Resort News

Lookout Pass Ski Resort Set to Unveil First Phase of Massive Expansion

By Camillia Lanham, Guest Writer, 2-10-11

	Few skiers brave the rain- and snow-filled afternoon last Friday at Lookout Pass Resort on the Montana-Idaho border. Lookout Pass recently proposed an expansion that could quadruple its size in the next 20 years. Photo by Camillia Lanham.

With two new lifts, 500 acres and 10 additional ski runs, Lookout Pass Resort hopes to defy the recession and overcome its relative remoteness as it begins a 20-year, $20-million expansion along the Idaho-Montana border.

The resort wants to add the new lifts in the next two years said the resort’s chief executive, Phil Edholm.

“We think there’s a need for additional recreation here at Lookout,” he said. “The only rub about us is that we don’t have enough terrain.”

His complete plan would add another 2,000 acres, eight lifts and another base.

But growth at the resort just off of Interstate 90 is nothing new. In the last 10 years, Edholm oversaw expansions that added two lifts to Lookout, giving it a total of three lifts and 540 skiable acres. According to Edholm, with each addition the business has grown. The resort more than doubled its skier visits following the expansions, reaching 58,000 visits in the 2009-2010 season.

Now Edholm projects two more lifts will increase business by another 30 percent, bringing annual skier visits up from around 60,000 to 78,000.

Their market area stretches some 200 miles from Spokane to Missoula, said Bill Dire, Lookout’s marketing director. If the expansion goes through as planned, they will go from the smallest resort of the five in the Coeur D’Alene-Spokane area to the biggest.

But to achieve this level of growth, Lookout will have to overcome several obstacles that have slowed its expansion in the past.

Even the marketing director admitted one major drawback for the resort is that “we’re a day-use area,” meaning skiers have to leave the mountain to find a place to stay at night, often traveling 11 miles to nearby Wallace, Idaho.

With the nearest airports 100 miles away, Dire said, “we’re really banking on the added draw from Missoula.”

Lookout has a long process ahead of it before the first new lift goes in, Dire said.

The proposed land use areas are in both the Lolo and Idaho Panhandle National Forests. Lookout will have to submit a plan to the Forest Service for each phase of the expansion.

This is the stage that Lookout Pass’s first expansion phase is in. It takes four to six months to get approval from the Forest Service, said Superior, Mont., District Ranger Sharon Sweeney.

Any hiccup in the plan and Lookout could have to revamp its proposal, but Sweeney said it is too early to tell if the first phase will have any problems.

If approved, resort officials will need to submit an Environmental Impact Statement that is compliant with the National Environmental Policy Act.

Her initial reading of Lookout Resorts plans is positive. She said the area is a good place to expand because environmental impacts are minimal and the snow Lookout Pass gets is great. But, she cautioned, “it’s a big expansion” and may change.

“If you look at any ski hill, I’ll bet they came in with big grandiose plans and what they ended up with is probably extremely different then what they came originally to the table with,” she said.

Sweeney said she thinks with 650,000 people in between Coeur D’Alene and Spokane, the population is large enough to support this next expansion.

Tom Vineyard, a ski coach/freestyle instructor at Lost Trail Powder Mountain Resort in Montana, has been skiing at Northwest’s resorts for the last 20 years agrees Lookout Pass is a good place for an expansion.

“As a skier I look forward to seeing ski areas expanded,” Vineyard said. “They get the snow. It’s not the light and fluffy snow that Lost Trail gets, but it gets the accumulation.”

He said the area around Coeur D’Alene has struggled economically and one of the keys to Lookout Pass’ past growth is its affordability compared to other full-service ski resorts in the area, including Silver Mountain.

“The reason they are increasing visits is because they are pulling in locals. Silver Mountain is doing the resort thing, so locals go to Lookout because they can afford it,” Vineyard said.

But with a massive expansion planned, Vineyard worried that Lookout Resort will raise its prices. Over the last 10 years, Lookout has raised lift ticket prices from $25 to $35.

“There will be a point, and I don’t know where it’s at, where people say it’s too expensive,” Vineyard said.

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