A New Experience
It snowed more than a half-foot overnight, pushing the snotel site east of Warm Lake on Deadwood Summit to read 114.9 inches of snow on the ground. That was March 15.
That afternoon we did something we never thought we would ever do on a snowmobile trip-rode a chairlift up the mountain to where snowmobiles were waiting for us to ride. How's that for diversity? We started the afternoon ride at the base of the mountain at Tamarack Resort, the first ski resort to open in the United States in more than two decades. Tamarack is located on the west shore of Lake Cascade, just west of Donnelly.
We took the Tamarack Express high speed quad from the base of the mountain (elevation 4,900 feet) to Packer's Station (6,600 feet), a gain of 1,700 feet in just eight minutes. We got off that ski lift, took a short walk over to the Summit Express and rode the rest of the way up the mountain, another 1,100 feet in 3.5 minutes.
We got off the chairlift in Antarctica-like blizzard conditions and made our way to Tamarack's snowmobile rental shed, perched on the mountain like a radar tower. Tamarack operates its own snowmobile rental business and has access to more than 350 miles of groomed trails in the Payette River Mountains. It offers full- and half-day tours. Tamarack has quite a variety of rental sleds, most of which cater to the downhill skiing crowd. That means there are several two-up models and smaller models such as 500s. Our pony for the afternoon was an Arctic Cat T660 two-up sled, a turbo four-stroke. The T660 is a great trail sled, unless you encounter fairly deep snow on the trails like we did. We tried to dive off-trail a couple of times but thought better of it after the sled made like it was going to sink like the Titanic. So we made our own fun, picking which deep snow battles we thought we could win.