We took a short trip to McCall, Idaho last weekend in search of snow with our friends Kincaid and Ellie. Why McCall? Mostly convenience - a cheap flight for us, a six hour drive from Bend for them, and two resorts on Kincaid’s Indie Pass. It ended up being a great call though as we had a lovely stay in a small town and two great ski days at Brundage and Tamarack.
We all got in late Friday night and after a leisurely start drove 15 minutes up the hill to Brundage on Saturday morning. After some snow earlier in the week the resort was 100% open with decent coverage everywhere except for off-run on the lower parts of the mountain. We all explored the skier’s right side and Lakeview backside in the morning, finding pockets of decent snow but mostly ripping the groomers. The long lifts let you get in some long runs, comparable to Northstar or any other big resort.
After lunch Kaitlin tapped out and Kincaid, Ellie, and I went up to the hidden valley side to explore some of the more interesting terrain. This was a super fun area, but tough to explore on a first visit and with moderate-low coverage. Rocks and cliffy rollovers were all over, making it tough to commit to any line from the top down.
On our run out there we looked up to the ridgeline and saw what looked like some promising snow further afield, so at the bottom swapped skis and grabbed our backcountry gear for a bit of exploration.
A lot of traversing on the ridge led to… mostly disappointment. Clouds came in and visibility was pretty low, so again we were a bit too nervous to commit to any of the protected lines in the cliff bands not really knowing what was below us. We traversed out until we found more open terrain.. and pretty mediocre windblown snow. Oh well! Still fun to explore.
On Sunday we drove south to Tamarack, a much more developed resort and ski hill. It felt like a Northstar or Olympic village - big hotel/village area with retail and a spa. It was a great day to ski, but unfortunately Tamarack needed another couple feet of snow to open the whole mountain. On the first lift up we could clearly see all of the summer mountain bike park features, yikes! In practice, only the summit lift was open meaning everyone was skiing a single lift. 15-30 minute lift lines for most of the day put a damper on what was otherwise an awesome hill and great day.
Once again we were tempted by lands unknown and did a bit of hiking out the backcountry gate in search of better snow. Mixed results again - we found three or four turns of nice powder but above that was too blown and it quickly got warm/heavy below.
We stayed in the resort for the rest of the day, finding good snow in pockets and finally getting some hot laps in after people started to clear out around 2:30.
That evening we ventured to the Shore Lodge in search of a pre-dinner cocktail with a view but struck out - busy weekend!
After a bit of wandering we ended up at the locals pub Foresters. Great pizza, good beer, and the Olympics on TV was a great way to cap off a lovely weekend! McCall was a great little town to visit, I’d certainly go back. Small, independent ski resorts like these are becoming my favorite way to ski inbounds.