WHITEFISH — It was a challenging year for ski areas in the western United States, and that includes right here in northwest Montana.
“You know everyone knows it was a tough winter for ski areas especially on the west coast, and definitely a bit warmer than we are used to, but we held on pretty good, ended the season with about 207 inches of snowfall at the summit of Big Mountain,” said Whitefish Mountain Resort Spokesman Chad Sokol.
Sokol said the resort kept 90% of its terrain open for most of the season.
He said the mountain had enough snow to finish on schedule and host its annual pond skim closing weekend.
“We kept most of our 3,000 acres of terrain open throughout the season which really made a difference and made folks want to come here and spend their time on the slopes,” said Sokol.
Despite lower visitation numbers than last season, Sokol said it was the 5th busiest season on record at Whitefish Mountain Resort.
“We ended the season with about 457,000 skier visits, definitely a bit less than last year, we’re about 8% down from last year,” added Sokol.
About 50 miles south in Lakeside, Blacktail Mountain Ski Area also saw fewer visitors this season.
“We operated about half of the mountain and had more than half of the visits, but it wasn’t a great year for us visitation-wise,” said Blacktail Mountain Ski Area General Manager Jessi Wood.
Wood said they were only able to operate the Crystal chairlift on the lower half of the mountain for nine days during the season.
“About 20 years was the other year we did not have a ton of crystal country operations, and the year after that we had a banner year, so I cross my fingers and hope for that,” said Wood.
Wood said Blacktail will be busy this off-season cleaning fallen tree debris from winter windstorms.
“There’s a lot of fallen trees that we’d like to have the time to cleanup, we had full snow coverage when they went down, so we will be focusing on that and making sure our slopes and our lifts are ready for a great season next year,” added Wood.
More information on summer outdoor activities at Blacktail can be found here.
Information on summer outdoor activities at Whitefish Mountain Resort can be found here.
