49° North Mountain Resort — Attraction in Chewelah

No lift lines! The Inland Northwest’s best kept secret! This is one of my favorite ski areas in the northwest. It doesn’t have big mountain steeps and it’s not always deep. It is however consistent and gets light dry snow. The gladed tree skiing is on point and some of the best I’ve been able to find. It has three basins to ski from and a little something for everyone. This mountain is fun, nostalgic, has great bar food, fun and friendly lift ops, and has some sort of event or band playing every weekend. The Bartender Justin has fun sarcasm and will pour you the beer you’re looking for. The Rueben is top notch! We typically split it since it’s such large portions. And the Nachos! GET THE NACHOS! The high speed quad gets you up 1800 ft of vert in 7 min! You could do top to bottom laps in 10 if you’re a skilled rider. They have been putting more effort into snowmaking to keep the Season going when Mother Nature doesn’t deliver. They have three terrain parks if that’s more your style. The mountain will seriously make you feel at home. It brings back memories of riding a double fixed grip lift as a kid and just enjoying the days before high speed quads and bougie resorts became the norm. I love the mom and pop vibes. The lift tickets are seriously some of the cheapest you will find for a full day of skiing. 49-79$ an adult for a day depending if it’s a weekday or weekend. They have mountain hosts to show you where the secret stashes and good lines are waiting if you want to take some runs to explore the area. There’s a main day lodge on the main base area and a new sprung structure for families who bring sack lunches-still something this place allows unlike a lot of other mountains. They have a yurt that offers drinks, beer, snacks, and a place to warm up on the backside. If I could wish for one thing, it would be an upper mountain lodge to warm up in and grab a beverage. I’m sure someday it will happen. Seriously, it is a true gem and I’m so glad it’s been my home mountain since moving to the...

Great, lesser known ski hill in northeast Washington! We arrived at about 7:45 and hardly a soul was there. Parking lot was completely empty. We were so used to the hustle and bustle of Crystal and Snoqualmie on a Saturday we were concerned about a long line for rentals. Staff was so friendly and helpful and were happy to answer our questions as it was our first time visiting. As the morning went on it got a bit more crowded, but we ended up being third in line for the main lift, their newer high speed quad, when it opened at 9. The day we went, the snow and visibility wasn’t great but the groomers did a fantastic job for morning turns. As we were kind of skiing blind, both literally at times and figuratively, it seemed we could always find an easiest way down. As we got our legs under us we graduated to some steeper runs. Unfortunately it did start lightly raining so things go slushy fairly quickly and we didn’t explore as much terrain as we would have liked. But we never waited more than a minute in a lift line ON A SATURDAY and had fun on some terrain park features in the afternoon! Food options are decent, surprisingly good pizza actually, though I wish they had a few healthier options like maybe a salad or deli bar. I will say, the breakfast options looked delicious and had I known we’d have time to kill, I would’ve ordered something here instead of Starbucks. Prices were certainly reasonable for a ski lodge. The main lodge does get rather crowded during lunch and is not very big, so plan accordingly. Overall, a great mountain just an hour and 15 minutes outside of Spokane. Sure it doesn’t have the vertical drop you find at Baker, Steven’s or Crystal, but you spend much more time skiing than you do in lift lines. Can’t...

Our experience was ruined today by "the last man on the mountain" as he titled himself. Me and my daughter spent most the day on #3 lift helping her get back into skiing from last year. When we finally made it to the top it was near closing time. I have been to restaurants when they try to push you out the door because they are closing even though you're not done eating, ya this was very similar. It was only a couple minutes after we got off the #1 lift that I noticed it stopped. While strapping in it was about two minutes and one of the ski patrol guys was yelling down to us telling is they are closed and we needed to hurry up. They asked he if she wanted a ride down the mountain and she said no. I also said no thank you but thanks for the concern. Unfortunately this was just the beginning. They had three of the ski patrol come right on top of us trying up push us down telling my daughter to point her skis down the hill. One guy got between me and my daughter even. Kept asking her if she wanted a ride and I reminded we are paying guests and ask him respectfully be patient with us as this wasn't helping. This one guy wouldn't back off and kept talking over me to my daughter. He also made some rude comments about my parenting and even lied about me over the radio and I could hear over we radio, whom I assume was his supervisor, tell him to back off and let us ride down but he didn't. We where both pretty upset at this point and surrounded by this pressure. My daughter gave in and agreed to get into the sled. This was extremely unprofessional and just ruined our whole trip. One of the ski rental guys we talked with suggested we talk with someone about this and I told him I definitely planned to bring this up as it needed to...