The Black Bear chairlift at Eaglecrest Ski Area is impossible to repair safely, so it’s time to consider alternatives such as upgrading the other bottom-to-top main lift to triple-chair capacity while awaiting the installation of a gondola, the resort’s leaders decided during a board of directors meeting Thursday.
The aging Black Bear lift was shut down for the 2024-25 season due to serious mechanical problems discovered during an inspection last summer. Eaglecrest General Manager Craig Cimmons told board members on Thursday a further assessment indicates trying to reopen it is no longer feasible.
“So the board and the staff have officially decided that the effort it would take to fix Black Bear is way beyond our capacity,” he said in an interview Friday. “It’s just too old and it would take far too much to fix it, where we have to use that staff time and the money we have to make sure the other three lifts get the service that they need to keep running because they’re the same age as Black Bear.”
It’s the latest of numerous setbacks for Eaglecrest in recent years, including a dismal snow season that resulted in this year’s operations ending early and ongoing delays in the installation of the gondola officials hope is the key to the city-owned ski area’s future financial sustainability.
Cimmons said the permanent shutdown of the Black Bear lift will affect Eaglecrest’s skier capacity, but it generally operated only Fridays through Sundays during periods when the other three lifts were operating daily.
“It also is really subject to a lot of high winds that it shuts down,” he said. “So of all the four lifts Black Bear was the one that ran the least and was also most subject to the weather shutting it down.”
There are multiple future scenarios for Eaglecrest’s lifts, including converting the Ptarmigan lift — the other bottom-to-top installation — to triple-chair capacity, Cimmons said. He said a full replacement could theoretically be done in a single summer at a high cost, but a graduation replacement of the terminals and then the lift towers could occur over three years.
Officials are also putting their hopes on the used gondola that officials had hoped would open by 2027, but are now targeting for a debut in May of 2028. That is the deadline in an agreement with Goldbelt Inc., which provided $10 million for installation in exchange for a portion of the lift’s revenues for at least 25 years. Goldbelt can abandon the agreement and get its money back if the deadline is not met.
Eaglecrest is scheduled to celebrate its 50th anniversary during the coming season, but that landmark occasion is also indicative of the aging condition of much of the ski area’s infrastructure. The ski area has been suffering significant operational losses in recent years, which the Juneau Assembly has expressed a willingness to cover in part due to assurances by resort officials the gondola will make the resort profitable.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
