Silver Mountain, ID: March 14, 2021

ChrisC

Well-known member
Silver Mountain: the Riblet Double Chair tour of the NW continues.... :-D

More stable Spring conditions - cloudless, low 20s/high 40s, great preservation on north aspects, follow the sun on east/west faces

Another Indy Pass mountain - but only received a discount since it was a 'blackout date'.

As noted in other reports, Silver Mountain's 3.5-mile access gondola is a unique way to gain entry to the mountain - more akin to Europe versus America. I am sure this has been a bottleneck on weekends and holidays this year due to COVID capacity restrictions. However, the crowds were no longer a problem by mid-March.

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Again, another slow chair mountain so you had to be aggressive to ski significant vertical.

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Access Gondola:

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Upon arrival at the gondola summit, I started skiing the east-facing runs off of Kellogg Peak - a mix of groomers and a couple of north-facing chalky bumps.

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Much better visibility than my previous experience at Silver / more typical NW:

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Beautiful, sunny spring day, no complaints:

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View to Wardner Peak

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Some of the afternoon was spent on the traverse around Wardner Park and skiing various lines off of it. In particular, I would take the traverse out to the Silver Basin Junction that had a couple of variants to ski.

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Skiing some of the lines into both 'The Meadows' and 'Silver Basin' I surprisingly found untracked snow - so that got repeated. The last snowfall must have been days prior.

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Riding the Old Chair #4, a local explained that there are now lots of formal gates since the in-bound avalanches. In fact, he said you can ski into town under the gondola when the conditions are right. A bit like Heavenly.


Riblet Chair
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At the end of the day, there was a backup downloading the gondola so it was a good time for a beer and protein bar.

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Silver Mountain is an excellent inland NW gem with steeps, glades, and low-capacity lifts to preserve snow.
 
ChrisC":1w3ik4u4 said:
Silver Mountain: the Riblet Double Chair tour of the NW continues.
As I brought up in my report -- after seeing the new base area, I was surprised to arrive at the top and realise that it's a lift museum. To be fair, the old fixed-grip chairs seemed to move along at a decent rate but as mentioned by snowave, the almost 20-minute Riblet chair (which has a useful mid-station that allows you to lap the upper terrain) really does need to be replaced.
 
Given the mid March timing and sunny weather, ChrisC definitely chose the right places to visit in Silver Mt. and 49 degrees North.

On our trip the the weather changed abruptly from winter to spring on March 1. Feb. 26-27 had classic Great Gray North powder skiing at Schweitzer. Discovery March 3 was the standout in the later 40 degree sunny weather, all winter snow on the north side and some buttery corn cruising on the south side.
 
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