Looking Glass Ski Bowl

On October 4, 1938, a Forest Service photographer recorded cooperative work on a winter sports area on Lookingglass Creek. The Blue Mountain Ski Club, whose members came from southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon, leased the Looking Glass Creek area from the Forest Service for its ski hill, about half a mile north of Tollgate on the road to Jubilee Lake. The club dates from 1936 by one account and 1938 by another.^1,2,3

Members formed summer work parties that cut trees and brush and moved dirt so the hill could be skied on little snow. Ben Hunt Sr.'s Walla Walla business built the rope tow machinery around a wheat thresher motor, and the rope ran on pulleys fixed to trees. The first tow and run went from the road down into a canyon; skiers could take the steeper mother-in-law or the main run. A warming hut came later. The half-mile road in from Tollgate was never plowed, so skiers walked in.¹

The club's archive dates its skiing at Tollgate to 1938–1946, before its move to the Spout Springs ski area. The pages read do not say when the Lookingglass Creek hill itself was last skied.²