Mount Spokane, the closest of neighboring mountains to the city itself, is a natural playground for all seasons. Here you can wander through wildflowers in the spring, cool off and pick huckleberries in the summer, hike and mountain bike in autumn’s chill. But it is perhaps best known as a winter retreat, a place for snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, snow tubing, downhill skiing and snow-boarding, all the while surveying wintery landscapes as far as the eye can see. Today we’ll focus on skiing and snow-boarding.
Not for me:
Full disclosure—I cannot ski. The idea of plunging at breakneck speed on board-like material down a tilting terrain terrorizes me. As a teenager, I spent the night in a hospital after a day of unsupervised skiing with my church youth group. Four years later I stood at the top of a beginner’s slope, skis and poles at the ready, and burst into tears. Add to that almost forty years living in the Caribbean, where temperatures rarely dropped below 70 degrees, and … well, you get the idea.
However, our younger daughter visited over Christmas. She is interested in skiing, and I am interested in her learning to ski properly. My husband and I gifted her with a private ski lesson, and on a sunny, chilly day at the end of the year, we headed up Road 206 to Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park.
The park:
Some 25 northeast of Spokane, the park can be reached in under an hour from most places in the city. It is located within the Mt. Spokane State Park, on the eastern, and starting this year, northern slopes of the 5,889-foot Mt. Spokane, with a vertical drop of 2,000 feet. Back in the 1930s, local ski clubs purchased some 500 acres of land up here and built lodges, tow ropes, and ski jumps to complement the trails. Today, the ski jumps are gone, but the park has expanded to more than 1,500 acres, with six lifts and over 50 runs catering to beginner, intermediate, and advanced skiers. Some 400 feet of dry snow falls annually. At the summit, the iconic stone Vista House, built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, offers shelter and refreshments on weekends and holidays. There is also a dining lodge, a beginner’s slope, ski classes, and a tubing hill. The park is family-friendly and a loyal favorite of the local ski community.
The experience:
The day we drove up to the park proved to be the nicest day of the week between Christmas and the new year, and the staff was overwhelmed with the crowds who chose that day to ski. When we arrived at 10:00 a.m., parking extended down the road and lines were long to check in and gather up equipment. We regretted not arriving earlier, and my husband and I gave up on the idea of driving elsewhere in the park and losing our spot. So, while our daughter had a very generous private lesson and explored the runs on her own (with mixed success), my husband and I sat for several hours on the second floor of the lodge, looking out at the ski lift, trying to read in spite of the din, and sampling the restaurant’s wraps, one of the healthier items on the menu. I took a short walk, turning around when I startled a skier on a connecting run.