The Snowboarder's Journal - frequency 17.2
BITTEN FINGERS: Big Dreams and Harsh Realities at Idaho’s Soldier Mountain
Words, Photos and Captions: Ben Shanks Kindlon 2019-10-21 19:07:30
“Careful,” Diane McFerran warns.
“She’ll bite your finger off.”
Inside Diane and her husband Matt’s house in Fairfield, ID, Matt Wainhouse is beckoning to the couple’s curious orange cat. “I’m playing nice,” Matt says with a laugh, hand outstretched. “That doesn’t mean she will,” Diane responds plainly.
Outside the McFerrans’ home, heavy snow is falling. Light, dry flakes stack on the windowsills and we know it’s doing the same at Soldier Mountain just a few miles down the road. The McFerrans have lived within walking distance of its lifts since they took over the resort in 2015. Over dinner they tell Wainhouse, Justin Norman and I about the area. Like this January’s growing snowpack in the south end of the Sawtooth National Forest, Soldier’s history here in central Idaho runs deep. But unlike the powder we’ll board come morning, we learn that operations at the mountain haven’t always been a smooth ride.
Founded in 1971, Soldier Mountain existed for roughly two-and-a-half decades before actor Bruce Willis bought the ski area. He ran it—with mixed reviews from the locals—from the late 1990s through 2012 and then donated it to a local nonprofit, Soldier Mountain Ski Area, Inc. Following a few low-snow seasons the nonprofit went under, and in 2015 Soldier Mountain went up for sale. Within a day more than 2,000 potential buyers emerged—some more serious than others. At that time the McFerrans were living in Bend, OR and had been interested in buying Spout Springs, a small ski area near Pendleton, OR. Although that didn’t pan out, Diane says it planted the seed. “A couple months after that our friend sent us a Facebook link about Soldier,” she says. “Within 24 hours Matt was in his car and out here because it was just such a cool idea that we could leave what we were doing and go run a ski area.” The nonprofit sold Soldier Mountain to the McFerrans for the debt they owed on it: $149,000.
That $149,000 price tag included Soldier’s lodge, shacks, two lifts and three snowcats—two for grooming, one for transport. The latter is now used in conjunction with an on-mountain yurt that can be rented for overnight stays by visiting catboarding groups, a program the McFerrans implemented and feel should be a main focus for the mountain moving forward. Along with the resort’s functioning assets, the McFerrans also acquired Soldier’s snowmaking system, which has been broken since 1998. “We’re one of the few ski areas in the country without snowmaking,” Diane says. “So, when there’s a good snow year, it’s very different than when we have lean times.”
We wake early the next morning to another foot or so of fresh, then make our way to the mountain and onto a snowcat. The group onboard consists mostly of friends and associates of the McFerrans—several people gifted a day on the cat as a thank you for the times they’ve helped the couple out at this community-supported mountain. Everyone exchanges names and brief backgrounds as we clamber up the cat track, rumbling into the cloudy abyss resting above the base lodge.
Considering the abundance of fresh snow, we have high expectations. Sadly, all that new snow means high avalanche danger and low-angle terrain. No worries, though—we have private access to plenty of untracked snow. Matt sets the stage by diving headfirst out of the cat, and our crew spends the rest of the day porpoising through deep powder and taking turns on a snowsurfer over the course of a dozen runs. At 4 p.m. our guide leads us back to the resort, which is nearly untouched. He tells us Soldier Mountain is only open on weekends, so any snow that’s fallen since last Sunday has been sitting here undisturbed all workweek long. I think back to dinner the night before, when Diane told us that Soldier hadn’t seen more than 75 visitors in a single day yet this season. With lift tickets at just 43 bucks for adults and even cheaper for everyone else, it’s hard to understand why more people aren’t flocking to this remote, powdery paradise a couple hours east of Boise. The clouds are beginning to break. Tomorrow looks promising.
“Ben, I’ve got some bad news,” Matt McFerran says over the phone. We’d just returned to our rental house, changed and eaten dinner when he delivered the curveball. “We’re not going to be able to open the mountain tomorrow, unfortunately.”
Matt explains that both the snowcats Soldier uses for grooming are broken down, and despite the unrelenting efforts of he, his staff and even a technician they brought in from Utah, they aren’t going to be able to get them running in time to safely groom the mountain. We can’t help but feel disheartened empathy for the McFerrans, knowing they were expecting big numbers this weekend and financial hits like these are especially hard for independent operations to take. “Damn, I’m sorry to hear that,” I tell him. “Well, maybe we can still come up and build a jump?” To which he’s quick to respond, “Hell, yeah.”
The next morning, we find the McFerrans in the parking lot. They lend us a snowmobile and an invitation to explore the resort, so long as we promise to keep the sled on the cat tracks. As the noob around most motorized vehicles I offer to take the tow-behind while Matt and Justin double up in search of turns and, if we’re lucky, a little airtime, which we find in that order. Dipping just off the cat track lands us in waist-deep powder, but each hike back to the snowmobile takes tremendous effort in this dry, bottomless snow. We leave the sled behind to descend inbounds terrain, cruising playfully over a rolling fall line, then meandering through an easily managed glade littered with stumpy side hits. Between the bowls up high and trees down low, Soldier’s 1,150 acres prove more enthralling than its slight size may imply.
At the end of the day, we have a quick pint and bid adieu to the McFerrans. We leave Soldier Mountain rooting for them, sharing solidarity and support for this homey operation. It’s not until several months later that we discover Soldier Mountain had been put back on the market the very same week we visited.
“We’ve put a lot of work and time and love and money—pretty much our whole selves into making the mountain what it is today, and making plans for what it could be in the future,” Diane says later. “We knew that Soldier had previously operated in deficit and that there were going to be some big challenges with it, but we wanted to see what we could do.”
Low snowfall during the 2017-18 winter didn’t help their cause. Yet things for the McFerrans could’ve gone worse. Soldier saw consistent snowfall and ticket sales throughout the remainder of the 2018-19 season, and nearly every weekend’s snowcat-yurt trips are booked during the coming winter. The McFerrans can be forever proud of the improvements they made to this small ski hill in southern Idaho, of their loving contribution to its culture and community and, above all else, of living their dream, despite the hardships the endeavor might’ve caused. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” Diane says. “We’ve had the experience of a lifetime.”
The McFerrans feel they have a good grip on what Soldier needs to survive—lift-assisted downhill mountain biking, snowmaking—yet just don’t have the funds to make it happen themselves. “Matt and I are dreamers,” Diane says. “We knew that it could be an issue and wanted to try anyway, but ultimately Soldier needs someone with deeper pockets.”
As of press time, it’s unclear what the future holds for Soldier Mountain. In August 2019, a verbal agreement from a prospective buyer fell through, and the ski area is currently listed for sale on Craigslist for $800,000. Will it fall victim to a changing snowsports economy and unreliable snowfalls, or will a deep-pocketed investor bring the necessary capital to elevate Soldier to the four-season resort it needs to become to survive? While it would be sad to see Soldier Mountain wiped off the ever-shortening list of independently owned and operated ski areas, a sorer sight would be watching its lifts close altogether. Such is the reality of riding unapologetic terrain and navigating the often-scathing, weather-dependent industry built upon it. Despite approaching with the warmest intentions, this cold cat might bite your finger off.
Photo Caption: Matt Wainhouse atop Soldier Mountain, taking in the expansive view of Idaho’s Sawtooth National Park during a brief, beautiful break in the clouds.
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