Wanted: Snow

Local skis resorts are taking what they can get with limited snowfall early in the season and warmer-than-usual conditions early in the season.

For Schweitzer Mountain Resort, that means opening with one chairlift out of 10 and one ski run out of 92, as it did Tuesday.

“Ski conditions are pretty good, actually,” said Dig Chrismer, Schweitzer’s marketing manager. “We had a full, nice reset to winter.”

Schweitzer has received 33 inches of snow for the season, with 2 inches in the last three days and more snow in the forecast today.

Despite opening with only Basin Express Quad in action from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Chrismer said spirits are high and skiers are enjoying being on the hill.

“It’s still nice to get out there on our skis,” she said Tuesday.

Lookout Pass and Silver Mountain resorts remain closed but are hoping to have skiers gliding downhill soon.

“We’re still looking to try and open Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” said Matt Sawyer, Lookout’s director of marketing. “We do need more snow.”

Lookout had 13 inches of snow at the top of the mountain Tuesday, with eight at the base. It has received 66 inches of snow at the summit and 36 at the base so far this winter.

“The snow we got is pretty good,” he said.

To fully open, Lookout likes a solid 24 inches of snow at the base.

Another foot, he said, “would be ideal” to ensure a sufficient covering.

Lookout employs about 125 people when in full operation. It currently has about 20 to 25 people working there.

Sawyer said about once every 10 years Lookout opens by the last week of November, and normal opening is the first week of December. He said a few inches of snow is in the forecast and conditions are promising it will have the snowfall it needs to fully open by mid-December. Key to its success is a Dec. 17 opening before the big Christmas break rush to the mountains.

Lookout does not make snow and that is a point of pride, Sawyer said.

“We are 100 percent-natural snow mountain,” Sawyer said.

Silver Mountain Resort has received 38 inches of snow at the summit and 27 at the base so far this year, but much of that has melted in the recent warm spell.

Fourteen inches of snow has fallen at the lodge in the past 48 hours, and 17 at the summit.

“We’ve received quite a bit of snow,” said Gus Colburn, marketing coordinator.

Silver plans to open the tubing hill and beginner runs this weekend and chair 2, and could open more ski runs if the 10 inches forecast to fall comes down this weekend and is quality stuff. It likes to have 15 to 24 inches of snow when it opens.

Silver aims to be open for weekends shortly after Thanksgiving and shoots for a full opening by the third week of December when it employs some 450 people for its ski hill, lodge, dining and water park.

In an average year, it attracts some 100,000 users.

“It’s a pretty big operation,” Colburn said.

For the first time in 10 years, Whitefish Mountain Resort in Montana delayed its stated opening day.

On Monday the resort pulled the plug on its plan to open Tuesday for the winter season due to a lack of snow. The last time this happened was ahead of the 2011-12 winter season, according to resort spokesman Chad Sokol.

The resort now hopes to begin spinning its lifts for the 2021-22 season on Thursday, conditions permitting.

“That is still a moving target but we’re pretty hopeful that we’ll have at least a few more inches by then,” Sokol said Monday.

Over the weekend the mountain tallied roughly 9 inches of new snow, and that brought the base at the summit to 25 inches. It was not quite enough, though, to combat the snowpack issues created by record-high temperatures last week that melted much of the snow at lower elevations and delayed snowmaking efforts across the mountain.

More storms are forecasted to hit the area this week, according to the National Weather Service.

The Daily Inter Lake contributed to this report.