The modern incarnation of Silver opened in 1990, replacing a terrifying drive up the side of Kellogg Peak to the old base area with a 3.1-mile gondola ride from the valley bottom to the shoulder of Kellogg Peak—North America’s longest winter people mover. If the wind isn’t blowing, the ride takes approximately 22 minutes. The gondola is going to be one of two pinch points on the trip; it’s a serious chunk of time over which we have no control. Fortu-nately, with no recent snow, there’s no powder frenzy to contend with and we snag first gondy box. At 8:40 a.m., we hop off the gondola and scoot over to Chair 3 where there’s an even shorter route down a steep south-facing trail to Chair 1. Even with our time constraints, the 400 feet of vert seems like cheating. We carve fat, fast turns on the firm groomers of Collateral. At the bottom the lift attendant seems surprised to see us. So are the attendants loading the gondola back down to the base area. “Gondie beers”—often a to-go cup for a drink unfinished at Mogul’s—have become a tradition for us and countless other skiers over the years. But the early morning variety felt like something new, even for me. Downloading the gondola at 8:55 a.m., beers in hand, my buddies and I receive looks that border on disgust from guests just beginning their ski day. We’re the car driving the wrong way down the interstate, but we’ve got other mountains to ski today. Four of them, to be exact. Twenty-two minutes later, we’re leaving a parking lot that hasn’t filled up yet, with our eyes on Lookout Pass 25 miles away. Straddling Idaho and Montana as well as two time zones, Lookout Pass Ski Area lives in a world all its own. First used by Scandinavian locals who hopped freight cars over the pass to ac-cess the treed ski terrain, the mountain officially opened in 1935. A year later, Lookout Pass installed a tow rope constructed from car parts salvaged from an abandoned highway wreck. Constructed in part by the Civilian Conservation Corps prior to World War II, the base lodge is the second oldest in the Northwest. The area was financed in part by Silver Valley mining com-panies interested in providing recreational opportunities for their employees, and the mountain has remained true to those make-do roots ever since. Its first chairlift wasn’t installed until 1980 and normal day tickets have yet to crest $60. The winter of 2022-2023 will finally see the ski area expand beyond Runt Mountain to nearby Eagle Peak, effectively doubling its footprint to 1,100 acres. It’s a bit of a weather vortex too, averaging more than 400 inches of snow a year, funneled up through the Bitterroot Mountains. Snow gets so deep it can often swamp the low-angle slopes. But the mellow terrain has a major beneficiary: Lookout’s Free Ski School. Founded in 1942, the program has introduced nearly 80,000 chil-dren ages 6 to 17 to snow sports, completely free of charge—the longest-running ski school of its kind in the United States. Lookout has recently expanded its parking, and while I’m grab-bing tickets, Brandon and Dilley are getting a grand tour trying to find a spot. It’s race day for the region’s youth programs and the lot is packed with carpoolers. Back in line, I’m sweating (and trying not to swear too loudly while surrounded by kids). We’ve TOP TO BOTTOM The 3.1-mile gondola at Silver Mountain Resort in Kellogg, ID, is North America’s longest, and “gondie beers” are a time-honored tradition. Damian-Eachann Dilley and Brandon Byquist christen the trip—and first chair—with liquid breakfast selections. With nearly 4,500 vertical feet of relief from shoreline to summit, north Idaho’s Schweitzer Mountain Resort appears to hover over Lake Pend Oreille below. spent years gaming out the time cutoffs required to make this work—Brandon has logged data for every one of his ski days ever and has a spreadsheet, for god’s sake—and nowhere in that plan did we account for taking 20 minutes to find parking at Lookout Pass of all places. The boys finally show up, red-faced. Looking to make up for valuable lost time, we straight-line the moguled-out Montana Face at reckless speed. It’s a popular run for chairlift hecklers, but the groms are too focused on their race preparation to care about our style-free run. THE TWO-HOUR-AND-FIFTEEN-MINUTE drive from Lookout to Schweitzer backtracks west to Coeur d’Alene, then north along Lake Pend Oreille to the artsy enclave of Sandpoint. This is the second crux of the trip and we’re stuck with some im-movable math—the drive from Lookout Pass to Schweitzer is long in the best of conditions, and traffic or mechanical issues could easily sink the trip. Fortunately, it goes smoothly, and we cruise to the base of our third ski destination, auguring into a parking spot by 1:15 p.m. We’ve now driven a little over 200 miles, skied approximately 1,500 vertical feet, and still seem to like each other. In many ways we are living our best-case scenario. Allegedly named after the Swiss hermit who took up residence at the base of the mountain (“Schweitzer” is German for “Swiss man”), Schweitzer Mountain attracted local skiers and, ultimately, local timber money to develop the ski area in 1963. While the resort has grown considerably in the intervening decades, it’s still independently owned. Today it’s one of the 20 largest ski areas in America, sprawling over 2,900 acres, 1,200 of which snake through trees overlooking Lake Pend Oreille. We board the Basin Express and, because we’re feeling punchy (and because we’ve realized the few minutes on chairlifts and skis are not what is going to make or break this trip), we take the extra bump up the Lakeview Triple to Schweitzer’s summit ridge. Our typical Schweitzer stomping grounds—Pucci’s Chutes and the steep lines of Outback Bowl on the back of the mountain—will have to wait another day. Dilley dips into the wedge of off-piste trees next to the frontside fall-line corduroy on the Face and immediately regrets it; although the sky is clear enough that Lake Pend Oreille is visible—a rarity in the often-socked-in Selkirks—it’s not sunny enough to have softened up the snow. We stick to straight-lining the groomers back to the base area, whooping as we launch off the low-angle rolls back to the car. 076 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 3: Page 76
