Local family builds a dilly of a business

HATCHER PASS — Some road-weary travelers crossing Hatcher Pass along Willow-Fishhook Road about 33 miles from Palmer are surprised to find the Last Chance Coffee House. It’s a modest cabin offering up espresso and snacks in the middle of nowhere.

Even more surprising is the three-story, vinyl-sided, 6,600-square-foot gray structure rising up behind the coffee house at the base of Black Mountain. It’s not an illusion, it’s a bed and breakfast and it recently opened its doors.

Black Mountain Inn is owned and run not by a group of investors, but by a family. Glenn Dilley and his wife, Suzie operate the inn, with Glenn’s mother, Phyllis Backhaus making the homemade pies and desserts. The Dilleys, a pair of 40-year Alaska residents married some 26 years, have lived on this 120-acre Hatcher Pass spread with their three daughers since 1995.

The building that houses Black Mountain Inn is a unique structure with giant turrets on each side resembling covered castle-like towers. They house spiral staircases that provide access to the rooms on the second floor and the Dilleys’ own residence on the third floor.

“There are 48 steps from the bottom to the top,” Suzie Dilley said. “This way, we don’t have to shovel them all winter. The girls and I get to vacuum them instead.”

The second story of the building was once the first story, and long before that it was part of the old Red Ram in Anchorage. The building held special meaning for Glenn Dilley, whose father helped build the Red Ram, so the family bought the building in 1997 after it had been moved to Talkeetna. Nearly a year later and following a memorable journey up the bumpy, narrow gravel road, the old Red Ram was in place.

“We wanted to put it over there on the sledding hill,” said Suzie Dilley, gesturing toward Black Mountain. “But the snow was too deep, so this is where it ended up.”

Off the grid

Living in the middle of nowhere can be difficult. Trying to build and run an inn there can present even greater challenges. The Dilleys aren’t on the power grid and there is no standard phone service. But with their own well, a hot water in-floor heating system and a diesel generator for power, most of the challenges of running the place are transparent.

Guests see 12 well-furnished rooms with large, modern baths (with double headed showers in the rooms and hot tubs in the suites), the heated floors and patios, the high-definition flat-screen televisions, the wireless Internet service and are clearly impressed. What might be even more impressive is a tour through the under workings of the structure — the boiler room, the electrical room and the wood shed.

To generate heat, the Dilleys use a wood-fired boiler with a firebox located in a small shed outside the building. This greatly reduces the risk of fire in the building and allows them to insure the inn more affordably. The building also has a sprinkler system throughout, not a mandatory requirement but an added safety feature.

“We live on the top floor,” Glenn Dilley said. “I don’t want to take any chances.”

To run the wood-fired boiler, Dilley has to cut a lot of wood.

“I try to make it a family event,” he said. “I tell them we are going to have some fun and then we end up cutting firewood all day. But the kids smarten up pretty quick.”

Life in the pass

Raising three daughters this far up Hatcher Pass has not been easy, but Suzie Dilley says she thinks it is a good life for her girls, who moved here when they were ages 5, 9, and 12.

“We didn’t have a phone, there was no mall for them to hang out in and the nearest neighbors were a mile away,” she said. “At first, they missed their friends from the cul-de-sac where we used to live, but now they seem very happy here.”

The Dilleys drive their one daughter still in school about three miles down the hill each weekday, where she meets her school bus. Bus rides are about 75 minutes each way. Add bad road conditions, common in winter and spring, and they get even longer.

Road conditions are improving. Construction began this year to widen and smooth the road, and it should continue for the next few summers.

Before moving into the top floor of the inn, the Dilley family spent 10 years in a small cabin next to the coffee shop.

“We cooked and showered in the coffee shop, slept in the cabin and did laundry in the shed,” Suzie Dilley said. “Now we can eat, sleep, shower and do laundry in the same building.”

One memory of their early years on the property includes working on the old fuel tank at 3 a.m., with temperatures hovering around 20 below and the wind blowing.

“We were standing on top of the tank pumping air into it, just pumping our hearts out,” Suzie Dilley said. “Glenn is down there yelling at us to keep pumping, keep pumping. Oh, we hated that!”

Things are much easier for the family now, but there are still plenty of challenges. The inn is larger than they originally planned and expenses have increased greatly.

“I have to buy diesel to run the generator,” Glenn Dilley said. “It used to cost about $800 to fill the tank. Today it costs $3,000.”

So what drives a person to want to build a mammoth building in the middle of nowhere? Suzie Dilley says it’s just how her husband does things. While other people might dream of doing something big, Glenn Dilley is the kind of guy who actually goes out and does it.

“He’s a master tradesman, but he’s also a true entrepreneur,” she said.