A Good Alaska Day - Winner Creek Tram

Drove down to Girdwood with my daughter and granddaughter in the car.

A stop along the way to check out the Dall sheep above the highway.

In the other direction were the mudflats of Turnagain Arm. (I didn't do any editing of the shot below.)

The Winner Creek trail includes a tram across the river.  Here's looking at the next people in line pulling the ropes that got us across the gap.

Someone said there aren't too many of these left in the U.S.  And as I was looking up whether there are others, I kept getting sent back to just this one.  I did find this 360˚ view of the tram which gives you a much better view than mine.  (And for Jeremy, I found this video of Tram D201 hand wired with nine original tram tubes.)

And here's a view of Winner Creek from the tram.  The tram was much more primitive when we first pulled our way across, I don't know how many years ago.

From the tram it's a short (really short, sign says .2 miles) walk to the bridge over the Winner Creek gorge.  Here's a picture long down creek from the bridge.

And here's looking up the other side where the wide creek is forced into the narrow gorge.  Again, from the bridge.

Here it is from a little trail going up the creek a ways.

And since silent, still photos simply cannot do this experience justice, I took a bit of video from this spot to give you a better sense of the glory of this spot, one of my favorites in Alaska.  (Which means, of course, in the world.)




And then you can look on down below to see where it goes after the end of the video.

Here's a closer view of one of the rock walls above the water.

Then we took the tram back.  It's Independence Day holiday and people have found out about the tram.  There were 30 people waiting to get back across.  The tram holds two people (we took my granddaughter, but she's a wee thing).  It gets hand pulled across the gorge, then hand pulled back.  So it was a bit of a wait.

Late lunch at the Bake Shop and dessert at The Ice Cream Shop at what can only be called a strip mall where the Alyeska road meets the Seward Highway.  Good day with good friends.