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[Peter]

Alyeska open but main ski lift still closed

By CRAIG MEDRED
cmedred@adn.com

Published: November 30, 2007
Last Modified: November 30, 2007 at 04:48 PM

The main ski lift serving the upper mountain at the Alyeska Resort remained closed Friday, but resort employees reported it was being tested in hopes they could put it into operation over the weekend.

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Meanwhile, skiers were able to ski a limited amount of terrain using Chair 1 -- an old, slow lift that runs from near midway on the mountain to the Upper Tram Terminal. The lower slopes of Alyeska remain closed due to lack of snow. Skiers are being ferried on the Alyeska Tram to the upper terminal, where the precipitation that fell as rain below came down as more than 10 feet of snow.

From the upper terminal, skiers get about a 500-foot drop to a midway station on Chair 1. Chair 6 -- the high-speed quad lift -- would normally gain them acess to 1,400 feet of skiing on the upper mountain, but the vast amount of snow that has fallen in the last two weeks caused a snowslide that tilted one of the towers supporting the cables for that chairlift.

The force of the snow on the tower was such that it levered up the huge concrete footing on which the tower had been erected. Resort officials and consulting engineers spent the week trying to determine whether the shifted footing remained stable enough to support the tower and trying to get the tower realigned.

Resort spokesman Jason Lott said the lift was expected back in operation Friday, but that had not happened by the time skiers hit the slopes at 1 p.m.

The resort's recorded ski report said the slopes had been marked to steer skiers away from Chair 6 to Chair 1. It also warned that those who ended up going over the South Face and dropping down to Chair 6 would find themselves forced to take off their skis and hike back up to the midway terminal on Chair 1 to get back to the tram station to get off the mountain.

Lott could not be reached for a new prediction on when Chair 6 might be back in operation.

Without it, long weekend lift lines are a strong possibility. Chair 1 moves only 800 skiers per hour, and it takes many of them only a minute or two to return to the line. Chair 2 moves 2,400 skiers in the same time, and it takes those skiers many minutes to get back down the slope to the lift.

An Alyeska tram-office employee on Friday said she and her coworkers hadn't been given any idea of when to expect Chair 6 to reopen. She referred skiers to the Alyeska hotline -- 754-SNOW -- for the latest information.