Lookout Pass Ski Area opens

LOOKOUT PASS, Idaho – The snow was light; the crowds were heavy.

Lookout Pass Ski Area opened Thursday minus the foot of fresh powder that resort officials had hoped for on opening day. Hundreds of skiers and snowboarders showed up anyway, reveling in the Inland Northwest’s inaugural day of skiing.

Some, like Christopher Chew, found they couldn’t wait another 24 hours to hit the slopes.

He and his roommate, Jesse Johnson, drove nearly two hours from Missoula for Lookout’s opening, despite the fact that Montana Snowbowl – a resort just 15 minutes from them – is opening today. They wanted an immediate adrenaline fix.

“I moved out here just to snowboard,” said Chew, a former Florida resident, who will study finance next semester at the University of Montana.

By 10:30 a.m., they had made four runs on a light, fluffy coating of snow.

“Not bad for the first day,” said Chew, who had to be back in Missoula at 5 p.m. for a job delivering Domino’s pizzas. “The powder’s pretty deep in spots.”

“The snow’s a little heavier than it looks,” according to Johnson. “But it’s still pretty fun.”

Lookout – the first of the region’s five ski resorts to open – had 24 inches of snow at the top of the mountain, and 15 inches at the base.

“We were looking for another 8 to 12 inches last night,” said Jim Schreiber, Lookout’s marketing director.

But Wednesday night’s storm brought just 2 new inches of snow to the resort on the Idaho-Montana border. The storm also disappointed officials at Silver Mountain, who pushed back today’s expected opening date due to low snow levels.

At Lookout, nine of 34 runs were open.

That was enough for Bob Miller to play hooky from work. The Missoula man took a day off from his irrigation business, and brought a ski pal – Holt Corette – with him. The two men arrived for Lookout’s 9 a.m. opening. They were glad they came early.

“The temperature is good. The snow texture’s good,” Miller said, “but it looks like it will be worn off by 3 p.m.”

He regretted not packing his battered pair of “rock skis.” Instead, “I got to ride my brand new pair of hot dog skis” – an $800 pair of Rossignol Sick Birds.

“We’re a little bleak out there, with some of the bushes popping through,” said Lookout’s Schreiber, who’s hoping that snow forecasts for this weekend will translate into a heavy dumping.

In the meantime, Thursday’s crowds demonstrated the pent-up demand for skiing, according to Schreiber. He expected 500 to 600 people on the mountain before the lift closed at 4 p.m. The resort offered discounted $24 lift tickets.

Mary Gallegos was camped out in Lookout’s lodge with textbooks, a laptop and a cup of tea. A back injury sidelined the Post Falls woman, who is studying for a master’s degree in nursing. But her husband, Ken, was on the slopes. They left their house around 7 a.m.

“He’s been pretty impatient,” Gallegos said. “He was talking about snowboarding in the middle of September when he was out on Hayden Lake wakeboarding.”

Gallegos and her husband both work at Northern Idaho Advanced Care Hospital. They took weekend shifts so they can hit shorter lines at the ski hills during the middle of the week.

Lookout’s opening day was more important than school for Carrie Roberts and Katie Bayer. The girls – eighth-graders at Wallace Junior Senior High – talked their moms into letting them go snowboarding.

“I got straight A’s on my last report card,” which gave her leverage for a day off from her studies, Bayer said.

Roberts told her mom that she “really, really” wanted to go. Both girls have season passes to Lookout.

“We’ll be back on Saturday and Sunday,” Roberts said, “and every weekend for the rest of the season.”