Whitefish ski museum opens for season Thursday
Daily Inter Lake | Daily Inter-Lake | UPDATED 3 years, 7 months AGO
Toni Matt, a former Austrian National Junior champion, was the ski school director at Big Mountain from 1949 to 1955. He was also instrumental in laying out the downhill race course when Big Mountain hosted the 1949 and 1951 U.S. National Championships. A prominent ski run at Whitefish Mountain Resort bears his name.
The Whitefish Ski Heritage Museum will open for the summer season Thursday.
Hours are noon to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday from noon to 5 p.m., with plans to add more days when possible, according to a press release.
The museum is operated by the Flathead Valley Ski Education Foundation in the historic Saddle Club cabin adjacent to the Stumptown Ice Den in Mountain Trails Park. It features a photographic exhibit portraying the history of skiing in the Flathead Valley, a Hall of Fame honoring the ski pioneers and local skiing legends, a life-size cutaway reproduction of the interior of the Hellroaring ski cabin circa 1935 and a video library featuring rare footage of skiing in the Flathead Valley and around Montana in the 1930s through 1950s. Work is underway to add a 10th Mountain Division Ski Troops exhibit featuring the Flathead Valley men who served in this winter warfare unit in World War II and to record the personal recollections of local skiing pioneers.
A grant from the Denver-based 10th Mountain Division Foundation is helping to fund the exhibit, and a grant from the Whitefish Convention and Visitors Bureau is helping to fund the First Descents project to record firsthand accounts of surviving early-day skiers and employees of the Big Mountain Resort.
Both grants require that matching funds and operating reserves be committed to support the allocation of grant funds. The campaigns to raise these matching funds were launched in 2020.
For information about donating to the Matching Funds Campaign, contact director Tim Hinderman at 406-885-2730 or tim.hinderman@fvsef.org.
A nonprofit organization, the foundation is always seeking new members. Volunteers are needed for exterior painting, landscape planting and hosting during operating hours (training provided).
The organization also is seeking old ski lift chairs for its outdoor exhibit, “Ski Lifts From the Past.”
Annual memberships in the Ski Heritage Center are now available. For information on membership levels and benefits, visit fvsef.org/ski-museum.
