Sheep Mountain Lodge gets new owners

GLACIER VIEW — Longtime Sheep Mountain Lodge owners Zack and Anjanette Steer have turned over the business to couples Mark and Ruthann Fleenor and Ryan and Rachel Cote.

“We are pleased to announce that Sheep Mountain Lodge will be operating under new local Alaskan ownership and management beginning on August 1, 2015. It has been our pleasure to serve you and your guests over the past 16 seasons, and we have enjoyed the challenges and rewards that raising a family and running a small business in semi-remote Alaska can provide,” reads a statement on the lodge’s website.

All existing reservations, contracts and deposits for future reservations will be honored by the new owners.

“Our expectation, and the expectation of the new owners, is that our guests notice nothing different from what you have come to expect at Sheep Mountain Lodge: First rate hospitality, genuine Alaskan atmosphere and delicious homemade food. Don’t worry — the soups, pies, breads and other ‘secret’ recipes will stay with the Lodge,” the statement continues.

Mark Fleenor said he planes to meet those expectations.

“(We will) keep all the good things the same,” he said.

Fleenor, a longtime pilot of small and large, private and commercial aircraft said he, his wife and the Cotes have lived in the Glacier View area for about 7 years. Fleenor said they were “frequent diners” at the lodge’s restaurant, and knew the Steers from the Glacier View Community Council.

The group comes with some experience working at lodges like Sheep Mountain but none have owned one before, Fleenor said.

One of the changes coming to the lodge is winter hours and recreation. Though snowfall has been heavier in the Glacier View-Sutton area in recent years than in the more southern parts of the Mat-Su, the lodge had been closed outside the summer season.

“We were cross-country skiing by Thanksgiving and snowmachining by Christmas (last year),” Fleenor said. “We got quite a bit more snow than the (lower) Valley, and we didn’t have any melt either.”

This year, Fleenor said he plans to keep the restaurant open on weekends during the winter and lodging open year round. The 13 kilometers of cross country ski trails on the property — which connect to the Eureka Lodge and Long Lake trails — also will see more love when the snow falls with Fleenor’s grooming equipment, he said.

When asked about hosting a sled dog race, as the Steers used to host the Sheep Mountain 150, Fleenor said he’s “not a musher” but “would love to do it.”

“We’re absolutely open to it,” he said.

Fleenor said the new ownership team is also interested in doing a poker run from lodge to lodge on snowmachines during the winter.

Meanwhile, the lodge area has “a bumper crop of low-bush cranberries” available for picking. The blueberries are plentiful as well, though a dry spring yielded fairly small berries.

“Literally every day we’re getting calls (about berry picking),” Fleenor said.

For more information, call Sheep Mountain Lodge at 745-5121, or visit the website at sheepmountain.com.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.