NY Times: Juneau becomes a deal-seeker’s base for skiing, skating, hiking and glacier-gazing in winter

Twelve inches of fresh powder had just fallen at Eaglecrest Ski Area in Juneau, Alaska, when I arrived for my first day of skiing last February. Snow packed the slumping branches of towering pines and frosted the beards of draping moss. From the chairlift, skiers below me appeared from the thighs up, their lower halves plowing fresh tracks. Whoops of delight rang out from sources unseen.

Dropping into an intermediate run, I fought the pull of the depths and managed to surf the soft mantle in a joyous ride — whooping all the way.

Powder days, I always thought, were for locals and, occasionally, lucky visitors. After all, it’s hard to schedule a trip around an unpredictable snowstorm far enough in advance to get decent airfare.

To boost my luck last winter, I relocated to Juneau, the capital of Alaska, for a month. Though better known as a cruise port welcoming 1.6 million ship passengers annually between May and October, it’s also a ski town in the low (and budget-friendly) season.

Climate-wise, Juneau is renowned for rain. Surrounded by the Tongass National Forest, the world’s largest contiguous temperate rainforest, the destination gets 230 days of rain a year, some of them in winter.

But when the conditions are right, the rain turns to snow and freshwater to ice, creating a wonderland for winter fans, like me, who appreciate downhill and cross-country skiing as well as skating, hiking, cultural diversions off-piste and culinary intrigue after dark.

Bargain season

Darkness comes early to Alaska in winter, but by February — six weeks after the winter solstice in a city that’s a two-hour flight north of Seattle — its nine hours of daylight were similar to my Januarys in the upper Midwest.

Alaska’s offseason is, of course, bargain season, when airfare can run a third of summer highs (inaccessible by road, Juneau is reached only by boat or plane). I booked a one-bedroom Airbnb for $100 a night, which goes for $175 in summer.

Home to about 32,000 residents, the state capital has a life apart from tourism. While the cruise docks and neighboring souvenir and jewelry shops stand empty for months, Juneau’s historic downtown core — wedged between the sheer slopes of Mount Roberts and Mount Juneau along the Gastineau Channel — remains lively. Lawmakers, lobbyists and the like come for the legislative season, January through April, which helps keep the walkable downtown flush.

‘Rip the pow’

Located on mountainous Douglas Island across the channel from Juneau, Eaglecrest, with four lifts, 36 marked trails and a 1,620-foot vertical drop, is small by most mountain resort standards. But it gets an impressive 320 inches of annual snowfall on average, produced Olympic 1992 downhill silver medalist Hilary Lindh, and offers experienced skiers a gateway to the vast backcountry.

Its peak elevation is 2,750 feet. When it was 37 degrees and raining downtown one day, it was simultaneously 32 degrees with soft snow at the base of the ski area as snow fell copiously in below-freezing temperatures on top.

“We’re in a rainforest,” said Kristen Strom, the marketing director at Eaglecrest. “Every degree matters.”

Built in 1976, Eaglecrest is run by the city, which charges $75 for a day pass, with discounts on multiday passes, including five visits for $310.

I ran into David McCasland, a Juneau resident who owns the food-truck yard Deckhand Dave’s, while waiting in line for a hot chocolate ($3.50) in the ski area’s modest day lodge lined with wooden lockers. There’s no hotel at Eaglecrest and any après-ski partying on the hill takes place in a bar in an oversize tent.

No frills — and uncrowded — is exactly how locals like it.

“That’s why my business is seasonal,” McCasland later told me. The avid snowboarder uses his time off to enjoy the powdery snow — or, in his words, “rip the pow.”

Sea-level sports

Fluctuating conditions affect winter recreation throughout Juneau, including at sea level. On clear, cold days, Nordic skaters hit Mendenhall Lake, pumping and gliding a safe distance from the base of Mendenhall Glacier, 13 miles from downtown.

Across the lake from the glacier, volunteers with the Juneau Nordic Ski Club groom the lakeside Mendenhall Campground, which is closed for camping in winter, with a maze of cross-country ski trails (free). On days I wasn’t downhill skiing, I often spent an hour or two there or the nearby Montana Creek trail, also maintained by the club, burning calories while taking in views of the glacier and snow-flocked pines.

The club also creates a route on the lake each year, conditions permitting.

“The terrain is not very challenging, but the beauty is unparalleled,” said Frankie Pillifant, the president of the 650-member club, which sets trails on more than 100 days a year entirely with volunteer drivers. The latest day in club records was May 15.

Winter walks

On a clear day, the icy face of Mendenhall Glacier appeared baby blue in the sunlight. It drew dog walkers, photographers and a group of hardy picnickers on hikes to Nugget Falls, which springs from the glacier field and empties into the lake. The nearly 2-mile, round-trip trail, snowy but tamped down by foot traffic, gets hikers close to the glacier, but at a safe distance.

Juneau has more than 250 miles of hiking trails, which exceeds its road mileage. Many are hard to reach under snow but several shoreline routes remained open, including Eagle Beach State Recreation Area (free), about 29 miles “out the road,” as they say, meaning on the roughly 40-mile-long Glacier Highway that dead ends beyond Eagle Beach.

Low tide along the narrow Lynn Canal fjord left a wide, rippling sand beach to comb alongside red-breasted mergansers, bufflehead, Barrow’s goldeneye and other foraging waterfowl. Eagles perched in cliff-top evergreens above the water, and sea lions broke the calm surface; in the distance, the snowy Chilkat Mountains formed a serrated skyline.

Après ski circuit

If a ski town can be measured by its après ski scene, Juneau holds its own with four breweries, two distilleries and a craft cocktail bar, even if most are 12 miles from the tented pub beside the ski lifts.

Downtown, Matt Barnaby runs Barnaby Brewing Co., patrolled by his cat, Simcoe. While most of the offseason traffic is local, the quiet taproom (pints from $6) gets its “fair share of independent travelers coming to Juneau in winter, I assume, for the cheaper costs,” Barnaby said.

A few blocks away, a large copper still occupied one corner of the plant-filled tasting room at Amalga Distillery, which has the cozy vibe of a beloved coffee house and a diverse following for its gin and tonics on tap ($5).

“We get suits and safety vests and everything in between,” said Brandon Howard, a co-owner.

Two blocks from Amalga, the Narrows Bar slakes Juneau’s thirst for craft cocktails in an intimate, romantic space where ingredients behind the solid walnut bar include homemade syrups and fresh herbs (cocktails from $12).

“We’re not pushing miner’s toes,” said Jared Cure, the bar’s owner, referring to northern bars that say they make drinks with the severed toes of frostbitten miners. “We’re not tilting the experience to tourism. I want to be authentic to the craft.”

Sablefish and salmon wings

Midgi Moore runs the popular culinary tour company Juneau Food Tours and links the city’s creative drinks to the culinary circuit.

“Part of our dining scene is cocktailing,” Moore said. “We pregame at Amalga, have dinner at Salt restaurant and end at the Narrows.”

With its frosty martinis and expensive steak and seafood menu, Salt is the power-dining destination in town (the sablefish with udon, a splurge at $44, was delicious).

In Bocca al Lupo, which has an industrial atmosphere, became one of my favorites. Chef Beau Schooler, who also runs a breakfast and lunch cafe, the Rookery, nearby, does Italian with an Alaskan accent that honors area food sources — specials included smoked king salmon wings ($17) with fatty bits of fried fish on a fin — while turning out blistered Neapolitan pizzas from a wood-fired oven (from $18). (The restaurant was included in the Times’ list of best pizzerias in the United States.)

Dining out can be an indulgence in Juneau, because of the cost of importing food, though the tempting house popcorn with nutritional yeast ($5) and Cuban sandwiches ($15) seemed reasonable at Devil’s Club Brewing Co. downtown.

Cultural breaks

Not many mountain towns can claim their own symphony and state museum. When the weather — or exhaustion — called for time outs, I found plenty of cultural diversions.

Visitors arriving by cruise ship get the best introduction to Juneau’s renown for Indigenous art. Thirteen totem poles line the waterfront beginning at the cruise docks, gloriously vacant in winter.

The native nonprofit Sealaska Heritage Institute, representing the local Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures, installed the Totem Pole Trail and operates a distinctive cultural campus in the center of downtown with studios devoted to textile weaving, basketry and wood carving.

“It’s a statement that we’re still here,” said Ricardo Worl, the group’s communications and publications director, explaining that Indigenous people used totem poles in part to identify themselves and commemorate their ancestry. “We’re reclaiming our identity.”

During my weeks in Juneau, I caught the German film “The Zone of Interest” at the tiny Gold Town Theater, where the wooden chairs were cushioned with mismatched pillows ($12); a play at Perseverance Theater ($45), by playwright Paula Vogel, who wrote her Pulitzer Prize-winning “How I Learned to Drive” at the theater; and a vocal concert through the Juneau Jazz & Classics series ($42).

“There are no audiences like this in the world,” said Zuill Bailey, a cellist and the artistic director of Juneau Jazz & Classics, who is based in Texas and travels throughout Alaska to perform. “People will stop you in the street and thank you for coming to Alaska to play and inspire them. You feel like you’re playing for your family.”

Onstage, singer Danielle Talamantes told the audience she hoped to come back in summer when an audience member interjected, “But it’s going to be sunny tomorrow!”

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times.