Whitefish To Open Two New Glades This Season Thanks To Wildfire Mitigation
How do you make an old mountain feel new? Give it a haircut!
POWDER’s Ian Greenwood covered how Sun Valley opened 90 acres of new terrain last season thanks to wildfire fuel mitigation efforts, and Whitefish Mountain Resort, Montana, is following suit with new glades of its own.
“Throughout summer 2026, Whitefish Mountain Resort and the U.S. Forest Service undertook the Big Mountain Fuels Reduction Project, which involved felling trees on roughly 200 acres of terrain,” wrote a Whitefish representative in an email to POWDER. “The goal was to reduce wildfire risk and protect resort infrastructure by clearing corridors along the Chair 1, Chair 2, and Chair 4 lift lines on the front side of the mountain.”
The result? Two new glades called Bad Medicine and Big Twig near the base of Chair 1, Whitefish’s main frontside lift.
Take a look at a before-and-after of Whitefish’s trail map below. Keep reading for more.
Whitefish Mountain Resort
Whitefish Mount
The new glades increase Whitefish’s trail count to 112, but the offseason trail work didn’t stop there.
“We’ve also made a concerted effort to clear brush and overgrowth mountain-wide,” writes a Whitefish representative. “So far, our slopes crew has tended about 125 acres this summer and fall, including North Bowl Face, Schmidt’s Chute, Elkweed, Movieland from Russ’s Street to the Danny On Memorial Trail, about half of The Back 9, and a small triangle between Langley and Inspiration. In the Chair 2 zone, the crew also cut brush on Hibernation, Heaven, and the middle section of Mully’s, meaning there will be less stubble to cover up early in the season.”
TLDR: Whitefish has been busy this summer, and the skiing experience this winter will be better because of it. More glades + thinner underbrush = more skiing.
The resort has also invested in two new snowcats to enhance grooming and six efficient TechnoAlpin snowguns to bolster snowmaking efforts across the mountain. “This gives us a total of 22 mobile guns, as well as four guns that are fixed alongside Chipmunk, our beginner run near the Base Lodge,” says Whitefish.
Whitefish is slated to kick off the 26/27 season on December 4, 2026, conditions and weather permitting.
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