Mount Roberts Tramway: Closed, And What To Do Instead

On 30 April 2026 a tram car failed to slow down as it approached the bottom of the tramway. Two people, both employees, were taken to hospital. The incident was reported by KTOO the next day, and the tram has not carried passengers since; by 17 June 2026 the Juneau Independent confirmed it remained closed.

The operator's own wording matters, because it is all that is officially published: "The Goldbelt Tram is temporarily closed as assessments continue." Goldbelt's site adds that the company expects the tram to reopen this season once repairs, internal reviews and safety certification are complete, and no date is attached to any of it. That expectation is the operator's, stated on its own page, and this page carries it as exactly that: an expectation, not a schedule.

What open means while the ride is dark: the lower terminal experience runs. Raven About Coffee pours, cultural carving and weaving experiences are offered, and the shopping floor is open, per the same page. Everything above the cable line, the Mountain House, the trails, the theatre and the restaurant included, is unreachable by tram and this page does not assume any of it is open.

How to check the morning you arrive

The reopening question is answered fastest at the source: the Goldbelt site carries the status line, and the operator's phone, (907) 463-3412, answers the reopening question faster than any port blog, ours included. If the tram resumes mid-season, expect the ticketing link on that page to go live first and the hours line to republish; the tram's hours historically varied daily and changed with mountain weather, so a reopening will not mean a fixed schedule.

The port-day arithmetic without the tram

The tram sold the fastest height in town: dock to 1,800 feet in about six minutes. Without it, a Juneau day redistributes. The height is honestly lost unless you hike, and the Mount Roberts trail is a half-day mud climb whose views arrive at the top, a poor trade on a schedule.

The story half moves indoors: the Alaska State Museum and the Capitol carry the cultural weight, a short walk away (the downtown route), and the water time that used to compete with the tram, the whale docks, absorbs the crowd instead (the whale watching hub).

The ride: two 60-passenger cabins on a jig-back system, one rising while the other descends, climbing 1,800 vertical feet from sea level at the cruise-ship docks to the Mountain House in about six minutes. It was one of the most vertical tramways in the world, and the cabins ran at up to 23 mph on a 2,400-metre haul rope built by Fatzer of Switzerland, driven by a 600 hp electric motor with two diesel backups. Around 200,000 visitors rode it each summer.

The top: the Mountain House, or Shaa Hit, held the Timberline Bar & Grill with its channel view, the Chilkat Theatre showing the free 18-minute film "Seeing Daylight" about Tlingit life, the Raven Eagle Gifts gallery of Native arts, an espresso bar and a nature centre. Outside, the Skybridge joined the terminal to the ridge, and trails ran to the sub-alpine meadow and its 360-degree view, past interpretive signs, the Stephen Jackson totem pole and traditional tree carvings. A live bald eagle display sat at the top, connected to the Juneau Raptor Center's eagle education work.

Whether all of that returns intact is an open question the assessments will answer. The description stands as what a reopening restores, and the operator's reopening expectation, quoted in the closure section, is the pledge against it.

The view that sold the ticket

From the top terminal the panorama ran from the Chilkat Mountains north down the Gastineau Channel, across to Douglas Island and the high peaks of Admiralty Island to the west and south. It was the view from the ship, elevated: the whole street grid of downtown Juneau readable in one look. That panorama is what the reopening restores or does not, and no lower-terminal experience substitutes for it.

The lower terminal building on South Franklin Street is open, directly across from the cruise piers. The operator lists three things, and the list is short enough to repeat exactly: Raven About Coffee, cultural carving and weaving experiences, and shopping, plus visitor amenities. Hours for these are not stated on the official page.

Set expectations by the building, not the mountain. This is a coffee stop, a craft demonstration and a gift floor in the base station's main hall, where the ticket windows and loading platforms used to queue 60-passenger cabins every five minutes. It costs nothing to enter, it is the closest thing to the tramway a visitor can touch today, and the carving and weaving sessions carry the cultural content the mountaintop experiences sold. If your interest in the tramway was the ride, this is a consolation; if it was the Tlingit art and story, the artists at work downstairs deliver a real share of it (the cultural and museum options carry the rest).

The tramway was conceived in 1994 by John Heiser, who with four partners formed Mount Roberts Development Corporation and then partnered with Goldbelt Incorporated, the Alaska Native corporation for Juneau, to finance and build it. Limited operation began in September 1996; the grand opening followed in May 1997, and the tram carried nearly 160,000 riders in that first full season. Construction cost nearly $16 million.

Goldbelt bought out the development partnership the following year, and the tram settled into its long run as one of Southeast Alaska's most popular attractions at around 200,000 summer visitors. It was rebranded from the Mount Roberts Tramway to the Goldbelt Tram along the way, though both names remain in use, and the Mount Roberts name survives in this page's keyword and on the mountain itself. The accident of 30 April 2026 is the first passenger-carrying incident in the record we read, and the closure that followed is the longest in the tramway's operating history.