Snowbound Octagon: Alyeska Resort Ghost Stories, Girdwood

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated October 8, 2026 · How we verify

Ski Alaska long enough and you will hear the Alyeska Resort ghost stories: a skier glimpsed on a run that has already closed for the day, a helpful staff member who turns out not to work there, whispers in a corridor with nobody in it. Alyeska sits in the Girdwood area of Anchorage, roughly 30 miles from downtown, on a flank of the Chugach range that receives some of the heaviest snowfall in North America. The documented history of the place is about chairlifts, race results and ownership changes. The ghost stories run alongside that record rather than through it, and it is worth keeping the two apart.

Quick Facts for Alyeska Resort

• Where: Girdwood area of Anchorage, Alaska, about 30 miles from downtown Anchorage
• Mountain: Mount Alyeska, part of the Chugach range
• Status: The largest ski area in the state
• Company founded: Alyeska Ski Corporation, 1954
• First chairlift and day lodge: Opened 1959
• Landmark: The octagonal Mt. Alyeska Roundhouse, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003
• Lodging: The 300-room Hotel Alyeska at the base of the tram
• Snow: An average of 209 inches at the base and more than 650 inches at the top of the Glacier Bowl Express

Correcting the Founding Date: 1954, Not the Late Fifties

Accounts of Alyeska often compress the start of the resort into a vague late-1950s origin story. The record is tidier than that. The Alyeska Ski Corporation was founded in 1954. The first chairlift and the first day lodge opened in 1959. Construction on the Roundhouse, which served as both a ski lodge and a ski patrol station at the top of the mountain, began in 1960.

That Roundhouse is the oldest piece of the operation still visible to a visitor. It is an octagonal building, it is still standing, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places under the name “Mt. Alyeska Roundhouse” in 2003. It now houses a museum devoted to local ski history, which makes it the one spot on the mountain where the past is the actual exhibit.

The Lifts, the Pitch and the Snow on Mount Alyeska

Alyeska currently runs five chairlifts, one high-speed aerial tramway and two Magic Carpets. Chairs 6 and 4 are high-speed detachable quads, Chair 4 having been upgraded in 2012, while Chairs 7 and 3 are standard quads. Chair 5 is co-owned by Alyeska and the Tanaka Foundation. A sixth chairlift, Chair 1, was pulled from service in the summer of 2017. Chair 4 tops out halfway up the mountain and the tram three-quarters of the way; Chair 6 reaches the highest lift-served point at 2,750 feet. Terrain above Chair 6 is occasionally opened but has to be hiked.

This is not a gentle mountain. Alyeska carries a far higher percentage of advanced and expert runs than most North American ski areas, with a small novice section and the bulk of the terrain pitched at intermediates and above. The weather matches. The climate is subarctic, the Aleutian Low dumps enormous quantities of snow, and the record annual total measured at the top of the Glacier Bowl Express is 939 inches, set in the 2000 to 2001 season. A freeze has been recorded in every month of the year.

None of that is ghost material, but it explains a good deal of the atmosphere people describe. Low cloud, flat light, wind over a hard surface and whiteout conditions are a reliable factory for half-seen figures and voices that nobody can place.

World Cup Racing and a Teenage Tommy Moe

Alyeska has a serious competitive record. The resort hosted World Cup giant slalom races for both men and women in 1973, and first held the U.S. Alpine Championships in 1963, with the championships returning in 1981, 2004, 2007 and 2009. The American Olympic gold medalist Tommy Moe, born in 1970, sharpened his racing as a teenager at Alyeska during the 1980s.

Who Owns Alyeska: Byrne, Pomeroy and the Modern Resort

Alyeska was bought in December 2006 by John Byrne III, who said he intended to improve the resort with a focus on day skiers. The changes that followed included RFID gates at every lift, removal of the bubbles from Chair 6, fresh paint on the tram and the construction of the only superpipe in Alaska. On October 9, 2018, the resort’s director of marketing, Eric Fullerton, issued a statement saying that Alyeska had entered into a contract to sell substantially all of its resort assets to Pomeroy Lodging.

The Burial Ground Claim and the Stories Told on the Slopes

The most repeated piece of Alyeska folklore is that the mountain stands on a sacred burial ground and that the spirits attached to it never left. This claim should be treated with care. It is a stock motif that attaches itself to resorts, hotels and ski areas across the country, and nothing in the documented history of Alyeska, which covers its corporate founding, its lifts, its race calendar and its ownership, supports it. There is no identified burial site, no named community and no incident on record behind the story. It circulates because it circulates.

The rest of the lore is anecdotal in the ordinary way. Visitors and staff have described figures on the snow who do not resolve into other skiers, a helpful member of staff who cannot afterwards be accounted for, voices or whispers along quiet corridors, and shadow movement among the trees at the edges of the runs. These are reported experiences, not verified events. No death, disappearance or incident has been connected to any of them in the public record.

One claim worth retiring outright: Alyeska is sometimes described as running organized ghost tours and training its staff to handle supernatural encounters. Nothing in the documented account of the resort supports either statement. Alyeska presents itself as a ski area and a hotel, and anyone traveling north expecting a paranormal program will be disappointed.

Visiting Alyeska Resort and the Mt. Alyeska Roundhouse

Access is easy, which is more than most haunted-reputation sites can say. The resort is a working commercial operation about 30 miles from downtown Anchorage, and the 300-room Hotel Alyeska sits at the base of the tram, so you can simply book a room. The aerial tramway carries non-skiers up the mountain to the interconnected summit buildings, which hold the Roundhouse patrol quarters along with a newer complex containing the upper tram terminal, a quick-service cafeteria and the Seven Glaciers restaurant and bar.

For anyone interested in the mountain’s history rather than its folklore, the Roundhouse museum is the destination: an octagonal 1960 building on the National Register, now given over to local ski history. Check conditions before you go. Snowfall here is measured in multiples of hundreds of inches, the terrain skews advanced, and the upper mountain can close without much warning. Treat the ghost stories as a quiet thread in the background of a serious ski resort, not as the reason for the trip.

Sources

• Home
• ZRankings Topographical Survey, Alyeska
• Cool skiing in sun-baked Alaska
• VerticalFeet.com-Accurate Ski Resort Ranking with monthly updates
• 'We'll see what happens'; Girdwood locals react to Alyeska Resort's sale
• Wikipedia: Alyeska Resort

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