If you’ve been waiting for ski season, it’s finally here...sort of.
Schweitzer, Lookout Pass and Silver Mountain are all open today, albeit with some limitations.
It’s a delayed start to the season, but Matt Sawyer at Lookout Pass is thankful opening day comes before school lets out for winter break.
But does the late start forebode less stoke this season?
“No, actually, all the forecasts are pointing to actually having a very good winter, and I'm glad it's finally here," he said. "Hard for people to believe that we've actually had over 71 inches of snow so far to start the season. But a lot of that, when we got it in the middle of October and early November, all melted off or had rain events following shortly thereafter.”
The National Weather Service is predicting La Niña will eventually make this winter cold and wet—a winter sports dream.
Schweitzer opened with the help of some manmade snow on Wednesday. It will have at least one lift, one trail and one groomed run open this weekend.
Silver Mountain opened its bunny hill last weekend.
"We were one of only two resorts in the entire state of Idaho that was open for skiing," said Gus Colburn, Silver's director of marketing. "And we were able to do that one day after our planned opening."
Today, Silver will have at least two main runs groomed and ready this weekend.
"Right now it's actually snowing really hard up there," Colburn said on Thursday afternoon. "It's gonna be early season conditions. Still pretty low tide up there, but like we're happy to just get anything open right now and just get out there sliding on snow."
Lookout Pass will also have multiple runs open, depending on the current snowfall.
Mt. Spokane is planning to open next weekend, and will release more details on Monday.
49 North is the only resort without a firm opening date set. Marketing director Sarah Walker says the coming week’s weather will play a big role in determining when that will be.
