Had a chance to do some skiing at Schweitzer in northern Idaho this week. One day we headed up a backcountry peak; my buddy put together this video. Hope you enjoy- we sure did!
VERY nice!
thanks for posting.
Nice.
What slope aspect(s) (direction) did you hike up and ski down?
Initially from your video, I thought you were going to drop in and ski towards Schweitzer.
Scotchman Peak is about an hour east of Schweitzer. It's the highest peak in northern Idaho at 7000 feet. Conditions at the resort were very late season, so after one great day of spring skiing inbounds, we headed out on this trip. Trail 65, the route for our hike up and our descent, is mostly south and west-facing. The north slope of Scotchman looks spectacular, but it would drop you into a wilderness I'm not sure how you'd get out of. It's grizzly country and the locals were saying the bears are waking up early because of the mild winter. We carried bear spray on this hike. On the way up the snow was firm but it softened perfectly in time for our ski down. There is some great sidecountry available out of the Schweitzer gates which allows you to return to the lifts, but this year the backside chairs were closed and there wasn't a practical way to access it. Later in the week we took a quick roadtrip to BC for a day at Whitewater, but even there they recommended staying on the groomed slopes and most of their best terrain was closed. Not a great year for the Pacific Northwest, but the video captures some of the most fun I've had on skis. Quite a thrill stepping into your bindings at the top of a peak like that and picking a line down. Between that and hiking Highlands Bowl a few weeks ago, I checked off two major boxes on my list of things to do!
ridenski wrote:
Scotchman Peak is about an hour east of Schweitzer. It's the highest peak in northern Idaho at 7000 feet. Conditions at the resort were very late season, so after one great day of spring skiing inbounds, we headed out on this trip. Trail 65, the route for our hike up and our descent, is mostly south and west-facing. The north slope of Scotchman looks spectacular, but it would drop you into a wilderness I'm not sure how you'd get out of. It's grizzly country and the locals were saying the bears are waking up early because of the mild winter. We carried bear spray on this hike. On the way up the snow was firm but it softened perfectly in time for our ski down. There is some great sidecountry available out of the Schweitzer gates which allows you to return to the lifts, but this year the backside chairs were closed and there wasn't a practical way to access it. Later in the week we took a quick roadtrip to BC for a day at Whitewater, but even there they recommended staying on the groomed slopes and most of their best terrain was closed. Not a great year for the Pacific Northwest, but the video captures some of the most fun I've had on skis. Quite a thrill stepping into your bindings at the top of a peak like that and picking a line down. Between that and hiking Highlands Bowl a few weeks ago, I checked off two major boxes on my list of things to do!
That looked like fun. We went out to Schweitzer a few years ago when they had a much better snow season, and I remember looking up at the peak over there and thinking how cool it would be. There were some tracks on it, but we stuck to the resort as we had great conditions.
Thanks for posting. I really need to try something like that some day.
