I decided to take my backcountry touring gear out yesterday and shake the cobwebs off. After dropping off some wood at our place, I drove to Hyak and climbed the ski area’s Rampart chair. With untouched glades from the weekend’s 19 inches of new snow, it made for a dramatic climb up and enjoyable ski down.
The ski area has a long history of alpine use, that’s forgotten with the techno-population growth to the west, that should be pondered on while touring. And, it’s fun to think about what it was like before all the chair lifts entered the area.
“It was originally the “Snoqualmie Ski Bowl” until it closed at the start of World War II. It reopened in 1946 as the “Milwaukee Ski Bowl” to avoid confusion with The Snoqualmie Summit ski area, two miles (3 km) away at the top of the pass.[4] It was a major ski area for its era, comparable to but not as luxurious as Sun Valley, the Union Pacific Railroad‘s new resort in central Idaho.[5] In early 1938, there was night skiing and lift tickets were a dollar a day, or ten cents per individual trip, for the cable surface lift, which vertically climbed 300 feet (90 m).[6] Five runs were in the bowl, named for the railroad’s popular trains of the era: Hiawatha, Chippewa, Arrow, Pioneer, and Olympian;[3] additional lifts were added over time.[7]
The area proved to be popular when the Seattle Times newspaper sponsored a free ski school for high school students from Seattle and Tacoma. A round trip train ticket cost one dollar in 1940 with lift tickets for fifty cents. The 200-foot (60 m) lodge could hold one thousand people and concessions were operated by the Ben Paris complex of Seattle.[8]
A Class-A ski jump was built in 1941 and was said to be the largest in North America. National championship events in ski jumping were held here, including the 1948 Olympic team tryouts,[1][2] held the preceding spring.[9][10]“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_Ski_Bowl
Updated – 11/29/2022
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