Douglas Ski Bowl

Douglas Ski Bowl on Douglas Island, across Gastineau Channel from Juneau, Alaska, was the Juneau Ski Club's mountain for most of the years before Eaglecrest. It sat in an open basin at the head of a creek valley southwest of West Juneau, below Mount Troy, about three miles up the trail from the road. The club dated itself to 1927. When the Douglas Bridge opened in 1935, the Forest Service built a trail up the valley with Civilian Conservation Corps crews under foreman Dan Moller, a charter member of the club, and the trail still carries his name.

For its first years the bowl was ski touring country. Skiers climbed the trail and ran back down through the meadows, and Juneau photographer Trevor Davis sold real-photo postcards captioned Douglas Ski Trail and Douglas Ski Course. In 1936 the CCC built a log warming hut near the top, known as the third cabin because two more stood lower on the trail. The club's newsletter, TRACK!, ran its photo in February 1948 and described it as sitting in the center of the Douglas Ski Bowl. That same month a 1,000-foot rope tow, built by soldiers in Seward and bought after the war, was dedicated at the second meadow with Territorial Governor Ernest Gruening and his wife on hand. In 1951 the club moved its tow up the valley to the bowl itself.

Getting there was the hard part. In the mid-1950s the club raised $10,000 for a Tucker snowcat it named Oola, the Juneau Ski Train, which towed a sled caboose holding 40 to 50 skiers up the Dan Moller Trail. Oola broke down often and lasted about ten years. A private snowcat service followed, charging $2 a ride, or $5 to go up by helicopter, and in 1970 the club bought a Snow Master snowcat. The club held its annual tournament from the bowl down the trail to West Juneau from the 1940s through 1974, with downhill, slalom and jumping events that drew skiers from Anchorage, Fairbanks, Ketchikan, Petersburg and Whitehorse. Cross-country skiers had about ten kilometers of track near the cabin, and in 1968 club member Bob Janes bought the area's first snowmobile to set it. A longtime operator recalled that even a perfect day never brought more than about 200 people up the hill.

In 1974 the ski club persuaded Juneau voters to fund a city ski area with a one percent sales tax, and Eaglecrest opened just over the ridge in January 1976. The club's tow and snowcat at the bowl ended with it. The Forest Service took over the old third cabin in 1983 and later rebuilt it as the Dan Moller Cabin, a public rental cabin at the top of the same trail.