Mountain of change
Grass spikes through a thin blanket of snow under a chairlift Tuesday morning at Whitefish Mountain Resort. The ski area is aiming for a Dec. 8 opening. Jennifer DeMonte photos/Daily Inter Lake
Just some more snow, and a $20 million transformation will be revealed at Whitefish Mountain Resort.
New chairlifts. A new road leading to the resort. A new lodge. New restaurants. More parking. More snowmaking capacity and an expanded snow park.
And all of it has been tied together in a more streamlined and consolidated way aimed at providing a more user-friendly destination for skiers.
The changes got under way as soon as the snow melted last spring and just before Winter Sports Inc. announced that the Big Mountain Resort would take the new name, Whitefish Mountain Resort.
"We've been pretty busy," said Donnie Clapp, the resort's public relations spokesman. "We've really put a lot of thought into making the place work better."
So far, snow has been somewhat scarce. But that changed on Tuesday, with 3 to 5 inches falling from the mountain's summit to the village area.
The target: "Dec. 8 has been our plan for an opening. And we are still pretty hopeful that we will be able to open at least part of the mountain by then," Clapp said.
In previous years Big Mountain opened on Thanksgiving Day.
The resort is ramping up its work force and should be at a peak operation of about 550 employees within a matter of weeks.
The changes come on the resort's 60th anniversary. The hub of the improvements is an $11 million Base Lodge built over the summer in the location of the old Outpost building.
The 35,000-square-foot lodge consolidates services and amenities that previously were scattered throughout the upper village area.
Equipment rentals, the ski and snowboard school, a child-care center, a central ticket and information center, locker rooms, dining, a bar and a lounge all are under one roof.
The lodge will feature Mackenzie River Pizza as a new operation on the mountain, while a Memphis-style barbecue restaurant - Ed & Mully's - will open in the Upper Village at the former Moguls location.
The lodge was located at the lower tier of the resort specifically to provide skiers closer access to far more parking. That move, in turn, is expected to free up previously scarce parking in the Upper Village area, Clapp said.
About $7.2 million in chairlift improvements are centered around the Upper Village. The resort's high-speed quad lift - Chair One - was completely replaced with new equipment fitted to the existing towers that stretch 2,100 feet from the base to the summit.
"We stripped everything off and basically replaced the chair with a brand-new lift," Clapp said. "The old chair was built in 1989 and it needed to either be rebuilt or it needed to be replaced."
Parts of the old lift were cannibalized and put to work in replacing Chair Two - a fixed-grip double lift - with a high-speed quad lift. That lift was extended and realigned with a loading location directly adjacent to the base of Chair One.
Skiers taking Chair Six from the Base Lodge will unload at a location that is conveniently located near the Chair One and Chair Two loading areas.
Just getting to the resort should be more pleasant, too, with last week's completion of major improvements to the Big Mountain Road.
The $10 million rebuild largely focused on replacing three severe switchbacks with long sweeping curves with shoulders and guardrails. Other curves in the road have been straightened, and improved drainage features have been installed.
The resort also has tripled its snowmaking capacity, a move largely aimed at accommodating an expansion of the Fishbowl Terrain Park. The park will have three separate runs, catering to beginning, intermediate and advanced park riders.
And it will feature a 450-foot-long super half pipe that won't open until Christmas because it requires so much snow, Clapp said.
"You need a ton of snow to create the park, and the superpipe in particular," he said. "You need millions of gallons of manmade snow, and you need a lot of help from Mother Nature with natural snow."
Temperatures low enough for snowmaking didn't arrive until Thanksgiving week.
"We've had six guns running in the park area since then, and three more guns running in the pipe area," Clapp said. "Temperatures have been consistently below 25 degrees, which is kind of the magic number."
Whitefish Mountain Resort was recently ranked 20th in Ski Magazine's Top 50 Resort Guide - the highest ranking a Montana resort has ever received.
Retail-window lift ticket prices are $56 for adults (ages 19-64), $46 for seniors (ages 65-79) and youths (ages 13-18), and $30 for juniors (ages 7-12). Night ski operations occur on Friday and Saturday nights, mid-December through mid-March for $15.
For more information on lodging and lift ticket packages, call (877) SKI-FISH or check the resort's Web site at:
Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com