OAKRIDGE — The mercury is climbing toward 98 degrees Fahrenheit in the Willamette Valley as a retired ski coach stands at the top of a ski lift with one of his long-ago skiing stars, cool as a cucumber at 71 degrees, in utter amazement of what stretches out before his eyes.

"Oh my, it’s just outrageously beautiful," said Roger Gildersleeve, for 35 years an Oregon resident and a frequent winter visitor to Willamette Pass Ski Area. "But this is the first time I’ve been up here in the summer, the first time I’ve appreciated the whole ball game."

Slowly, the word is getting out about the summer gondola rides to the top of Eagle Peak.

Hikers use the lift to access the Pacific Crest Trail, just 200 feet off the edge of the ski area; fishermen avoid the steep uphill hike to cast a line in the three Rosemary Lakes; just below Gildersleeve a foursome tees off on the first hole of the ski area’s new flying disc golf course; and mountain bikers in body armor charge down a steep trail on a kamikaze run from 6,666 feet toward the lodge and the golfers’ 18th hole at 5,120 feet.

"This is really priceless, I think," Gildersleeve says. "I’m going to be coming back. It’s kind of an unknown gem."

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A group of hikers step off the gondola and inquire, "Anything good to see up here?"

Gildersleeve, the longtime ski coach at Central Oregon Community College in Bend, replies, "Everything. I think it’s one of the prettiest spots I’ve seen, and I’m thinking of Aspen and Vail. This is incredible."

To the north, left to right, Mount Jefferson, South Sister, Broken Top and Mount Bachelor dominate the skyline, so close that Gardner’s snow groomers can see Mount Bachelor’s SnoCats working on winter nights. Below is Waldo Lake, and with binoculars, Mount Hood can be seen on a clear day. Bald eagles soar in the thermals.

"With the views we have, it’s a priceless place to work," Gardner said. "We get spoiled by it. This is normal for us. Every day we see a lot of neat things, and we come to take it for granted."

Gildersleeve has revisited the mountain on this day with Ernie Meissner, once a world-class ski racer, who grew up at Shelter Cove Resort on Odell Lake, not far from the base of the ski run.

"The first thing I thought is, ‘Who’s crazy enough to put a golf course on the top of this mountain?’ " said Meissner, who has moved but a couple of miles from his childhood home, switching from Odell Lake to next-door Crescent Lake. "But this Frisbee golf — it’s working. The biking is working. I mean, I don’t want to ride a bike down it, but these kids have a gas doing it."

There are radical runs for the kids and the crazy, and trails ranging from intermediate to tame for the more conservative.

Tom Small and his wife Jennifer previously biked at a ski resort at Mount Shasta and now have made the 100-mile drive to try the gondola at Willamette Pass.

"It’s such a pretty area, such a pretty forest to go through, and 11 miles downhill is a pretty good draw," Small said, pointing out on a map the trail he and Jennifer are about to attempt.

"It’s certainly a good deal, $12 for the day, for as many rides as you can manage," said David Chamberlain, owner of Trailhead Coffeehouse in Oakridge, which caters to mountain bikers. He’s seen a surge of Willamette Valley Freeriders at his shop in recent weeks.

"What some people call freeriding is the fastest growing area of mountain biking, and people use very sturdy, expensive bikes that are too heavy to ride uphill," he said. "But they’re equipped to go downhill extremely fast and they need opportunities like Willamette Pass so they don’t have to set up a shuttle for themselves.

"I’m not so sure that Willamette Valley Freeriders would even have formed if Willamette Pass hadn’t started doing this. There’s a connection between the gondolas and the formation of this club."

It’s an alliance that riders of mountain bike trails around Oakridge applaud vigorously.

"Willamette Pass is taking the heat off the trails in our area, trails that were starting to get a lot of use from freeriders, and it was not always the best thing," Chamberlain said. "It’s not good for other users, and it’s not good for the condition of our trails, so the gondolas are a pretty exciting development for mountain bikers in this area."

Willamette Pass opened the gondola rides last summer, but didn’t promote them heavily because it still was building platforms at the loading areas and still was building the disc golf course.

Now, when spring skiing tapers off in April, mountain manager Ray Gardner strips the six-person chairs off the main chairlift and replaces them with the gondolas and rolls out the red carpet for a whole new clientele.

On the Net:www.willamettepass.com/mountain/index.html