Soldotna
Ski Hill 1955
to 1978 |
Name of Ski
Area: |
Soldotna
Ski Hill |
Location: |
Soldotna,
south of the Kenai River, between the Sterling Highway and Ski
Hill Road. |
Type of Area: |
Ski
Hill and Jump |
Dates of
Operation: |
1955
to 1978 |
Who Built It?: |
Jim Browning, Ralph Soberg, Bill Caroland, Rusty Lankashire, Stan
McLane, Dave Spencer, Peninsula Sportsman Association (a
non-profit corporation). |
Base/Vertical Drop: |
Base:
~100' / Vertical: ~150'
|
Lifts: |
The original lift was powered by a dump truck with the back end
jacked up and one wheel used to power the rope tow (see picture
below). Later the
rope tow run by an electric engine that was acquired from the
Homer Electric Association (HEA). |
Facilities: |
Small
warming hut, lights for night skiing. |
Miscellaneous: |
The ski area operated weekends
and sometimes mid-week evenings. It usually operated 4
months of the year. In 1959 3000 skier days were logged.
ANILCA (Alaska National
Interests Land Conservation Act) issues were the reason for
closure of this ski area.
The Kenai National Wildlife
Refuge (KNWR) headquarters are near this lost ski site and cross
country ski trails are maintained by KNWR in this area.
According to former UAA ski team member Gloria Thiele, in the
early 1970's races were once held on these trails. Races
in the Soldotna area are now held on the Skyview High School ski
trails. |
Sources of
Information: |
Stan
McLane; Paige Spencer; Jim Hall; Gloria Thiele; Tim Kelley; Jim
Browning; Pamela Ables; Gary Titus; Bill Caroland; Vern Brooks;
Alan Borass; Pete Snow |
Photos: |
Does
anyone have pictures of skiing at the Soldotna Ski Hill (or current pictures of the vicinity) that they
would like to
contribute to ALSAP ?
|
|
~
PHOTOS ~
Early 1960's Photos
Courtesy of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
[Photo
credits: Kenai National Wildlife Refuge / Wade] |
|
|
View of ski
hill, December 1961 |
Rope tow, 25
March 1962 |
|
Zoomed in
view of December 1961 photo that shows earthen mound and
structure at the top of the ski area |
1955 Jim
Browning Photos
[Photo
credits: Jim Browning] |
|
|
Jim Browning
jumping |
The original
tow engine, a surplus dump truck - jacked up and one wheel used
to drive the rope tow |
[Jim Browning - 31 March 2008 email]
I am going to attach a couple of
pictures and update some of the following info based on what I
know. My name is Jim Browning and was in the Army at the Kenai
Base from 1953 to 1955 and was involved in getting the ski hill
started.
I met
Ralph Soberg, Foreman of Alaska Road Commission and talked to
him about skiing, he was a former ski jumper. He let one of his
bulldozers get lost on a hill near Soldotna one day to clear the
trees and that was the beginning of the ski hill. He also
overhauled a surplus dump truck and donated it to the ski hill
along with a generator and lights.
Bill
Caroland arranged to get some surplus rope from the Army Ski
Hill in Anchorage and have it trucked to Kenai.
Bill
Caroland and I (Jim Browning) talked up the ski hill at the
Kenai Army Base and got some guys interested in it.
Rusty
Lankashire, a homesteader, talked it up and got some community
folks interested in it and The Kenai Sportman's Association was
born.
When
the ski lift was first operating all we had to do was bring
along 5 gallons of gas and we were in business. |
~
SITE PHOTOS ~
~
MAPS and AERIAL VIEWS ~ |
This large
scale topo shows where the Soldotna Ski Hill was located relative to
Kenai, Soldotna and Kasilof. (click
on this map to expand it) |
|
A
zoomed in topo map view shows the location of the Soldotna Ski Hill
between the Sterling Highway and Ski Hill Road in Soldotna.
(click
on this map to expand it) |
|
A
zoomed in 1997 aerial view shows the approximate location of the
Soldotna Ski Hill.
(click
on this view to expand it) |
|
Research
Correspondence |
[Jim Browning - 31 March 2008 email]
I
am going to attach a couple of pictures and update some of the
following info based on what I know. My name is Jim Browning and was
in the Army at the Kenai Base from 1953 to 1955 and was involved in
getting the ski hill started.
I met
Ralph Soberg, Foreman of Alaska Road Commission and talked to him
about skiing, he was a former ski jumper. He let one of his
bulldozers get lost on a hill near Soldotna one day to clear the
trees and that was the beginning of the ski hill. He also
overhauled a surplus dump truck and donated it to the ski hill along
with a generator and lights.
Bill
Caroland arranged to get some surplus rope from the Army Ski Hill in
Anchorage and have it trucked to Kenai.
Bill
Caroland and I (Jim Browning) talked up the ski hill at the Kenai
Army Base and got some guys interested in it.
Rusty
Lankashire, a homesteader, talked it up and got some community folks
interested in it and The Kenai Sportman's Association was born.
When the
ski lift was first operating all we had to do was bring along 5
gallons of gas and we were in business.
|
[Bill Caroland - 15 April 2008 email]
I don't know whether Jim told you
which side of the hill the rope tow was on or not. Looking up the
hill it was on the left when we were there. He is right about
there. Jim is correct about the location of the ski jump. When I
was out there we did not have a warm up hut. Jim and I were there
when the ski hill was started and I remembered helping compact the
snow for the first trip down.
|
[Bill Caroland - 15 March 2009 email]
Hi Tim,
Jack Paugh (an old Wildstation fellow) emailed me the other day and
had the Soldotna web site with it. I had not seen it since you
completed it with Jim and my information and pictures. My son and I
looked for the ski hill in 2001 when we visited Alaska but could not
find it. The web site looked good and I was happy to see all the
photos and write-up. I found something the other day you might be
interested in. I found my membership card. I had designed the card
in 1955 and Jim Browning got them printed. Allan Petersen ("Once
Upon the Kenai page 264") signed it. I don't what whether he was
the first president or not. The Ski Hill really gave us some place
to ski and enjoy. At Wildwood Station we had very little except
Army work. Gave us some place to get away and enjoy ourselves in
the long winter months.
Bill Caroland
[Tim Kelley note: The ski area is quite
overgrown, so it indeed can be hard to find. If anyone wants
to look for it, this GPS coordinate from Google maps should be near
the center of the ski hill: lat="60.468812" lng="151.086044"]
|
[Tim Kelley - 19 February 2011]
Above comments have mentioned the
Wildwood Air Force Station. Recently Alan Borass wrote an
article for the Anchorage Daily News that described his experiences
at the Wildwood Air Force Base in 1973 just after it was turned over
to the Kenai Native Association. Here is an excerpt from that
article:
"In 1973 one of my first jobs at Kenai Peninsula College was
teaching Adult Basic Education classes at Wildwood north of Kenai.
The former Wildwood Air Force base had recently been transferred to
the Kenai Native Association, which was setting it up as
administrative offices, apartments and a vocational training
facility.
An air base without airplanes, Wildwood was something of a mystery.
According to Al Hersberger, a Captain Knowland selected the base's
location choosing Kenai over the other finalist, Kodiak, because the
fishing was better. When Wildwood was built in 1953 it provided some
of the first regular employment outside of commercial fishing for
men who worked on its construction. The airmen also supplied some
much-appreciated diversity to the dating pool for Kenai and Soldotna
girls.
When I opened my metal military desk in the basement of Building 10
I got a clue to the function of Wildwood. In it were three ink
stamp-style stamps labeled confidential, secret and top secret.
Beside the desk was a barrel with remnants of kerosene still in the
bottom apparently for burning those top secret documents in case of
attack. Poking around on the third floor of Building 10, I came
across the war room. On one side were two tiers of desks with maybe
eight stations on a tier each with a red telephone but no dial.
Naturally I checked to see if any were still connected; they
weren't. The desks looked out on an 8-x-12-foot Plexiglas map with
an outline of Alaska and Siberia etched into it. Obviously someone
could stand behind and draw with grease-pen the progress of Soviet
and American planes or missiles. Not quite the war room scene of Dr.
Strangelove, but the same idea.
Wildwood Air Force Base was a cold war spy base. We were monitoring
Soviet activity just as they were undoubtedly monitoring ours. We
now know information was passed on through a communications system
called AUTODIN which consisted of a network of spy bases sending
teletype messages at all levels of secrecy. AUTODIN was an early
form of e-mail initially networked to 17 locations.
But even as Wildwood was reaching its stride, the seeds of its
obsolescence were being sown. As a result of Russia's 1957 Sputnik
launch, President Eisenhower authorized a spending package that
included research into better communication systems. A Polish émigré
named Paul Baran, working for the Rand Corporation, developed a
packet switching system which became the basis for a communication
system called ARAPNET."
Read more:
http://www.adn.com/2011/02/18/1711178/evolution-of-communication-continues.html##ixzz1EQgRyyGA
|
[Pete Snow - 26 February 2014]
Hi Tim,
Took these
photos from the top of the Soldotna Ski Hill yesterday (January 26,
2014) from roughly the same spot where you took your photo of the
mound. Interesting that the piece of birch bark hanging from the
tree in your photo from 2007 is still there (part of it, anyway) 7
years later. Looking down the slope, it appears that it would still
go (with a bit of clearing ;)).
Thanks for all
of your work on the site. It's a great resource.
Cheers,
Pete Snow
Kenai, AK
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Do
you have further information, stories or pictures that you would like to
contribute about this
ski area? |
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