Mountains of golden dreams

X Games, Olympics passing up perfect area

When it dumps snow in the mountains, nature brings the Northwest a heavenly playground to exploit. From riding pure white powder drifts to hitting rails and landing high-altitude jumps, skiing and snowboarding offers the outdoor enthusiast a taste at the closest thing to god-like ambrosia.

I’ve been riding since I was 15 and have had a chance to experience almost every mountain in the area. While each mountain has its own special charms, there is one thing that I noticed about our resorts: they each have the potential to be hosting bigger competitions than what they are currently holding every year.

There is no doubt in my mind that Lookout, Silver, Mt. Spokane, or Schweitzer mountains could host the X-Games in their present condition. If the mountains all pulled together, Idaho and Washington could host the Winter Olympics one day in the future.

The X-Games are being held for the 11th year in a row at Aspen, Colo. I’ve visited the area before and can say that the town and the surrounding areas are breathtakingly stunning.

It kind of reminds me of Sandpoint with the way the business district was set up.

Some of the big wigs from ESPN should take a trip to North Idaho for a change. Maybe our area could break the monopoly Aspen has had on the games.

Although I have yet to ride the face of Buttermilk Mountain at Aspen, I can imagine that the terrain is equally as enjoyable as Schweitzer’s front or back bowls. With the right kind of preparation, Shaun White might be pulling his signature Double McTwist 1260 off of Idaho snow for a change.

Now I know this concept might be stretching the capacity for our area, but if each mountain could work out a schedule of who gets what event, I think the Winter Olympics could also be staged in our area. We almost always get the snow and we have the area to do it if each mountain was OK with staging certain events.

The drive between most of the mountains is roughly an hour, so if someone wanted to catch the snowboard half-pipe event on Schweitzer and then the ice hockey game at the Spokane Arena, it would only be a short drive that shuttle companies could offer.

There would have to be some things built for the games, like a bobsled course for example, but the amount of money the games brings in has been outrageous.

For the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, a Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s study estimated that $2.5 billion dollars were added to the local economy. It created 45,000 jobs, mostly to build extra venues and homes to house some of the athletes. With that kind of money, Coeur d’Alene could pave Sherman Avenue in Olympic gold.

Either of these competitions have a chance in our area, but I think our area needs to grow a little bit before that happens.

We have the mountains and we have high-caliber athletes that could participate. We could create the right arena and let the torch be carried from Lookout Pass to Mt. Spokane. We just need the luck of an event scouter to hit the area.