Bill Jennings: Silver Mountain offers nostalgic trip down the slopes
Fifty years ago this week Jackass Ski Bowl opened above Kellogg. It turned the intensity of skiing up a few notches in the Silver Valley. Silver Mountain is celebrating this golden anniversary Friday with Jackass Day. Expect a variety of special events along with $12 lift tickets – the price of admission in January 1968.
The ski area’s steeper slopes, deeper vertical and perilous access were a stark contrast to the mellow aspect and convenient location 20 miles to the east at Lookout Pass. Ski patroller Roger Grovner, 66, was born and raised in Kellogg. He was at Jackass from the beginning.
“I started on the Jackass ski patrol in the winter of 1968-69,” Grovner said. “I was 16 years old and I came on as a junior patroller. It was a brand new ski area with a different type of terrain than Lookout Pass. A lot of advanced and expert runs. The mile-long chair was unique. I had never skied off a chair that long.”
The mile-long chair is still there. A few new runs have been cut since the double Riblet opened up 1,900 vertical feet of skiing in the basin between Kellogg and Wardner Peaks. The original lodge is long gone, but little else has changed in this part of Silver Mountain, except for the equipment and apparel of the people on the snow – although you will see a lot of retro outfits and gear on Friday.
Jackass was renamed Silverhorn in 1973. With the advent of expansion and the gondola, it became Silver Mountain in 1990. But the most dramatic change over the past 50 years has occurred in the Silver Valley below.
In the October, 1970 issue of Ski Magazine, author Barry Harem called the Silver Valley “25 miles of the ugliest valley in the world,” as well as “an ecological nightmare.” To avoid letting the desolation below detract from the promise of fun at the end of a white-knuckle drive up a sketchy mountain road, Harem’s advice to readers was “Just keep going and don’t look down.”
It’s likely that Harem drove over a layer of black slag trucked up from the Bunker Hill smelter that was spread on the surface of the road for traction.
“Those of us who knew the road real well would get up really early in the morning to beat what we called the ‘turkey traffic,’ ” Grovner said. “Just ahead the plow company would be dropping the slag. The problem with the slag though, was if you tracked it into your house it was really hard on carpet and hardwood floors.”
The slag was also contaminated with toxic heavy metals. But thanks in large part to a $500 million dollar trust fund established as penance by the bankrupt mining companies that poisoned the valley, the view from Silver Mountain today looks down on forested hillsides instead of denuded contamination.
Starting in 1983, cleanup and ecological restoration efforts have removed contaminated soil from inhabited areas and contained of millions of tons of toxic mine tailings. More than two million trees were planted over about 2,300 acres.
Fifty years ago, Grovner was too busy with the demands of ski patrolling at Jackass to bother with the hazards of traction slag. Patrolling was an even bigger challenge back then. They had no radios. Accidents were reported by word of mouth. Patrollers would hear about them from a lift operator. The volunteer patrol wasn’t cleared to use explosives for avalanche control.
“We would go cornice stomping, or saw the cornice down with our ropes,” Grovner said. “As a last resort we would try to cut them with skis.”
In this era, explosions echoing across the valley are the signal for an excellent day of powder skiing at Silver Mountain. A scenic gondola ride has taken the place of the harrowing drive. But Grovner will still be there patrolling, just like he has for 50 years.
“There’s nobody else that was on the Jackass ski patrol here now,” he said. “There’s nobody here from the Silverhorn era either. I’m the last man standing.”