A Complaint Lodged How Come Some Modern Ski Resorts Feel More Like Fast-Food Restaurants?

I was only 11 when I saw my first ski lodge. But I can still recall some of the details: fashionably dressed adults gathered around the cozy pit fire … beer steins and antique wall ornaments … rugged stonework and burly timbers … and a singer in sweater and tights leading a conga line to the Henry Mancini tune “Meglio Stasera (It Had Better Be Tonight).”

I couldn’t join the conga line because I was stuck in the balcony of a New York movie theater, sitting next to my starchy Southern aunt. But ever since, the beguiling ambiance portrayed on screen by that scene from “The Pink Panther” has defined one extreme when I think of ski lodges.

Mount Spokane’s No. 2 Lodge comes frightening close to defining the other.

Its metal-stairway entrance resembles a tenement fire escape. Some days the roof leaks in a half-dozen places, saturating the already humid, french-fry-laden atmosphere.

But perhaps worst of all, nothing about the architecture inside or out suggests a kinship between the building and its environment.

It’s no surprise that area resorts can’t match Hollywood’s image of a ski lodge - or even Sun Valley’s. “You’re talking about world-class lodges that probably cost $25 million,” says 49 Degrees North resort owner John Eminger. “It’s like, `Gee, how come there’s no Empire State Building in downtown Spokane?’ “

But memorable ski lodges don’t have to cost $25 million. One of the coziest hillside retreats anywhere in the Northwest is the modest, 1941 lodge at Lookout Pass, with its vintage skis and black-and-white photographs mounted above an increasingly rare phenomenon - a genuine wood-burning fireplace.

Since Schweitzer and Silver Mountain built lodges earlier this decade, reviews have been mixed.

Silver’s mountaintop facility has the efficiency - and, some say, “charm” - of an airport terminal. Its one fireplace frequently can’t be used because a downdraft fills the room with smoke.

Schweitzer’s Day Lodge also gets high marks for efficiency but, according to some, doesn’t have the spirit of the smaller lodge it replaced.

The $8 million Green Gables Lodge next door makes a friendlier statement, with its wing chairs and wood wainscoting. But the lobby’s gas fireplace has an anemic feel. And the hotel’s elaborate pseudo-chateau roofline has been plagued by water damage, the result of a cost-cutting decision during construction to substitute a composition roof for the specified metal one.

Now comes talk of building new lodges at the two hills closest to Spokane.

Forty-nine Degrees North’s Eminger just completed work on a master plan that includes two new facilities - one at the summit of Chewelah Peak and another on a ridge overlooking the east basin.

And Mount Spokane’s management would like to tear down both base lodges, recontour the hillside between the two and build a single structure with a better restaurant and more space for equipment rental.

None of the proposed lodges would be elaborate. But that doesn’t mean they have to be sterile.

Donna Larsen has skied 45 years, include 18 on Mount Spokane’s ski patrol. She’s the sort of devotee who still appreciates the clomping sound that heavy leather boots made as skiers climbed the half-log stairs at the old Jackass Ski Bowl lodge outside Kellogg.

“To me,” says Larsen, “the perfect lodge would have a great room surrounded by a big balcony where small gatherings of people could sit and be friendly and play games without having a waitress in front of them - not so commercial.

“I think of a ski lodge as someplace where you can kind of communicate with nature a little,” says Larsen, “and feel like you’re a part of the mountain without all these modern conveniences like video games and cell phones.”

Local sports-equipment retailer Brian Conn’s idea of the perfect ski lodge combines brawny post-and-beam construction with great views.

“One of the nicest old lodges was the one at Schweitzer, until they tore it down to build a new one,” Conn says. “It had stone fireplaces both downstairs and up. People were jammed in there, but that was just part of the gig of skiing. It was a great place to hang out.

“I also like the little lodge at Lookout Pass,” he says. “It’s pretty funky. But around here, everything else is modern; they’re just big cafeterias.”

Caroline Halley tends to agree, even though her job as Schweitzer’s sales and marketing director is to promote the resort’s new facilities.

“I liked the old lodge’s ambiance,” she says. “It wasn’t an attractive building - it was colder than the new Day Lodge, and it had slippery floors. But it felt like skiing to me.

“New lodges tend to be built for efficiency,” Halley says, “but they don’t have the spirit of the mountain in them.”

Can you have both convenience and spirit?

Several area skiers say yes, and as proof they point to the $45 million Stein Eriksen Lodge in Deer Valley, Utah.

“That’s the closest thing to what you see in the movies,” says Mount Spokane Ski Patrol president Pat Downey. “It’s a cross between a London men’s club and Bloomingdale’s.”

It also costs $450 and up per night to snooze there - more than three times the base rate at Schweitzer’s Green Gables Lodge.

Another favorite mentioned by local skiers is Mount Hood’s Timberline Lodge. Opened in 1938, the Oregon landmark boasts massive stone fireplaces, carved beams and elaborate custom furnishings.

But unlike most ski lodges, Timberline wasn’t conceived as a business venture. Rather, it was a Depression-era Works Progress Administration project intended to help hundreds of craftspeople and laborers off the dole.

“The standard lodge today costs $95 to $110 a square foot,” explains 49 Degrees’ Eminger. “If you were to build Timberline today, I bet it would be over $200 a square foot if you could find the craftsmen.

“When I had to replace a couple of beams in my bar,” he says, “we had to go find the tree and selectively cut it to get 7-by-18-inch timbers. You can hardly find that stuff anymore.”

That’s why most contemporary ski lodges are built not of timbers, but of steel, reinforced concrete and laminated-wood beams. The steel and concrete might get covered with ornamental wood or stone, if the budget allows.

Fireplaces are another frequent casualty.

“The deal with fireplaces,” says Eminger, “is that they take up a lot of space, they don’t produce much heat and they’re a liability.”

How does one convey the “ski lodge” character without heavy timbers and fireplaces?

Several techniques that Spokane residential architect Jon Sayler recommends are scale, color and lighting.

“I design ski houses differently than I do lake houses,” says Sayler. “Lake houses have a more open, cavernous feeling - really bringing the outside in - while ski-house ceilings are a little lower for coziness.”

Sayler suggests furniture with exposed wood and bright fabrics.

“A lot of times we’ve specified Pendleton blankets for the upholstery,” he says.

The right light fixtures are important, too.

“I like to bounce light off surfaces. If the ceiling is wood, I want fixtures that put a lot of light up. It makes the ceiling glow, and the whole room takes on a warm color.”

Architect Glen Cloninger, who designed Schweitzer’s Day Lodge and Green Gables, acknowledges the realities of today’s ski industry can compromise aesthetics.

“The Day Lodge is like a rental-car business; get ‘em in and out as quickly as you can,” Cloninger says.

But he says the goal of any ski-lodge design should be to create an experience that’s different from what most of us encounter in our daily urban lives - and ideally one that relates intimately with its mountainous, snow-covered environment.

Interestingly, the Cloninger lodge others point to as most successful is the Mount Spokane Ski Patrol headquarters.

Built with volunteer labor and partly donated materials, the four-story structure is efficient, cozy and charming.

“It almost has a North Pole Santa’s workshop atmosphere,” says ski patrol president Pat Downey. “You half expect to see elves trotting around.”

Of course, it also serves a different clientele than the grim No. 2 Lodge next door. The ski patrol building wasn’t designed to make money. It’s a place where patrollers, their family and friends can relax and grab a bite in front of a wood stove while their wet gloves tumble in the drier.

That’s the ambiance 49 Degrees’ Eminger aspires to with his proposed ridge lodge.

“It will have a fireplace in it, and a big deck around the outside,” he says.

“It won’t be a base facility with a day care, ski school and rental shop. And it won’t be the Taj Mahal - just a place to get warm, have some hot chocolate, and enjoy the afternoon sunshine.”

That’s the spirit.