Greetings, Flathead Beacon readers! Last weekend’s trace of snow ignited a fire inside winter sports enthusiasts across the Northern Rockies. Northwest Montana got only a dusting, but some impatient souls in southwestern Montana broke out their rock skis and slid on a foot of freshies.
Despite this year’s bleak, warm and dry winter forecast, driven by a powerful El Niño, Whitefish Mountain Resort (WMR) sold about 16,500 ski passes by the early bird pricing deadline on Sept. 30. That’s slightly down from last year, but WMR spokesperson Chad Sokol said he expects pass sales to keep climbing over the next few months.
This season will bring some operational upgrades. If you were on Big Mountain this summer, you probably noticed logging crews thinning trees and vegetation around the ski area, and some singletrack trails were temporarily rerouted. That work was part of the Big Mountain Fuels Reduction project, a collaboration with local stakeholder group Firesafe Flathead that launched this year to mitigate wildfire risk.
Thinning was prioritized along Chairs 1, 2 and 4 to help protect infrastructure and avoid situations like the Sand Creek Fire, which burned more than 30,000 acres in the Pioneer Mountains southeast of Dillon in August and heavily damaged Maverick Mountain’s only chairlift.
In addition to reducing wildfire fuels on Big Mountain, the thinning also opened up two new ski runs at WMR: Bad Medicine, which descends from skier’s right of Toni Matt below Good Medicine, and Big Twig, at skier’s left of Toni Matt, descending toward the Chair 4 lift line. (Before-and-after images above.)
Crews have also cleared 125 acres of brush and overgrowth spanning Big Mountain’s front side, including North Bowl Face, Schmidt’s Chute, Elkweed, Movieland from Russ’s Street to the Danny On Memorial Trail, portions of The Back 9 and a section between Langley and Inspiration. In the Chair 2 zone, crews also cut brush on Hibernation, Heaven and the middle section of Mully’s.
Cleanup of logging debris continues this fall and will likely resume next summer, Sokol said.
Other upgrades to Big Mountain this winter include two new snowcats to add to the fleet of groomers and six additional TechnoAlpin snow guns.
Chairlifts start spinning for the public on Friday, Dec.4.
I’m Maggie Dresser, here to unload the rest of the Daily Roundup.
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