CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Matt Wainhouse knows how to make an entrance, but his exits are even better. Headfirst out of the cat into a few feet of fresh. Soldier Mountain’s owners and operators, Matt and Diane McFerran and their dog Skeeter. Kudos to the fuzzy, photo-bombing employee who also made it into this shot. Despite enjoying a full day of cat-serviced pow laps, Justin Norman hiked for binding-less turns till dark. We were surprised to find untouched snow just a few hundred feet from the base lodge, directly under one of Soldier’s two chairlifts. Words, Photos and Captions Ben Shanks Kindlon “C areful,” Diane McFerran warns. “She’ll bite your finger off.” 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 on-board consists mostly of friends and associates of the McFerrans—sev-eral 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. Every-one 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 expecta-tions. 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 pow-der 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 flock-ing to this remote, powdery paradise a couple hours east of Boise. The clouds are beginning to break. Tomorrow looks promising. Inside Diane and her husband Matt’s house in Fairfield, ID, Matt Wainhouse is beckoning to the couple’s curious orange cat. “I’m play-ing 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 in-terested 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 McFer-rans 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 052 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 17.2: Page 52
