Look Out! Skiers Running Early Kings Of The Hill Head For Fresh Snow On Top Of Lookout Pass
On the way there, it seemed like a prank.
Ski season couldn’t be here - you need snow for that. Sunday seemed as bare as a hot August day.
Heading east on Interstate 90, clouds hung low like still ghosts - splattering rain, not flakes. But as the freeway wound and climbed its way into Montana, the tree-stubbled scenery slowly developed a case of dandruff.
Finally, turning in on Exit Zero, there it was - Lookout Pass Ski Area, nestled under a two-foot blanket of snow, with more floating down in big, cotton chunks.
Manager Dean Cooper wore a wide grin as he watched this, along with the 600-some customers who swooshed down the mountain face bundled in wool and Gore-Tex. Cooper could barely believe it.
“Last Thursday or Friday, there was no snow up here,” he said. “We were cutting brush.” He had figured it would be Thanksgiving before there’d be snow.
The weekend opening made Lookout the first area resort to fire up its lifts. Veterans and newbies alike rushed them.
There, they found winter and plenty of company. Icicles pointed sharp and silver from the lodge eaves. Knit-capped skiers threaded the slope, quiet on thin rails.
But there seemed to be even more snowboarders. They’d zoom down toward the lodge, turn sharp and kick up a spray, then stop with a dull crunch. Their abandoned boards - stowed upright in a snowbank - formed a neon fence fronting the lodge.
Eli Tenner and Doug Taes, both 17, came from Spokane to board. Sitting on wet benches inside the music-thumping woody lodge, Taes took a minute to thaw and recover.
“I couldn’t stay up on it very long,” he said of his first, impact-filled crack at the sport. “I’d get going and it’d be like, ‘What?!’ … then I’d lose my balance and fall.”
Mercifully, Tenner just listened and fumbled with his shades. He was the pro here, the guy who dragged his buddy off to the place of reckoning. Once the season opens, Tenner boards every couple weeks.
But Taes was hardly alone. Outside, a kid hobbled knock-kneed atop his skis, a motorcycle helmet on his head like a fishbowl.
Kristy Walsh wasn’t anywhere near that state of confusion, but it had been awhile.
“My knees feel like they’re about to give out,” she muttered to her brother. “I don’t think I want to drive right now.”
“You’re gonna be sore tomorrow,” Patrick Walsh said.
“I know it,” she said, adding, “That’s the best I’ve skied. I haven’t skied in 10 years, and it wasn’t even my gear.”
Both Walshes were in their 30s, and are now firm believers in moderation. Still, they couldn’t complain - they had free passes.
While 30, of course, isn’t old, it may have felt that way at Lookout. The whole place, save the bar, swarmed with teenagers.
“I feel outnumbered,” said Katy Farrington, referring to the cliques of goateed, denim-clad snowboarders.
She and husband Kevin, instead, were of the stylish set. Glossy-new purple skis. Flower-bright purple jackets. Kevin even had the matching cap.
Kid or adult, ski or snowboard, everyone was stoked. Especially the staff.
After all, they shred too. Just ask Cooper. He got to break in the slopes before opening - “More to look at stuff than play,” he claimed.
The glint in his eye said otherwise.
“No one does it for the money,” he beamed. “It’s a labor of love.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo