Sharon Spurns a Ski Lift on Alyeska Summit

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We woke with a day of leisure on our hands. Our plans were to take the cable car up about half a mile and check out the surroundings. The area just finished hosting a three-day music festival with wonderful weather where you could see for miles; so, the pit-a-pat of rain drops outside our window was not a welcome sound, nor were the clouds that seemed to shroud the mountain outside our window. But we were in no rush and we hoped that things would clear up; if not, we’d just lounge around the resort. Sharon wondered what all of the wooden bench-boxes were for outside the many rooms, and our room was at the very end of a meandering hall with a couple of bends and lined with many, many bench boxes; but, this time on the fourth floor. This is of course a ski resort and these are there for storage of ski boots. We found the Pond Café for breakfast and I tried the breakfast burrito with reindeer sausage, something different. Sharon said I’d get another chance to have reindeer sausage up north. This is a strange place where Donner and Blitzen are on the menu. Sharon stuck with bacon with her scrambled eggs.



Sharon got some stuff to munch on in the room from the convenience store on floor two, including a larger bag of those lightly salted Alaska Chips, that really are quite good and I have to admit I ate my share of them. We hung out in our room eyeing the window, and the sun did make some feeble attempts to break through. Around noon things had cleared enough that we could make out the unloading station for the cable car atop the mountain outside our window. The rain had stopped, so we decided to go on up. The cable car station at the base was right in our hotel. We purchased tickets with a senior discount, which gave us a good break on the price at $29. Those super-seniors who are 70+ got an even better rate at $19. The ticket is good for the day (and I’m assuming that these are the non-ski-season prices). For an additional $10 we also got a $20 coupon for dining at the Boar’s Head Sandwich Bistro atop the mountain, which is what we planned to do anyway.



It took only six minutes to hoist us up the mountain, and there were just a few other people going up with us on this trip. It offers and impressive view of the surroundings, and of the ski area. Directly below the cable car the mountain is mostly forested with the ski runs off to the right as we went up the mountain. It was a steep rise to the one support tower near the top and now it was just granite and snow below us. We walked around the viewing platform outside the station, and over to the Round House that now serves as a gift shop and museum. Its octagonal walls are surrounded by a wooden railed walkway and provides perhaps the best viewing atop the mountain from all sides. There is still snow everywhere; but, not enough to ski with the many rocky patches. They stopped skiing here about six weeks ago. The cable car operator had said they’d recently spotted bears and moose on the ride up; but, that was not the case for us. We did see a helicopter fly through the valley below, and a small airplane take off from the flat below. There was a “old-time chairlift” hung in a patio area and framed to make a swinging seat for two. Sharon didn’t want to join me on the chairlift seat; but, she did take a picture of me. She said, “The seat looks wet;” but, it wasn’t, not really. I might have asked her afterwards, “Why’s my butt wet?”; but, it wasn’t, not really.





We popped in the restaurant and I chose the cup of chili and the sliced steak sandwich with provolone cheese, mushrooms and peppers; while, Sharon had the pulled pork sandwich without the coleslaw and barbecue sauce on the side. We both got a bag of those Alaska Chips. We just missed the cable car back down the hill so we had to wait about fifteen minutes. Back in the room, we decided to just hangout, and count that lunch as a lunch-dinner after the massive amounts of food that we’ve consumed recently.

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