The Sand Creek fire damaged the chairlift at Maverick Mountain Ski Area on Monday evening, leaving the mountain’s lift system out of service while flames pushed higher up the peak. David Wendt said the fire spread up Maverick Mountain and also damaged a small ski shack, though the ski lodge and Elkhorn Hot Springs lodge were still standing Tuesday afternoon.
That damage landed as the Beaverhead County Sheriff's Office expanded a Go evacuation status from Billings Creek north, stretching from Polaris to the subdivisions where Ma Barnes is located, including Mountain View, Highboy Drive, Sawtooth Road and Clark Creek Road. For people watching the fire from the road or from the valley below, the search now is not abstract: it is about which homes and operations have already been pulled into the fire’s path.
The ski area said on Facebook Tuesday that the fire had damaged its chairlift, but it had not been able to get onto the property to assess how badly. That matters because a chairlift is not a simple piece of equipment that can be ignored until later; if key towers, cables or controls are affected, the mountain could be stuck waiting well beyond the summer fire season before it knows whether the lift can be used again. Wendt did not offer that kind of answer, only the immediate scene around him: the evacuated Grasshopper Valley looked empty, he said, “like Bannack.”
The fire was almost 16,000 acres after growing quickly over the weekend, and more than 300 personnel were trying to contain the Sand Creek fire and the Bobcat Lakes Fire. Crews were placing water lines around evacuated cabins in Grasshopper Valley, planes were dropping fire retardant in the area and workers were cutting back brush to slow the spread, all while the Sand Creek fire burned about two miles from Elkhorn Hot Springs. The lodge survived the day, but the damaged chairlift turned Maverick Mountain from a place under threat into a place that had already been hit.
What happens next is less about the flames on the slope than about what crews find once they can get back onto the property. If the lift damage is limited, Maverick Mountain Ski Area may be able to repair it before winter; if the fire reached the lift’s core systems, the setback could last far longer than the evacuation map.
