Scoping the terrain and incredible views<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Riley Polumbus, PR Manager and spokesperson for Whitefish Mountain Resort tells us that unlike many other resorts, 50% of lift ticket sales are locals and that is a huge number! Think about the amount of tourists who spend time skiing at resorts around the world and then consider a mountain that has half the people on it who actually live in the immediate area.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s one of the reasons Whitefish for me has been a truly unique experience. No hype, no B.S. and locals that just love their home mountain (and why wouldn\u2019t they living on the edge of the Glacier National Park). If you want to be genuinely immersed in a local experience but not sacrifice terrain or express lifts, then you really should put Whitefish Mountain Resort in Montana on your list.<\/p>\n
I digress.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nWe had\u00a0reservations<\/h2>\n
Bryan and I had talked about a trip to Montana for a long time as neither of us have ever skied here (let alone visited) before. We had the same reservations anyone would have had and let me address those below:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s too cheap so can\u2019t be any good<\/strong><\/p>\nSeems counter intuitive, but maybe if Whitefish raised their prices, people would take the hill more seriously. Like I\u2019ve already said, this place is everything you want and expect in a ski hill, but due to their allegiance with the locals, the management just doesn\u2019t feel the need to increase prices and risk their relationships for short term profits. Huh. Imagine that.<\/p>\n
Do we have to push start a plane on a runway to fly into Kalispell?<\/strong><\/p>\nNope. We flew on a full flight with Delta on a real plane with real jet engines and the Glacier National Park airport is, although small, exactly what you would hope for in a regional airport.<\/p>\n
How many ridiculous flight connections do we have to make to get there?<\/strong><\/p>\nHard to believe, but you can fly from probably every single location in North America (and a bunch from international locations) with a maximum of one transfer! Flights arrive here every day from all the major hubs and access is easier that almost every other ski resort I\u2019ve been to in North America. And get this, the airport is less than 20 minutes from town and even on a powder day, no more than 30 minutes for the actual ski lifts!<\/p>\n
I like my shopping, food, bar and town conveniences… do they even have electricity in Whitefish?<\/strong><\/p>\nThis was a sort of serious question from me (not the electricity, I\u2019m just having fun), but I was very surprised to discover how well equipped the town of Whitefish was. Plenty of bars to choose from, a range of dining options from the super cheap to pretty fancy and stores from cheap and cheerful to very high brow indeed.<\/p>\n
Since no one really knows about this place, the terrain must be pretty boring<\/strong><\/p>\nThe trees are perfectly spaced for all levels of skier<\/p><\/div>\n
Um… nope. The terrain here is serious. Yeah, sure… it\u2019s a great place for families (and you see plenty of them about) with green runs right from the mountain base and blue cruisers all over the resort with nightly grooming you would expect at any resort. But the real pleasure comes in the bowls, cliffs, rocks, trees, chutes and serious terrain to rival some of the best I\u2019ve ever skied. Yes, it\u2019s that good.<\/p>\n
How crappy are the lifts at a small town ski resort?<\/strong><\/p>\nHow do express quad chairs sound? They have a few of those accessing the peaks. Sure, they also have some fixed grip chairs, but the beauty is that they access some very fun powder stashes and the ride is well worth it.<\/p>\n
If not many people visit, is that because the locals hate visitors?<\/strong><\/p>\nApparently not. Although it\u2019s pretty obvious I\u2019m \u201cnot from round here\u201d, the locals have been nothing but friendly and accommodating. At the restaurants, bars, on the ski hill and even in the street I\u2019ve had pleasant conversations where we\u2019ve shared stories from how dangerous Australian spiders really are, through to locals sharing their secret stash lines on the hill (or at least the ones they are happy to share).<\/p>\n
They must not get any snow<\/strong><\/p>\nAlthough our trip has seen a week of warmer weather and dare I say even some wet stuff down low, this is certainly not normal, especially for this time of year. Sometimes you get lucky with the weather and sometimes you don\u2019t. Despite our lack of powder days here, we are assured that over 300 inches of powder falls here every season and the snow on the ground everywhere is testimony to the fact this is indeed a good year. As Riley tells us though, the snow falls here in smaller amounts, but just more often. Smaller storms litter the season giving refill on refill of fresh tracks. This week, we have had a little snow fall albeit heavier, though up high in the bowls, it is still skiing fantastic and I\u2019ve been to plenty of places before where that is certainly not the case.<\/p>\n
So what are the negatives of this place?<\/h2>\n
For me, cell phone and data reception *sigh*.<\/strong><\/p>\nAs someone who lives for connection to the outside world, I have struggled a little here. Where we are staying is a little out of the way though and once you are in town or on the hill, things get much better.<\/p>\n
Long ski outs from short steep runs<\/strong><\/p>\nGiven the size of the resort and lower amounts of lifts, you can look at this another way whereby it reflects the distinct lack of crowds. As a snowboarder, I know Bryan isn\u2019t a huge fan of some of the traverses or ski outs, but at least almost all of them don\u2019t require you to unbuckle or push. Good new though, as one of these ski outs in question is under consideration for a new lift relocation, but more on that in an upcoming interview series.<\/p>\n
No gondolas<\/strong><\/p>\nLol. Not really being serious here, but if you can\u2019t live without them, you are in trouble here \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Summing it up<\/h2>\n
Standing in a Montana bar, jam packed with locals wearing plaid and trucker hats, where I was one of only two without any facial hair whatsoever (I haven\u2019t hit puberty yet, ok) listening to blue grass and the crowd moving as one, I had a moment:<\/p>\n
The Infamous String Dusters playing in Whitefish<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
This was not on my \u201cbucket list\u201d, but it sure as heck should have been.<\/p>\n
Whitefish Mountain Resort Montana, you\u2019ve won me over and I\u2019ll be back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A trip to Whitefish Montana to ski or snowboard may not be at the top of everyone\u2019s list, but that\u2019s just fine with me, as Whitefish Mountain Resort offers world class terrain with virtually no one here. I still can\u2019t figure out why. Arriving Granted, I may have sampled some alcoholic beverages on the flight, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[669,484,758,487],"tags":[785,784,761,680,270,280,672,759,760],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/You-had-us-at-hello-Whitefish-Mountain-Resort.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ORf3-2CN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10093"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10093"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10102,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10093\/revisions\/10102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowreporttv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}