Schweitzer, ID, Feb. 26, 2021

Tony Crocker

Administrator
Staff member
There’s an expression in this COVID ski season that “Friday is the new Saturday,” and this was the day I saw a demonstration of that. There must have been 4x as many people at Schweitzer Friday as Thursday. We arrived at 9:02AM and were relegated to the lowest parking lot, requiring a short walk uphill to the Musical Chairs lift. That lift and Great Escape had 5-7 minute lines clearing out the base early in the morning.

There were other factors contributing to the difference between Thursday and Friday. Thursday was a bit of a sneaker powder day as no overnight snow was reported but it dumped hard from 6AM to noon. Those 6 inches were reported as new snow for Friday, and Friday also had less severe fog with some sunny breaks. Friday also had a smaller burst of early morning snow, so untracked snow was slightly deeper than on Thursday.

The crowd dispersed over the expansive terrain and we never waited behind more than about 10 people after those first two lifts. Obvious lines got tracked out fast but we still got our share of powder. We started with Shoot the Moon again, this time with a view to Stella terrain below.
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We then got one run in near the Cedar Park liftline, deeper but more tracked than Thursday.
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The other side of the ridge was less tracked.
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This was SE facing but enough snow had accumulated that we felt hardly any crunch.

Now we rode Colburn several times to ski from the top.
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Liz thought the visibility up top was still marginal, so our first run was in the trees of Australia.
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Our second run had some clearing so we skied from the top.
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View down Colburn lift:
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We skied some less tracked trees beyond Australia. Then I skied one of the Lakeside Chutes from the top and joined Liz, emerging from Whiplash here.
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We took a short break at Sky House, then skied to the Village via White Lightning.
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This may have been the first time the Village was visible from the top.

But by the time we rode Basin Express and Lakeview it cleared more. We skied all the way out South Ridge.
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Here Liz is skiing the farthest run Ayers Alley with view of the Village and the Sunnyside runs beyond.
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We found less tracked snow on our final run in one of the South Bowl Chutes. We skied to the base, then down Happy Trails to the lower parking. Just below the base we got our first view of Lake Pend Oreille.
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Today we skied 17,100 vertical and about 7K of powder. We were quite tired after these two days but with the fresh snow conditions it was well worth the effort.
 
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nice... I thought they were gonna upgrade that Coburn lift a few years ago to a HSQ?

Are you going to be in the Silver Valley this week? I'm planning on getting there tomorrow night and riding Silver Mon and Tues, Lookout Wed...

Brundage yesterday was also pretty busy (10-15 min lines at Bluebird in the AM), but the backside was not as bad. They're up to 2 ft with this latest storm.. still snowing this morning.
 
snowave":1eyp8874 said:
nice... I thought they were gonna upgrade that Colburn lift a few years ago to a HSQ?
You were thinking of the old Snow Ghost double, which rose from the base of what is now Cedar Park HSQ to the top of the mountain, now served by the Colburn triple.
https://www.schweitzer.com/discover/history/":1eyp8874 said:
2019: Schweitzer installed two new lifts in The Outback. The high-speed detachable quad, Cedar Park Express, and the fixed grip triple, Colburn Triple, began service during the 2019/20 winter season. The resort also added an additional 7 new runs and increased gladed terrain accessed by those lifts.
Since the Cedar Park lift does not go above tree line, it greatly enhances the ability to run tree laps on bad weather days like Thursday. That terrain would also be accessible on days when wind closes the top, although I don't know how frequent that is.

Wind closures may be rare but the fog is very common: it has been present to at least some degree all 6 days I've skied Schweitzer on 3 different trips. But Schweitzer is an elite area for tree skiing, as I hope was demonstrated by Thursday's pictures. It's one of the best places to ski on a bad weather day.

Yes I read that Brundage was the bullseye of the storm we got at Schweitzer.

Today was clear; we skied 49 Degrees North, about a 1 hour 15 minute drive from Sandpoint. We will ski Whitefish Mon and Tue, drive to Missoula or Philipsburg after skiing Tuesday. Wednesday is probably Discovery unless I can see the possibility of a sunny corn snow day at Montana Snowbowl.

James will be at 49 Degrees North Mon and Schweitzer Tue-Thu. We will all just miss each other.
 
Great timing at Schweitzer, very similar to when we skied there in 2013.

Tony Crocker":1uqnvg9c said:
James will be at 49 Degrees North Mon and Schweitzer Tue-Thu. We will all just miss each other.
Snowave and I tried but couldn't manage to coordinate our ski days, too bad.
 
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