Bill Jennings

Driving to a ski hill at sunrise on a cold, clear day, the sky turns from black to purple to orange to cyan blue. The blanket of snow on the surrounding mountains, lit up by sunshine, creates a telephoto effect. The peaks look deceptively close. Saturday morning at 49 Degrees North the temperature was in single digits. A breeze bit sharply. The ski area opened the day before with a foot of fresh powder. There would be leftovers. The best hunting was on the north aspect in the perpetual winter shade. The snow can be good there a few days after a storm.

Expanding Mt. Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park has been trapped in a painfully slow bureaucratic process. After 12 years of studies, public meetings and changes in that process, the suspense may be coming to an end. The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission approved a new master plan for Mt. Spokane State Park last summer. Next spring the commission will decide if an expansion of the ski area is included as an addendum to the plan. Its decision rests on how land proposed for expansion will be classified.

“Vertical feet” is a statistical category the ski industry likes using to measure the potential of a mountain experience. Ski area marketers try to include every scrap of elevation in their total. Some of the biggest vertical drops in North America are in our neighborhood. Jackson Hole in Wyoming, about 10 hours from here by car, has the longest continuous vertical in the U.S. at 4,139 feet. Big Sky in Montana, about eight hours away, claims 4,350 vertical feet.

Lookout Pass has tripled in size the past decade. But Phil Edholm, president and CEO of the ski area on the Idaho-Montana border 90 minutes east of Spokane, isn’t stopping there. When Edholm and his partners bought Lookout Pass in 1999 the ski area had one double chair. The previous owners developed a master plan that Edholm fine-tuned and executed to create the Lookout we know today. Now it’s time to grow some more.

Skiing and snowboarding can cost a lot of money, if you’re careless. Playing in the mountains costs a lot less if you’re smart. Deals are everywhere long after the season-pass sales are gone. You don’t have to be a corporation for the Ski NW Rockies Corporate Pass: $1,500 for 50 adult passes – $30 a day. Vouchers are accepted at Mt. Spokane, 49 Degrees North, Silver Mountain and Lookout. Schweitzer quit Ski NW Rockies and isn’t in on the deal. As of last weekend, Tom Stebbins at Ski NW Rockies said there were about 20 corporate passes left. Start a ski club with your friends and family at skinwrockies.com.

Most people of the ski and snowboard persuasion know a La Nina winter is on the way. The reality set in for me when a powder alert from Larry Schick at Ski Washington showed up in my e-mail on Oct. 23. Schick, in his inimitable “Grand Pubah of Powder” style, described a developing storm in language only a powder hound could appreciate. He called the low-pressure system offshore an “explosive, extratropical, midlatitude cyclogenesis.” It was enough to make me wax my skis.

It’s not how you start, but how you finish that makes an impression. The 2009-10 ski season started with some of the earliest hill openings in recent memory. But early excitement fizzled during several miserly months of snowfall. Now, just in time for me to say goodbye, a series of storms has brought forth the best conditions of the year. Spring Breakers really lucked out this week. It’s time for the rest of us to cash in with mountain snow in the forecast today through the weekend.

In my wildest dreams, I would never ski in the same race with former American Olympians Scott Macartney and Libby Ludlow. It took the Bavarian Race at 49 Degrees North for that to happen. Macartney and Ludlow grew up skiing at Crystal Mountain near Enumclaw, Wash. They joined a rowdy rabble with a broad range of ages and abilities in bright sunshine last Saturday for the 36th annual Bavarian Race. The event combines two great things that go great together: beer and skiing (not necessarily in that order).

Eric Norman is living the dream. He travels around the world, getting paid to wear top-of-the-line gear while he does crazy things on skis in front of cameras. His job is to conjure an image outrageous enough to be used as fuel for the ski industry marketing machine. Norman, a 21-year-old freestyle athlete who graduated from Central Valley High School, doesn’t bother with the rigid boundaries of terrain parks. He’s making a living by exploring what is possible in bizarre settings.

Will Brandenburg didn’t have time to bask in the afterglow of his top 10 Olympic finish in the super combined on Feb. 21. About an hour after the event he packed his bags and flew to Aspen, Colo., to ski more races. “I’m trying to win the overall NorAm title,” he said. “If I do that I get a World Cup spot at every event next year. We flew straight out from the Olympics, took a few training runs and raced. By the time the last race was done I was ready to go to bed for awhile.”

When you watched Jeret “Speedy” Peterson pull off his amazing “hurricane” during the men’s Olympic freestyle aerials on TV, you could hardly tell the wintry setting was a manmade illusion. Brad Suey, a 45-year-old freestyle veteran from Saco, Maine, managed to create a world-class venue on a mountain that had no snow. After a month building and maintaining the Olympic site at Cypress Mountain near Vancouver, British Columbia, he traveled directly to Schweitzer Mountain Resort to create the stage for Yoke’s Outrageous Air Show tonight and Saturday.

Little snow and more freezing than thawing made the off-piste terrain I’ve skied the last few weeks sketchy and unappealing. Little did I know that Selkirk Powder had been bagging the good stuff all along. I caught a ride on the Selkirk Powder snow cat Tuesday and chief guide Ken Barrett chauffeured our group to an epic stash of soft, untracked snow on the western frontier of Schweitzer Mountain Resort. We were amazed at the quality conditions that persisted there after an extended drought.

Lou Lou Kneubeuhler opened a ski shop in 1973. “Loulou’s of Spokane Ltd” became a flagship store for the biggest brands in gear and fashion. It was one of the top shops in North America. Today in the ski chalet on Pacific and Sherman where he influenced the sport around here, Kneubeuhler has founded the Ski Museum of Spokane. Among all the history, the place gives you a hands-on lesson about the evolution of skis.

One of the best days to ski is Super Bowl Sunday. You can turn for three or four hours on Mount Spokane and get back in time for the game. I left the dull grey city for sunshine and ideal spring-like conditions. Later at the Super Bowl party, I talked about going skiing. People gave me incredulous looks. During this El Nino winter, they found it hard to believe the mountains can accommodate such an activity.

A few weeks ago, Will Brandenburg e-mailed his friends to thank them for their support and tell them it didn’t look like he was going to live his lifelong dream. Last week, his dream became reality when he was chosen to ski in the 2010 Winter Olympics as a discretionary selection.

The sunrise never looked so good, ascending over the mountains to turn the lake from deep blue into molten gold. I had made it through the night on skis in 24 Hours of Schweitzer. Daylight was a welcome sight for 153 skiers and riders subjecting themselves to sleep deprivation, aching legs, chills and a few spills last weekend to raise $75,000 for the National Cystinosis Research Foundation Board. They were also subjected to plenty of good food, enough energy drinks and coffee to float a boat, a heaping helping of adrenaline and a sense of shared purpose and fellowship.

January is Learn a Snow Sport Month. Resort associations representing 32 states and more than 300 alpine resorts are part of this massive ski industry promotion. In the spirit of the occasion, I left my skis at home and went to Mount Spokane for a snowboard lesson. Mt. Spokane operates the largest ski and snowboard school in the Inland Northwest. Private lessons are under way and multiweek sessions run through February. Mt. Spokane Ski and Snowboard school director Maxine McIntyre said there are still plenty of lessons available.

About 30 miles high in the atmos- phere, the stratosphere thins out into the mesosphere. Meteors burn up here. Burning meteors may have been what Matt Gillis’ quads felt like after winning 24 Hours of Schweitzer last January. Gillis, a market analyst at Coldwater Creek in Sandpoint, logged 175 runs skiing nonstop around the clock. His total vertical was 157,102 feet, a few turns short of 30 miles.

The people at 49 Degrees North were busy maximizing their U.S. Forest Service permit area in the last decade. In 2006 they added about 600 acres of terrain and a quad chairlift in the east basin. In 2007 they extended Chair Two 300 vertical feet to midmountain. Last year the ski area expanded to the summit of Angel Peak, adding 300 acres and extending the inbounds vertical in the west basin to 1,100 feet. Now at about 2,625 acres, 49 Degrees North competes neck-and-neck with Crystal Mountain as the largest ski area in Washington.

A lot has happened in Bryceson Tenold’s life since he built the adaptive snow sports chalet at Mount Spokane for his Eagle Scout project. He graduated from Lewis and Clark High, got a degree in international business and marketing from Pepperdine University, became an officer in the Marine Corps, commanded troops in two wars and got married. Tenold, a Marine Corps Captain, returns to Mount Spokane Saturday for a long overdue formal dedication of the chalet. The ceremony begins at 2 p.m. A reception in the Mt. Spokane Ski Patrol chalet next door follows, hosted by volunteers from the adaptive snow sports program.

It’s no surprise my wife, Claire Peterson, discovered the perfect gift. Claire, an especially thoughtful soul who knows me better than anyone, arranged to have T.J. Sneva create a pair of skis personalized to my specifications. Sneva builds skis and snowboards by hand in a shop at 11120 E. Empire in Spokane Valley. His company, Sneva Mfg, offers 11 twin tip shapes this season. Specs for models ranging from pipe and park to powder pig are listed on snevamfg.com. He brought some to demo day at 49 Degrees North last week.

The 306th Rescue Squadron stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Ariz., conducts search-and-rescue missions in extreme environments. Its equipment meets the highest standards. Pat Sullivan, the lead boot fitter and foot specialist at Mountain Gear in Spokane, recently spent a weekend with this group customizing its new Dynafit ZZeus boots, the latest in high-tech alpine touring footwear. He worked with 17 “pararescuemen,” members of the United States Air Force Special Operations Command.

Sunday morning the temperature was 3 below zero on Kellogg Peak at Silver Mountain. I was grateful to be in the tropical ambience of the Silver Rapids Waterpark in Kellogg. The main attraction there is the FlowRider, a surfing wave that never breaks. Some people make it look easy. Most people don’t. The action is a parade of slapstick comedy scattered with moments of grace.

Mt. Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park kicks off its 79th season as the city’s designated winter playground today. In all those decades, perhaps none have been more significant than the one just ending. Cheney Cowles founded the Mt. Spokane Ski Club in 1931. The world’s first double chairlift was installed there in 1946. Terrain and amenities expanded until a long, slow decline began in the 1970s.