Turner Mountain Joins The ‘90s

Big changes are in store for the little-known Turner Mountain ski area a dozen miles north of Libby, Mont.

Indoor toilets.

This season, at least, the Turner Mountain ski area has continued to be a take back to the ‘60s.

On a sunny Saturday morning, the parking lot might have only 50 cars. A sign at the loading point boasts of North America’s longest T-bar.

“It’s probably the longest one running that’s left,” chuckles Dave Anderson, 38, a vice president and board member of Kootenai Winter Sports, the corporation that created Turner in 1960.

The regulars spot visitors right away, giving earnest welcomes and asking where they’re from.

Most of the license numbers sport the “56” prefix for Lincoln County, but a few have come from nearby Idaho and as far as Washington.

The ski area “is the West’s best-kept secret,” said Anderson, who’s skied all over the Rockies.

Turner takes you back 30 years to an earlier era in Montana skiing, when the pace was slower and you grumbled about a long lift line when six skiers were ahead of you.

It’s an area known for its precipitous terrain, powdery upper basins and a vertical drop of at least 2,110 feet.

Lift tickets are a deal at $16 and come with the jokes about how it’s really a double bargain because you get to ski 4,400 feet of vertical: 2,200 up the T-bar and 2,200 down the mountain.

But changes are coming to the 840-acre ski area, which offers some 25 runs, the longest over two miles.

Over the next two years, a small new lodge with indoor plumbing will replace the tiny snack bar, ski rental shack and four port-a-potties. A chairlift will replace the 5,600-foot T-bar that has pulled skiers up the mountain since 1961.

Volunteer help has been the key to keeping costs low at Turner, where the only paid employee is lift operator Merlyn Mohr, a retired mechanic who pampers the big diesel TD-24 dozer engine that has driven the T-bar for more than three decades.

“Everybody kind of just does their own thing and pitches in,” Anderson added. “We’ll barter a lot of stuff, too, for passes. We get by. We don’t have much overhead.”

Though Turner is open to public skiing only on Saturdays and Sundays, you can rent the entire ski area complete with ski patrol for $1,200 on a weekday.

Turner remains a quiet, down-home place away from the crowds. Only about 3,100 skiers have visited its slopes this year, up from the usual 2,400, in a winter that brought record snowfall and a longer season.