Region in brief: Lookout Pass opening Friday

Lookout Pass will open Friday after receiving 15 inches of snow over the weekend.

The ski area on the Montana-Idaho border will become the first of the Inland Northwest’s five resorts to open for the season with operations Friday through Sunday.

Most of the mountain’s front side will offer top-to-bottom skiing, and eight runs have been groomed. Additional trails will open as conditions allow, a Lookout news release said. Exit 0 Terrain Park also will open. But skiers and snowboarders were warned of early-season conditions.

The forecast calls for more snow through the week.

The base lodge will be in full operation.

Lift tickets will cost a reduced price of $26 this weekend, said Phil Edholm, president and CEO of Lookout Pass.

Alison Boggs

Palin book tour may stop in CdA

Sarah Palin, the former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor, is expected to stop in Coeur d’Alene next month as part of her book signing tour.

Palin, who begins a tour next week with the release of “Going Rogue,” is tentatively scheduled to be at the Coeur d’Alene Fred Meyer store Dec. 10, corporate spokeswoman Melinda Merrill said.

The book’s publicist told the Associated Press last week that her tour will be unconventional, skipping some large cities like Los Angeles and Seattle. But she will stop in some cities where she drew crowds last year as the running mate to GOP presidential nominee John McCain, and in some smaller cities such as Sioux Falls, S.D., Fort Wayne, Ind., and Roanoke, Va.,

Jim Camden

Man found dead possibly drowned

A Wallace man found dead in a residential drainage ditch may have accidentally drowned, the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.

Milo Whisman, 45, was found dead Saturday by a resident in the Placer Creek area about 11 a.m., said Capt. Jeremy Groves.

Preliminary results show Whisman may have drowned, but an official cause of death is pending the results of an autopsy Monday at Providence Holy Family Hospital in Spokane, Groves said.

Whisman was last seen while walking home from a local bar, Groves said.

Sara Leaming