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Discover the heartbeat of Juneau's cultural and community landscape with 'Capital Chat.' This series explores the vibrant world of the community, arts, and dynamic cultural and social events happening in Alaska's Capital City. Tune in to 'Capital Chat' for your essential guide to the pulse of our community, where every story is an adventure and every voice matters.
And now Capital Chat on KINY, where we connect you with Juneau and Southeast Alaska's community organizations only on KINY.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Capital Chat. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Justin Miller joining you. Filling in for everyone.
Speaker 2:Usually Cliff Dumas does the program and Angel Montgomery does the program, but today I'm running the program. Super excited to have our guests in the studio today. We have Erin Lupro, who's the director of snow sports up at Eaglecrest and a lot of other things. She wears a lot of hats. So literally before we hopped on air, was saying like, there's a fire.
Speaker 2:I'm usually the one putting it out. How are we doing today, Erin?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great. How are you, Justin? It's great to be here.
Speaker 2:It's good to have you on the air and you're saying it's been a little while since you've talked to eaglecrest on the radio. So, so glad that you're here and hanging out and kind of giving us a lowdown. What's to come, what's going on currently and our hopes for this coming winter. So first off, I want to jump into Christmas in July. Can you tell us a little bit about about this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course. So, as a team, we kind of sat down and thought about how are we in the community in the summertime. We're kind of up on the mountain, out of the way, just working away, trying to get winter ready. And we always have an event in September, but we wanted to figure out something that we could do off the mountain, in the summertime. So we just thought, let's do Christmas in July.
Speaker 3:So what that means for us is we're going to be down at the food truck area on July 21, and we will have a band. Steadygoing will be there. We will have sales of season passes that we will be able to support people with. We will also have festive attire, of course.
Speaker 2:Oh good.
Speaker 3:You know, I did buy a very fancy shirt. But if you do buy your pass at the event, we will give you an ornament to put into a box of your choice to win a Christmas present. So the variety of gifts. We have, think we ended up with like five different presents for you to choose from. So if you buy your season pass at the event, you have an option to pick a present that you might like.
Speaker 2:Can you give us a hint of what might be in a present or no? I guess that ruins the spirit of Christmas. I'm trying to give
Speaker 3:a little bit. It varies from some eaglecrest swag, of course, that's a staple. All the way up to, we might have a helicopter ride in one of those boxes for any of your family that might be visiting this summer.
Speaker 2:Maybe an extra free season pass, maybe?
Speaker 3:Maybe not that. Maybe some day tickets.
Speaker 2:So this is a kind of a brand new idea. Not like something that eaglecrest has been doing off and on or every year.
Speaker 3:No. This is the first time that I know in the history that I've worked for eaglecrest that we've done it. So we're really excited.
Speaker 2:Well, sounds like quite the event, live music. What's the venue for the Christmas in July?
Speaker 3:Did you
Speaker 2:already say that or did I told
Speaker 3:you No. We are down in the food truck area, Deckhand Days. Okay. We'll be in there. We will have our festive decorations and the band starts at 05:00 till seven.
Speaker 3:So we will be there from four till seven. We hope everybody can come down, come see us. And if you're not buying a season pass at the event or you already have, come see us anyways. We love to see our eaglecrest users.
Speaker 2:And why should the community really make an effort to buy season pass at this event?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So July is the only month that we offer our payment plan option. Okay. It's been really successful over the last couple years, but we haven't pushed it as hard into the public. And everybody is always really bummed when they're like, Oh, I missed the payment plan.
Speaker 3:So you only have fifteen more days as of today to get the option of a payment plan. And those payments go till the end of October.
Speaker 2:Okay. Yeah. So that so from July 21 to end of October is kind of the community's window to get this payment plan pass option. After that No. Or no.
Speaker 3:The end of July is the only option.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:So you get July 1 till July 31, and then it gets cut off. You can only buy it online. You can buy it at the event because we're going in through the store to buy it to help people purchase their passes. But the incremental payment installments go till the end of October.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay. So you have to have it paid off
Speaker 3:by
Speaker 2:the Gotcha. End of So
Speaker 3:you have to have it in your cart and paid by July 31.
Speaker 2:Gives people some time though to kind of save up the funds and not feel like they to drop it all at one time. Exactly. That's a very awesome I'm glad they're bringing this back and kind of make it more of a huge, huge thing for our fellow skiers and riders here in Juneau so that people don't feel like they have to drop a whole lot of money all at one time to be able to ski and ride throughout the winter. So that's Exactly. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:So again, that's July 21 at Deckhand Days at 4PM. So definitely swing on over there. I did want to shift gears a little bit. Yeah, of course. Not a lot of know about this, but not a lot of folks do.
Speaker 2:But the summer camp up at Eaglecrest, how did so this is what's year?
Speaker 3:Think it's year four.
Speaker 2:Year four of summer
Speaker 3:camp. We're about year four.
Speaker 2:Yep. That's awesome. And so it's all done now. It's all wrapped
Speaker 3:up No, for we're in the middle of the last of the third camp. We have one more camp at the end of July, the week of the twenty seventh.
Speaker 2:And how are the camps going? How are kiddos like receiving it? So
Speaker 3:we started this four years ago. We weren't sure what it would look like. We knew that down the road that Eaglecrest might become part of summer tourism. But I wanted to make sure as I run the snow sports school that I was able to focus on what we could grow for a community. Because as a parent of three kids, I get it.
Speaker 3:There's not a lot of options. And if there are any options, they're usually sold out pretty quickly. And we knew that we needed to make it the entire parent workday. So when we built it, we kept all of that in mind and we wanted to be adventurous on the mountain. That was the goal, be outside on the mountain.
Speaker 3:A lot of kids don't come up to Eagle Crest in the winter and they might ski there or in the summer, they might come up in the winter. Gave us a different focus to meet the community need, but it's also really fun and adventurous. And we started small. We started with two camp counselors and some junior counselors. And now we've grown.
Speaker 3:We started with, you know, what could have like 30 kids. And now this summer is our biggest summer yet. We're over 70 kids. We more than doubled this So the word is getting out and it's really fun and exciting to hear them in the lodge and outside and on the mountain. It's better than I could have ever expected.
Speaker 2:Do you see it kind of evolving it evolving bigger and bigger and bigger as the years go by? Like maybe not not be a day camp, maybe it'll be a stay in camp kind of situation. I don't know how you guys would operate like that. I don't
Speaker 3:know if that one is gonna be an option for a very long time. But I hope that we can grow what we have, very intentionally of course. We don't wanna outgrow ourselves and then not make it what we wanted it to be. So we're just slowly growing and figuring out the kinks as we go and finding amazing camp counselors that also work as instructors for us in the winter. So they have a great idea of the kids that are there, some of them that are skiers or snowboarders.
Speaker 3:Just it's a totally different vibe in the summer.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Yeah. So as we're kind of in the topic of summer, what else has kind of been happening up on the mountain this summer as far as maybe maintenance stuff goes or improvements goes?
Speaker 3:Yeah. We were lucky we sat down as a team first thing in the spring. Got the entire team from mountain maintenance to snow sports to the rental shop, the ticketing office. We all kind of sat down and wanted to get our priorities out because everybody looks at the mountain very differently. So we've been working on a ton of chairlift maintenance like we do every summer.
Speaker 3:We are really far ahead on that, which is amazing. You know, we have some painting projects of course, trail maintenance, fixing up the bike trail. Just all of the things that we know as employees that just, you know, we're checking the boxes and getting the work done. But really collaborative team up there right now, all working together. So it's really nice.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Yeah. And a lot of listeners already know about me that I've worked up there as an instructor and I could attest to that. It's such a great team atmosphere and just like everyone's passionate about being up there, which is such a cool work environment. And that kind of segues into my next conversation about winter hiring.
Speaker 2:How's that gonna shape out this year?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know there's been, it was a rough budget cycle and everybody's heard a lot of news about where we're at. We are going to start opening hiring next week. You know, we did have some changes that had to be happening on some full time positions that were on the mountain. But we were able to keep a lot of the staff that we had to move forward into this winter. And we do have space for upcoming, this upcoming winter for lift operators and rental shop and ski instructors, things like that.
Speaker 3:So, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, that's opening up very, very soon. So, if you're just tuning in and you're thinking about maybe making a career in ski industry, not necessarily eaglecrest but I feel like you start at Eagle Crest, hang out there for a couple years, get some experience on your ropes, you could take that off into other ski areas or just keep it here in our hometown area.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you do get the opportunity to meet a lot of different people in our community working there.
Speaker 2:It's really it's really cool. I I could attest to that. So, kind of looking into the winter, I really hope we have snow this year. And I I know a lot of folks were bummed about the maintenance that happened last year in the start
Speaker 3:of this. Fair.
Speaker 2:The huge dump that we had. But it sounds like we're kind of ripping and rolling, ready to just kick things off as we roll into December. So fingers crossed, no crazy chairlift maintenance that has to happen before opening day. So
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:As far as, I guess, mound operations, like I know the community has like heard a little bit about it might be shrunk down a little bit, but obviously there's still going to be lift operators at every lift. Is there any sort of like change in the schedule might happen as far as which lifts are open throughout the winter?
Speaker 3:So yes, the beginning of last season was a little rough. It was rough both for our community and both for the staff because we want the same thing as the community. We wanna be able to provide what is so much fun for all of us. So this winter, I know it's the big elephant in the room, what will eaglecrest be doing? Opening day is December 12.
Speaker 3:We have eighty seven operational days on the calendar, which is almost exactly the same as last year. We were able to work through the budget and look at the schedule of how we wanted to do this and where we can make changes. So it's pretty much a copy paste of what we've done previously. The only change is we have a small window in February where we go from three to 03:30 for two weeks. We're gonna stay from 09:00 till three a little bit longer, and then switch to four right away.
Speaker 3:That's the only difference that we made to the calendar for this operational season. So opening day is December 12. It's a week later because it always seems to hold off on that snow on us. And then we're all the way till April 11. So it's very similar to our previous operating schedule.
Speaker 2:Oh, good. Yeah. That totally makes sense as far as keeping it from nine to three because that thirty minute mark, might have time for maybe get one more lap in. So it was like, give people enough time for one more lap or just keep it kind of tight and consistent that way. So I'm glad that's going to happen with the lift schedules this coming winter.
Speaker 2:But there's also a last kind of question about changes. Yeah. Got a new general manager potentially starting or not potentially, she is starting.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:What is her name again?
Speaker 3:Piper, or a lot of us know her as Julie Jackson Piper. She worked at Eaglecrest previously, and she her official first day is August 31.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it's great that she's got Eagle Crest background and knows our ski area in our community. And so she does she wasn't living here, but she is moving back here for this position?
Speaker 3:Yes. She is moving back to or back to Juneau to work at Eagle Crest.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, I'm super excited for her to join the Eagle Crest family yet again and put it in the right direction with collaboration with you and the whole other team. So I'm very optimistic, very excited for this coming winter. Is there we only have a couple more minutes left. So is there anything else you wanna throw out there before we wrap things up?
Speaker 2:Any crazy news or
Speaker 3:Can I share a couple of things that are kind of on our radar for calendar of events? Definitely. First, of course, July 21, Christmas in July downtown. We have our snow sports school program day. Everybody wants in on programs, lesson programs.
Speaker 3:August 26, ten a. M. Discovery Eagle Crest Day is our biggest on mountain kind of fall event. That is September 19. And of course, we will also have the haunted house again.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah. Yeah, October sixteenth and seventeenth and the twenty third and twenty fourth. So we look forward to that as well.
Speaker 2:Great. I'm so glad that the haunted house has been getting popularity and I know it was kind of, not a whim of a moment idea, but it was like, let's do a haunted house. And then Quinn and the whole other crew kind of put it together and it seemed like it's been a great success ever since.
Speaker 3:It has been and it's a great fundraiser for the book support program for Eagle Crest for middle school.
Speaker 2:Why need to shift part of the haunted house outside and kind of get it all spooky outside. And then you gotta go out of the lodge and in the lodge and kind of get chased by it. I don't know, chainsaw guy.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness. It's so much fun though. So many different things that we've been able to do.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, I'm super excited, Erin, for another winter up at Eaglecrest. '20 The twenty six, twenty twenty seven ski season is upon us. Yes. Again, Christmas in July happening on July 21, 4PM to get your payment plan passes and also some other goodies.
Speaker 2:So, yet again, thank you so much, Aaron, for joining us here on Capital Chat this morning.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, Justin, for having me today.
Speaker 2:Of course. And that's been Capital Chat. You could always listen to this past episode anywhere you get your favorite podcast. It's KI and Y.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Capital Chat on KINY, your connection to the people and organizations making a difference in Juneau and Southeast Alaska. Subscribe to the Capital Chat podcast everywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts and at K