Schweitzer: Dr. Jack Fowler's vision 49 years later

The view out our west side would be just that of another mountain had it not been for Dr. Jack Fowler's vision 49 years ago.

Dr. Fowler, a Spokane dentist, along with his family, was driving home in a bad mood from a terrible skiing experience with wet chairs, mushy snow and no visibility at Big Mountain near Kalispell, Mont., on Easter Weekend in 1960.

He stopped alongside the road at Hope to take a break.

"While the family stretched, I took in the scene," he wrote in his Looking Back: The History of Schweitzer Mountain Resort (1991). "By then, the weather was clear.

"There it was, in all its shimmering white splendor. It was cradled in a protective bowl which had preserved it into the change of season, while the pack of adjoining ridges had melted away," Dr. Fowler continues. "Thus, the thought of which, so they say, a destination ski resort was born: Why should I drive six hours to be bombed out, when I could be skiing an hour and a half from home in that gorgeous place right up there? 'There,' I found out, was referred to as Schweitzer Basin."

Schweitzer's visonary died yesterday. I saw a note of his passing in the obituary section of this morning's Spokesman-Review. There was a time when Dr. Fowler's passing would have been front-page news in our regional paper. After all, his vision that day in 1960 quickly led to the reality of one of the Northwest's premiere ski resorts.

In his book, Dr. Fowler recounts a set of steps he took after returning home to Spokane filled enthusiasm for the possibilities that could come from that chance moment when he first eyed Schweitzer that day.

"I was seized with the thought that right there was a great spot to develop a ski area. I gave it a few days to simmer, assuming that like many high-flown notions, it would go away," Fowler writes. "It didn't.

"It persisted and I felt I had to bounce it off someone else in the interest of getting a second opinion," he adds. "My sounding board was my good buddy Grant Groesbeck." Fowler invited Grosbeck, a Spokane architect, to dinner. When the discussion landed their desire to come up with some big idea, like the hula hoop, Fowler seized the moment, telling his friend about his vision for Schweitzer.

They soon flew over the area and liked what they saw. Then, a few weeks later on Memorial Day, they hiked an old logging road for the eight mile walk to the mountain, wearing their ski boots.

"When we finally reahed the basin, the blisters on our feet were the size of silver dollars!" Fowler recalls. "We made camp below the Basin on a ridge we named Pea Soup Ridge. The name referred to the dried material we reconstituted and heated over a charcoal fire that night. The label called it pea soup. That taste bore no resemblance. It was terrible!

"Next morning we explored the basin. We hiked to the top to the South Ridge (elevation 6,389 feet)."

Next the men strapped on their skis and for the first time, actually skied Schweitzer Basin.

"It was mushy snow but it was the end of May," Fowler states. "That was important to our dream of establishing a ski area."

So, as I look out my west windows this morning and see the runs of Schweitzer, I salute the late Dr. Jack Fowler who saw a vision, pursued the idea and convinced the Sandpoint community to carry it out. The ski area opened in 1963.

Therein lies a story that changed Sandpoint forever and provided a phenomenal playground for the entire region.

More about the history of Schweitzer can be read in some stories I wrote for Sandpoint Magazine in 2003, when the resort celebrated 40 years of existence. The Sandpoint Magazine online collection at www.sandpointonline.com