Silver Mountain opens tube runs

KELLOGG – Take two 3-year-old girls, bundled up against the late-autumn cold.

Let them sit inside flashy blue nylon tubes atop 6,000-foot Silver Mountain.

Watch them fearlessly ride their tubes alone down one of five tubing lanes – a 600-foot-long snowy roller coaster ride with a drop of 200 feet.

The result?

Big smiles on the girls’ red-cheeked faces, and grins of bemusement from their parents.

It happened Saturday when Silver Mountain opened its new “Prospector Adventure,” a tubing ride at the popular ski and snowboarding resort in Kellogg.

Silver Mountain joins Schweitzer Resort in offering a wrinkle on winter sports standbys: tubing down a snow-covered hill.

“She loved it,” Jeff Hawkins, of Coeur d’Alene, said after riding his tube down in a lane adjoining his daredevil 3-year-old daughter, Megan.

“She was screaming ‘Whee!’ all the way down the hill,” Hawkins said of his daughter.

“When we got to the bottom she says, ‘Next time I want to race you to the bottom, Daddy.’ “

In an adjoining tubing lane, Patrick Johnson took his 3-year-old daughter, Maya, down on the first few tube rides.

But then the little one expressed a desire “to do it on my own.”

She got her wish.

With Mom watching and Dad in an adjoining lane, Maya went tubin’.

“Her first words afterwards were, ‘I want to go down faster,’ ” said her mother, Andi Johnson.

Maya grabbed a clump of snow and was anxiously chewing on it as she waited for her next trip down the tubing hill.

The hill is actually five individual chutes – carved out by the blades and tracks of snow cats – so riders don’t collide with each other as they ride the resort-provided sledding tubes.

It’s at the bottom where the old sport meets new technology.

A moving rubberized sidewalk – called the “Magic Carpet” – parallels the five tubing chutes, giving riders and their tubes an effortless trip back to the top.

Riding the noiseless 20-inch-wide sidewalk seemed to be easier than catching a snowflake on the tongue for the 3-year-old girls.

Silver Mountain attendants don’t let riders launch until those who have gone before have cleared the landing area, where a snow berm is the final bumper. Riders have to be at least 36 inches tall to ride along, and both Maya Johnson and Megan Hawkins qualified.

Hawkins and his wife, Angie, were heading out on a weekend getaway to Montana when they decided to pull off Interstate 90 and take their daughter up to the tubing hill, which opened for the first time at noon Saturday.

They took the 3-mile-long gondola ride from the valley floor to the top of Silver Mountain where the “Prospector Adventure” is located just to the east of the lodge, in the area that has been the resort’s amphitheater.

Last summer, the amphitheater’s sloping incline was modified by bulldozers and is now covered by about two feet of snow.

Jeff Colburn, the general manager of Silver Mountain, said a growing number of ski resorts are adding tubing hills – separated from skiing and snowboarding areas for safety reasons.

“There obviously are a lot of people of all ages who don’t ski or snowboard,” Colburn said. “We’re trying to create a winter experience for these people and broaden our customer base.

“It gives people one more thing to do up here on the mountain,” the general manager said.

Tony Crandal, 29, brought his 10-year-old stepson, Mickey, from Spokane for the first-day experience. They both loved it. “It’s cool and fun,” said the third-grader from Trent Elementary School.

Jennifer Zeller and Grant Williams, both freshmen at Kellogg High School, also came up for the day, knowing more snow is needed before their favorite boarding hill opens for the season.

“I wish it was longer and faster, maybe with some jumps,” Williams said.

Zeller decided to go down the hill backward on her tube. “That scared me, just to hang on as you spin around going down the hill.”

While tubing was fun and filled the void, she, too, said she can’t wait to get back on her snowboard.

Anton Ferraro, 12, and his father, Jim Ferraro, 57, of Kellogg, also were beaming with smiles after the tubing experience.

“I think I will stick with snowboarding, if I had a choice, but this is fun and it’s fast,” said Anton Ferraro.

His father, a skier, said tubing atop the hill will offer a “break in the action” when his legs and feet are tired from skiing. “At night, it’s going to be fun,” he said.

Silver Mountain’s tubing park, with new lighting towers, will be open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and until 8 p.m. when night skiing begins on Dec. 26.

Resort tubing started last year at Schweitzer, near Sandpoint.

The Schweitzer tubing center – “Hermit’s Hollow” – has two tubing lanes that run 500 feet in length, said resort spokesman Patrick Sande.

A handle tow provides tubers a lift back up the hill.

“We had a great opening year last year and hope to see the operation continuing to grow in the upcoming year,” Sande said.

“Amenities like tubing are great additions, providing additional activities for those who are looking for an alternate to skiing and snowboarding at the mountain,” he said.