The little mountain that could: Maverick Mountain has great skiing at a great price
By BEN PIERCE Chronicle Outdoors
POLARIS – “It’s all about attitude,” Ron Loge told me last Thursday as I munched on a Stromboli sandwich in the parking lot of Maverick Mountain Ski Area. “Everybody here is laid back. They are here because they love to ski.”
Behind us the slopes of Maverick Mountain lifted upward to the height of the East Pioneers. The sky shown blaze blue through a light haze, the sun cast soft shadows on the six inches of fresh powder that had fallen since the previous Sunday.
Loge, unbuckling his telemark boots, told me of coming to Dillon in 1980 and finding his way to Maverick Mountain shortly thereafter. Back then $50 bought you five group ski lessons, five ski rentals and five lift tickets. Loge said he’s been skiing Maverick ever since.
You might think a whole lot has changed at Maverick Mountain since those days, and you’d be half right. But only half.
Maverick Mountain bills itself as part of a “fleeting breed of non-commercial mom-and-pop ski mountains.” You get that feeling when you pull into the parking lot and there are a more dogs wandering about than skiers, the sound of the slopes louder than the hum of car engines.
And you definitely get the mom-and-pop feel from Cindy Marchesseault, who smiles gleefully from behind the ticket counter at Maverick’s classic ski lodge.
Lift tickets at Maverick – which operates 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Thursday through Sunday – are $30. But on Thursdays and Fridays Maverick cuts the price down to $20. It’s clear Marchesseault takes a little pride and serious satisfaction in selling a lift ticket at such a reasonable rate.
“Thursday is the day for powder,” Marchesseault said, “and a $20 lift ticket, you just can’t beat it.”
Marchesseault wears a number of hats at Maverick. When not behind the ticket counter she’s a whirlwind of activity – helping customers in the ski shop, lending a hand in the cafeteria, pouring a cold beer at the bar.
“What better place to work than a ski hill, because nobody is in a bad mood,” she said. “That’s the beauty of it all. And just wait until you get to the top and hit ‘Thin Air’ or one of the other runs. It is ‘whoa’ spectacular.”
Maverick’s single lift – a double chair with a mid-mountain drop off – churns skiers up the slopes through towering Douglas fir forest and sporadic granite boulders dusted with fresh snow. The lift serves 24 trails that range from the beginner’s “Easy Street” to double black diamonds like “Widow Maker” and “Chutes.”
“We are a one-chairlift mountain and that is a negative for a lot of people,” said Maverick Mountain general manager and owner Randy Shilling. “But for families it is great. You always know where your kids are going to end up and you really get to ski together.”
You might imagine a single-lift ski area with 24 trails would offer limited terrain, but Maverick Mountain really does have something for everyone – and the views are magnificent, rivaling any mountaintop vista in the state.
From the summit, skiers can gaze north and east on the high peaks of the Pioneer Mountains or south to the studded ridgeline of the southern Bitterroots before choosing their run. Maverick claims 30 percent of its terrain is suitable for beginners, 40 percent for intermediates and 30 percent for experts.
“(Maverick) doesn’t get skied enough to have any defined, deep mogul runs, but there is plenty of terrain for advanced skiers,” Loge said. “And you’ve got the runs all to yourself, no lift lines. You can ski untracked stuff pretty near all day.”
Shilling said Maverick sees between 200-300 skiers on a typical weekend day. Thursdays tend to be slower when numbers might reach 100 skiers. Following a really big dump on a weekend, the ski area might see 400 guests.
Friday’s skier numbers are boosted by Maverick’s relationship with local schools. Kids from Melrose, Jackson, Grant and Polaris join homeschoolers and students from Leadore and Tendoy, Idaho, on the slopes. Still, those numbers only raise the daily skier population by about 150.
“We have great trail capacity here,” Shilling said. “We really spread out our skiers. You never feel like you are playing bumper cars on our trails.”
Maverick’s capacity – and its quality of skiing – received a big boost in 2003 with the completion of three new runs on the north side of the mountain. The ski area added “Ripper,” “Widow Maker,” and “Thin Air” to its lineup of trails.
“Typically if it is a low snow year we’d have limited runs, but those runs on the north side have changed things completely,” Loge said. “It has changed the character of the ski resort, too, I think.
“Used to be you’d come to Maverick and it would be mostly just groomed stuff and families with their kids,” Loge said. “Now we see a lot more boarders and tele skiers. Plus it extends the season a lot too, and almost always the snow is good on the back side.”
Shilling said Maverick makes the most of its wide trails by grooming a swath down the middle and leaving a healthy share of powder on the edges. On trails like “Thin Air” there’s a good 15 yards of powder on either side of the run that remain untouched by grooming machines.
It’s an approach that keeps guests happy. And it’s a part of Maverick’s minimalist philosophy of making the most with what it’s got.
“We try to keep our prices reasonable and we don’t have a lot of amenities that add to the cost,” Shilling said. “We get a lot of skiers coming over from Bozeman because it is so expensive and commercial in the Bozeman area.
“This is what skiing was like 30 years ago. We don’t try to compete with the big ski areas. We know exactly what we are and what we are trying to do.”
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