The 'Hat Lady' of West Glacier
Stacy Schnabel, event coordinator for the Belton Chalet, says part of her job is helping couples plan their weddings or receptions at the Belton. It's a job she is well suited to since she had her wedding reception there.
Stacey Schnebel was traveling through West Glacier in 2000 when she decided to stay.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Schnebel planned to spend four days in the small Northwest Montana town that serves as the main western entrance to Glacier National Park and then head west to Portland to finish college. She never made it. Stacey fell in love with the place and made it her home.
Eleven years later she is married, has a 1-year-old child, and wears many hats.
Schnebel got her first job as a front desk clerk at the historic Belton Chalet. She later worked as a server in the restaurant there, and is now the marketing and events manager. In between she spent five years as the catering manager at Big Mountain Resort in Whitefish.
Schnebel is called "The Hat Lady" by co-workers at Belton Chalet, where workers are gearing up for a Mother's Day brunch on May 8 and the ensuing "summer season" that begins May 21.
The Chalet's Grill Dining Room, where Schnebel worked as a server in her second job, hosts the brunch.
"I'm always going," said Schnebel. "My husband [Seth] and I are full of next steps and ideas for new businesses we'd like to start."
Their relationship began when Stacey was hanging around West Glacier's old bridge on a hot day in 2000.
"This guy with a big fluffy dog pulled up in a truck with a wooden camper," she said. He was getting ready to embark on a kayaking trip down the Middle Fork of the Flathead River.
It was a chance meeting for the Chicago native and a guy from rural Kansas.
"We are whitewater rafters," she said. "We moved from Whitefish to Coram four years ago so we can be closer to where we play. Then we ended up buying a business."
Together with Melissa Mangold and Greg Muhlenkamp, the Schnebels purchased Stoner's Inn in Coram in 2009 and renamed it the Stonefly Lounge.
"We purchased a dive bar that had potential," Stacey said.
She's been working on growing the live music scene in the canyon area through the Belton Chalet's Taproom and the Stonefly Lounge, which was remodeled.
The businesses feature a wide array of genres, including bluegrass, blues, rock ‘n' roll, Latin, reggae, folk and indie.
"We don't rule anything out really," Stacey said. "There's kind of an art form to finding the right kind of music. I'm getting into music. Never in a million years thought I would."
She explained that there are hundreds of seasonal workers in and around West Glacier in the summer who are looking for things to do. Live music helps fill the void for Glacier's 20-somethings.
The Schnebels also own a website search engine optimization company, UnderCurrent Web, that is Seth's livelihood.
Stacey is also vice-president of the Trapline Association, the non-profit group that puts on Cabin Fever Days in February.
She is a member of Gateway to Glacier, an informal group of Canyon-area business owners that is trying to expand business beyond the June-through-September season.
"The focus is to bring this community together. They've never had that," she said.
The group meets at 7 p.m. the first Wednesday of the month, usually at the Tamarack Lodge in Coram. Their website is Gateway2Glacier.com.
The newest group Schnebel joined is Women in Motion, a group that formed in March for 10 mothers of young children. They meet once a month for a potluck and donate $5 or $10 dollars each to global charities.
With Stacey being as busy as she is, Seth gets to be "Mr. Mom," taking care of Jackson except for the two days a week the boy's grandfather comes from Whitefish to watch him.
"It's a definite juggle for us as we play ‘pass the baby'," Stacey said.
In their leisure time, the Schnebels have enjoyed floating the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, Utah's Green River, the Snake, Payette and Salmon rivers in Idaho, and Montana's Yellowstone River.
"We used to go on road trips for a month at a time," Stacey said.
She probably won't have much time for those month-long road trips for a while, however.
The Stonefly Lounge is hosting a community party at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 2, which will serve as a "summer sendoff" featuring the Belton Blues Band.
In the meantime, Stacey will help manage the Belton Chalet, which was built in 1910 and whose lodge and cottages sat vacant for 60 years between World War II and 2000. That was three years after current owners Cas Still and Andy Baxter purchased it from the Luding family.
It took three years to restore two cottages and the lodge, which previously had been a dormitory but was used for storage in the long interim.
A shower and toilet were added to each room in the three-story 25-room lodge, located up the hill behind the chalet. Previously visitors had to use the community bathroom located at the end of the hallway.
More than 50 percent of the furniture in the chalet, lodge and cottages is original from when the property was built by Louis Hill, son of the famous railroad baron James J. Hill.
Of the original chalets in and around Glacier Park, Belton is the only one that's privately owned today.
"That makes a huge difference in the quality of your stay," Stacey said.
The Belton Chalet uses as much Montana-grown food as possible, including meat, fresh produce and beer.
That's all part of the endeavors of some transplanted Midwesterners.
"We want to be progressive members of society. We want to be successful enough to live here," Stacey said.
Reporter Caleb Soptelean may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at csoptelean@dailyinterlake.com.