said. “And this is like, the biggest gift to the community ever from the owners.”
Rowe and his crew are currently working on a trail similar to Blueberry Pancake at the Winner Creek connection. Their intention is for this trail to be entirely stone.
There has also been talk of allowing mountain bikers access to the aerial tramway.
“In the future we do plan to use the trams for bikes, but not yet,” Rowe said. “For right now, we’re going to build our trail infrastructure so there are specific trails, not just an access road.”
Rowe says the majority of the mountain trails are neither safe nor enjoyable for bikers.
“So that’s one of the reasons we’re not using the tram this year,” he said. “We’re just not ready to offer a good product. The best product is what we want to offer.”
To access the trailhead of the Blueberry Pancake Trail, start at the base of the tram and climb the small series of switchbacks that make up the Bear Cub Trail. The switchbacks will turn into what looks like a dirt road, and after a couple of minutes the Blueberry Pancake trailhead, flanked by stones, will be visible on your left-hand side.
While the Blueberry Pancake Trail is reserved specifically for mountain bikers, the existing Alyeska trail system offers hikers a wide range of options varying in length and difficulty.
For instance, the Race Trail presents the most difficult and direct route up the mountain for hikers, while Tanaka Road is the easier and least direct course. Also, the new North Face trail, constructed solely for strong, experienced hikers, is set to launch its grand opening Aug. 1.
A detailed map along with helpful trail descriptions can be downloaded at alyeskaresort.com.