Happy Trails Unique Partnership Provides Incredible Snowmobile Opportunity

Bump. Crunch. Bounce. Aaargh - a hole in the snow! Put on the brakes! Turn - not enough, we’re skidding! Ahh - finally, a flat, straight stretch. Faster! But - slow down, thump - watch out for that hump.

If you like your snowmobiling rough and ready, you’ll love this route: more than 20 miles of trail, much of it ungroomed, through the Bitterroot Mountains between Saltese, Mont., and the Lookout Pass ski area on the Idaho border.

The ride is hard work (days later, my shoulders are still a bit stiff), but well worth it, with views ranging from pristine wooded valleys and frost-tinted pine trees to open basins and spectacular mountain vistas.

And if more sedate snowmobiling is your style, you’ll find other trails almost as smooth as a pool table, with gentle slopes and curves following logging roads or long-abandoned railroad grades.

It’s possible, snow permitting, to ride all the way from Coeur d’Alene to St. Regis, Mont., on a network of trails - groomed and ungroomed - more than 1,000 miles long. The system has been conceived, developed and maintained in an unusual, private-public partnership that includes federal, state and local governments, tourism agencies and local snowmobile clubs.

The heart of this trail system is Wallace, the town that was built on silver but now hopes to thrive on snow. Although two silver mines are still operating, the region knows that its glory days as “the silver capital of the world” are gone forever. What it hopes to become, instead, is the nation’s No. 1 snowmobile destination (an honor currently held by West Yellowstone, Mont.).

Besides its proximity to views, trails and wide-open spaces, Wallace is unabashedly pro-snowmobile, unlike some regions that pay more attention to cross-country skiing. Snowmobiles may be driven - legally - on city streets (though it wasn’t happening earlier this winter - not enough snow). “Welcome Snowmobilers” signs are everywhere. You won’t get a dirty look from the waitress if you clump into a restaurant with your boots, bib and helmet.

“We make snowmobilers comfortable. We make them feel welcome,” says Thomas Magnuson, president of Magnuson Hospitality, which owns several lodgings in Wallace. “We’re not glitzy or glamorous.”

True enough, but the town, wedged into a narrow mountain valley, has undeniable charm. Virtually the entire downtown district, only about four blocks square, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Until September 1993, Wallace had the last traffic light on Interstate 90 between Seattle and Boston. It lost that distinction when state highway officials agreed (after a 20-year battle) to elevate the new freeway above a railroad right-of-way, sparing the town from an arrow through its heart.

Downtown is now a pleasant place to explore, with a nice mix of stores, from an old-fashioned five-and-dime, Fonk’s Variety, to antique stores, pawn shops, an Indian trading company, stores featuring locally made silver jewelry, a secondhand bookstore and Silver Capital Arts, where you can see or buy hundreds of different kinds of minerals, fossils and rocks (my children loved being able to fill up a small velvet bag with their own selection of polished stones for $2.50).

And, unlike some more fashionable tourist destinations, the friendliness is pervasive - at least on a slow weekend in early January. Every store, it seemed, had a free pot of coffee. Clerks smiled and said hello. Motorists waved jaywalkers across the street in front of them. And Michelle Mayfield, co-owner of the Oasis Bordello Museum, closed up shop for a quarter of an hour so she could give us a quick tour.

Wallace might not be proud of this distinction, but the Oasis is probably its most unusual tourist attraction. The building on Cedar Street was a working brothel from 1895 until 1988 (yes, 1988). Its ex-madam reportedly still lives in the area, and some of the “girls” have come back to take the museum tour.

The upstairs rooms are almost unchanged from the day the brothel closed, with their original furnishings, garish carpeting, cosmetics, clothes (some now worn by mannequins) and magazines. The madam’s room, overlooking the street, contains an intercom (so she could listen for any trouble) and has a price list posted on the wall for various “services,” complete with the Canadian exchange rate.

The upstairs tour is $4; poking around in the basement and main floor is free. My daughters, 4 and 7, loved the displays of frilly underthings, and there was nothing in bad taste (though, fortunately, I managed to avoid having to explain the word “bordello.”)

“A while back, two busloads of Southern Baptists took the tour,” recalls Mayfield. “They loved it.”

Other popular tourist attractions are the Wallace Mining Museum, which shows the history of local mining since the 1880s, and the Northern Pacific Depot Railroad Museum, housed in a stylish depot that was built in 1901 and relocated in 1986 to make way for the freeway (the building made a brief appearance in the movie “Heaven’s Gate”). The Sierra Silver Mine, no longer a working mine, offers popular underground tours, but only from mid-May through mid-October.

For such a small town (population around 1,000), Wallace has a good variety of places to stay. The modern, 63-room Wallace Inn is very nice, with an indoor pool, hot tub, steam room, sauna and exercise room. (A two-night package for snowmobilers is $140 per room, based on double occupancy; call (208) 752-1252 for reservations.)

A good stop for dinner is the saloon of the Jameson Hotel, a gorgeous room with a 20-foot ceiling supported by massive, glossy beams. The furnishings include old portraits, period lighting, brass fittings, an ancient Oriental rug and enormous, arched mirrors behind a gorgeous bar. The prime rib on our dinner visit was excellent, and the ambience is a nice throwback to the Old West. The hotel also has B&B lodgings upstairs.

Another good place to eat is the Edelweiss restaurant, a tiny six-table place that features enormous servings of schnitzel with homemade noodles, cooked by German native Monika Giles. Unfortunately (if you live in Wallace) it’s moving to the Alpine Village in Kellogg on Feb. 1.

Speaking of Kellogg, it’s only a 20-minute drive away on Interstate 90, offering a broader range of accommodations, the Silver Mountain ski area and its world’s-longest gondola ride. But I’d save Kellogg for a different trip; Wallace and its hotels, restaurants, stores and snowmobiles are definitely worth a visit of their own.

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