MountainAdventures

Before skis ever touched Schweitzer's slopes, the vast homeland of the Schitsu'umsh — the Coeur d'Alene Tribe — stretched across more than three and a half million acres of the Inland Northwest. It was a country of grass-covered hills, camas prairie, forested mountains, lakes, marshes, and rivers: from the southern end of Lake Pend Oreille in the north, along the Bitterroot Range to the east, down to the Palouse and the North Fork of the Clearwater River in the south, and westward to Steptoe Butte and just east of Spokane Falls.

October 10, 2026. Sandpoint wakes to 41 degrees and a sky that can't quite decide, with the National Weather Service giving us a 20 percent chance of showers after 11 a.m. and a mostly sunny afternoon high near 54. The KOTX radar is showing real shower activity this morning, with echo cells over the Colville highlands to the west and near the Canadian border to the north. Tonight is the interesting part: the snow level drops to 2,400 feet after midnight while temperatures fall to around 33, so the first dusting of white on Schweitzer's 6,400-foot summit is very much in play.

Schweitzer Mountain Resort is counting down to winter. The resort has announced a tentative opening date of Friday, November 27 for the 2026-27 ski season, conditions permitting, and unveiled a lineup of new programs, dining, and experiences for the season ahead.

In September 1885, a prospector named Noah Kellogg was combing the hills above Milo Creek in Idaho's northern panhandle when the jackass he had been grubstaked with wandered off. When Kellogg tracked it down, legend says the animal was standing on a glittering outcropping of galena, a lead-silver ore, gazing across the canyon at another. That chance discovery became the Bunker Hill and Sullivan lode, one of the largest of its kind in the world — and the town that grew up nearby took Kellogg's name.

Fall has settled over the Idaho panhandle in the most beautiful way — golden light on Lake Pend Oreille, crisp evenings, and a calendar full of reasons to get out. Here is your week ahead, October 6 through 11, from the mountain to the lake cities.