Cleary Summit Ski Area

Cleary Summit Ski Area at Cleary Summit on the Steese Highway north of Fairbanks, Alaska, was the first downhill ski area in the Fairbanks region. Bob and Sylvia McCann started it in 1949 with a partner, Link Imeson, on about 300 acres leased from the borough. Bob did the carpentry and Imeson the electrical and mechanical work. Family photos show the first lodge going up at the top of the summit in 1950, and the McCanns soon opened a ski shop called the Alpine Haus.

The early hill ran on rope tows, two above the highway and one below. A T-bar went in below the road around 1960, and a new lodge was built there around the same time. Dates for the lodge and T-bar vary between 1960 and 1963 in the family accounts. Three earlier lodges above the road had burned. The upper rope tows were later replaced with a second T-bar, and in the 1980s a platter lift for beginners and snowmaking were added, using water from a well drilled in the late 1970s. The area never had lights, and its vertical was about 900 feet. Runs included Bob-O-Link, McCall's Run, Rock Garden and Grimmy Gulch.

The Cleary Summit Ski Club's plywood sign says it was established in 1951. Its patch showed a ptarmigan, Alaska's state bird, standing on a ski with two poles, with the summit's coordinates, N65 and W147. A 1957 Thirty Below patch went to skiers who reached minus 30 on a thermometer. The hill also held a ski school, a ski patrol and carnival days with beer slalom races.

The area closed in 1993. Its lifts and snowmaking equipment were sold to a ski area in Anchorage, and one recollection ties the closing to a newer nearby hill that had opened a chairlift with about twice the vertical. A second ALSAP-based article gives 1994. The main lodge and lift houses were still standing in 2006, and the last lodge burned on January 29, 2008.