Ever thought to yourself, “Gee, I really wish I could rent an entire mountain”?

There’s a place in the far northwest corner of Montana where you can find peace of mind flowing in fresh Montana cold smoke. Ya know, the stuff they talk about in the magazines and you just saw in that last Warren Miller film where you hungrily watched skiers rip beautiful lines in wide open fields of untouched powder. Good news! Heaven is a place on Earth!

Enter Montana’s Turner Mountain.

Forget all the fluff, forget the froo froo bull s***, the high ticket prices, and the lift lines longer than Black Friday at Walmart. You can find that just about anywhere, but the real goods are found when you venture off the beaten path. (More on that renting-the-mountain thing later).

“might offer the best lift-assisted powder skiing in the U.S.”

~Skiing Magazine

Get lost in cold smoke

“Steep, Deep, & Cheap”

Turner has adopted three words to best describe its mountain and they couldn’t be more accurate. Let’s break it down.

Steep

Here’s something to consider–at 2,110 of vertical, Turner sits in the top 10 percent of vertical drops in the nation ahead of classic ski resorts such as Solitude in Utah, Bridger Bowl in Montana, and Jay Peak in Vermont. Then, on top of the vertical, you stack on the fact that 60% of its runs are rated as black diamond many of which are wide open runs designed for floating in pristine deep powder. Here you feel like you’re the only person on the entire hill, which brings us to one of the biggest draws of Turner.

Deep

When the mountain only turns its lifts on the weekends and on any given weekend day you’d be shocked to find over 100 people, you should EXPECT to find fresh turns. In this part of the country, snow falls at significant rates. Last season saw over 300″ of fresh. For God’s sake just watch this video of spring powder skiing in wide open runs with approximately two other people on them.

Cheap

Finally, that thing that keeps us skiing forever. A full day lift ticket will run you a $38. Yes, you read that correctly. Turner Mountain maintains only three full-time employees during the season and only operates one chair lift. Don’t walk in with fancy expectations. While the larger resorts in almost every direction–Fernie to the north, Whitefish to the East, and Schweitzer to the West–tout high speed quads zig-zagging across dozens of runs, Turner turns a single modest double chair lift right up the middle of the mountain. It’s a mile long too, so get comfortable.

Oh yeah, so you want the whole mountain?

Since the hill only operates during the weekends, Turner offers to its guest one of the most unique experiences in skiing anywhere in the world–renting out the entire mountain. For 100X the price of a lift ticket the whole place can be yours. Remember renting out the gymnasium or laser tag place or even that single room in Chuck E. Cheese’s for your birthday? It’s like that, but more like renting a swimming pool made of powder.

In short, make this mountain a part of your powder dreaming.

Fly into Kalispell, Montana, get a day or two in at Whitefish Mountain Resort, and then when the snow looks good, head to Turner Mountain and buy your lift tickets at the window. You won’t be disappointed. For more info, click here.