Day 3: 1/26/23- Schweitzer Mountain, ID
Day three really begins before day two even ends. Schweitzer was going to be the most expensive ticket of the trip by far (around $120 with military discount), and for this reason, I was still not yet sure if I was going to ski there. However, being the largest mountain in the region and having a solid reputation, I couldn’t pass it up and decided to bite the bullet. To offset the cost and add a bit of adventure, I elected to car camp, which the mountain allows in its lower parking lot.
Sandpoint looked like a cool town as I drove through that evening, although most things had quieted down for the night. The town, perforated by railroad tracks, serves as a major junction point for the BNSF Railway, as well as hosts a station for Amtrak’s Empire Builder. I grabbed a few final supplies and headed out of the town, still about twenty minutes from the resort. Like Mt. Spokane (and most mountains in this area), Schweitzer has a long access road- around six miles. The dozen or so steep switchbacks would have been more enjoyable during daylight hours, but I pressed on, finally arriving at the overnight lot to join a dozen or so campers.
The resort is a small town in its own right, evident by the full fire department and public works shops co-located in the overnight lot. As I heated up a late dinner on my Coleman stove, a small pickup marked “Public Safety” pulled alongside, and the officer welcomed me to the resort, offering his assistance should any situation arise during the night. I asked about the snow conditions, to which he replied, “to be honest, the mountain’s not in the best shape. It’s been a pretty dry January.” I smiled and thanked him for checking in, wondering if that could really be the case after skiing the great snow a few hours west. I finished up dinner, admired the stars, shuffled around the back of my car, and settled in my sleeping bag for the night.
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Despite the modest sleeping accommodations, I slept decently well, waking to temps in upper 20s and bright but overcast skies. Firing up the stove once more, I cooked a quick breakfast, packed up the car, and continued up the access road another few miles to the base area. The road climbed passed neighborhoods of condos terraced into the hillside until arriving at a built-up but compact base area. It took a while to procure a ticket since a recent cyber attack had devastated the mountain’s web and IT systems, leaving one register and a long line of skiers. The outage also claimed the ticket printers, requiring the trusty ticket and wicket duo to be called out of retirement to save the day. I watched in amazement as most customers had no idea what to do with the foreign sticker and twisted piece of metal; already having a day to knock the rust off at Mt. Spokane, I gladly accepted another shot at trying to perfectly align and smooth the paper ticket.
I exited the lodge and was immediately met with a sea of thick, moist air that obscured just about everything beyond the lift base terminals a few hundred yards away. Hoping to get above the clouds like the previous day, I hopped on the lift, but to no avail- the fog only thickened with the increase in elevation. My first run was on the verge of terrifying, as I timidly worked my way down the foreign terrain, encountering near total whiteout a few times. I re-boarded the lift, bracing myself for what I figured would be a long day of challenging conditions; however, as I arrived at the top, a subtle wind shift opened a break in the clouds, eventually opening to a partly sunny sky. With the much-improved visibility, I started my tour of Schweitzer bowl, enjoying a broad sampling of runs off the Basin and Great Escape quads.
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Schweitzer, the largest mountain in both Idaho and Washington, can be separated into two bowls- Schweitzer bowl on the front side, and Outback bowl over the adjacent ridge. For lack of better words, Schweitzer is best described as just being an incredibly fun and dynamic mountain. It has incredibly diverse terrain, from long cruisers to legit steeps, and it has substantial acreage, allowing you to travel across several unique areas.
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I ventured over the ridge to the Outback bowl, revealing an expanse equally large as the already impressive Schweitzer Bowl. I started out on the Cedar Park quad, which covered the middle third of the bowl. This section had a variety of meandering blues with abundant opportunities to dip into the pods of pine trees that separated them. The Colburn triple climbed the final third out of the bowl and back up to the summit, attacking the precipitous Lakeside headwall head-on. The series of chutes that made up the bowl were full of light, chalky snow, and culminated with a runout along a small alpine lake back to the chair. A modest legion of snow ghosts provided the necessary wind break to preserve ideal conditions in the bowl. If this was bad snow according to the public safety officer, I couldn’t imagine what the mountain would be like on a “good snow” day.
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The outermost reaches of the Outback bowl are reached by a long traverse out to a T-bar, which then climbed to a small-isolated knob- just high enough to continue along the ridgeline. I took a loop on the outermost run, paralleling the boundary of the resort to the very bottom of the bowl. I retraced my steps back to the summit, taking two lift rides back to the top and traversing out the north ridge, as Wayne’s Woods was too enticing to pass up. Like Lakeside Chute but gladed, it was one of the best runs of the day; however, patchy fog rolling back in was a sign to not push my luck, and I decided to avoid the more remote terrain for the rest of the day.
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At the bottom of the bowl is an aptly named outpost with a small restaurant and bar- one of my favorite lunch spots of the trip. I ate my backpack lunch alongside members of the Out-of-Control ski club from Albany, who were visiting for a week on a club trip. It was their second-to-last day, and despite heavy fog early in the week, they talked very highly of their time at the resort. One could definitely use a longer trip like that to truly appreciate the size of the resort and experience all of the terrain.
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I spend most of the remaining afternoon skiing off the Stella chair, the 6-pack that served looker’s left of the Outback. I had planned to ski more of the frontside terrain, but as fog engulfed the rest of the resort, Stella remained clear and sunny, so I elected to stay put and lap the sunny, long runs off the lift. At the end of the day, my stubbornness got the best of me, and I ventured up the frontside one last time to take a run on the Lakeview triple, a small pod serving a series of chutes on looker’s far left. I was greeted by the same pea soup fog I started the day with, so I forewent the chutes and followed the ridge down to wrap up a great day.
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I hit the road and continued along US 2, traversing the Idaho panhandle and watching the landscape continue to become more rugged as I traveled further east. I could finally say I was on “mountain time” upon entering Montana, the scale of my trip finally sinking in as I shifted my car’s clock.
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I reached Troy, MT, the first “town” into the state, where I would be spending the night. I enjoyed the sweet melodies of a mountain string band at the Silver Spur and chatted with friendly locals, bewildered that I chose to visit their little town. As I savored the moment, I also brimmed with excitement since the next day was one I had been anticipating since day one of planning this crazy trip.
