Keep kids happy at two small Idaho ski areas

If you go

Silver Mountain

Silver Mountain is in Kellogg, Idaho, just off Interstate 90. silvermt.com or 866-344-2675

Lodging: The Morning Star Lodge rents rooms and condos, with waterpark passes included. A one-bedroom unit, capable of sleeping four, on a nonholiday weekend is $224 a night including tax.

Restaurants: At the base of the ski area’s gondola are Noah’s Canteen, a full-service restaurant and bar, and Wildcat Pizza, which offers room delivery.

Traveler’s tips: Watch for advance deals on lift tickets at liftopia.com Check vrbo.com and other vacation-rental websites for condo rentals, although waterpark passes may not be included.

Lookout Pass

Lookout Pass is also just off I-90, near the towns of Wallace and Mullan, Idaho, and by the Montana border. skilookout.com or 208-744-1301

Lodging: The Wallace Inn (thewallaceinn.com) has rooms from about $84 in December. It also offers stay-and-ski packages.

Restaurants: Wallace has a small but good selection. Try the pizza at The Nook, and the Vindicator IPA at Wallace Brewing.

The ritual apres-ski drink at the Idaho ski resort Silver Mountain comes with a unique twist: 60,000 gallons of water per minute, moving at 35 mph.

That volume is shot across a surfing platform at an indoor waterpark right at the base of the ski lifts. Within minutes, you can go from riding a snowboard to riding a surfboard.

The waterpark is the flashiest element of an appealing pitch to draw families to smaller and less known Northern Idaho ski areas. Silver Mountain and Lookout Pass, just 25 miles apart on Interstate 90, offer good bargains and ample snow.

The bargains start with a “ski passport” good for free lift tickets for fifth- and sixth-graders at eight ski resorts in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho resorts, including Silver Mountain and Lookout Pass (and Schweitzer for fifth-graders). (See skiidaho.us/5th-grade-ski-or-ride-free-passport.) There are also free children’s lessons every Saturday at Lookout Mountain and ample deals on lodging near Silver Mountain.

After a day teaching my daughter to do stem Christies at Silver Mountain, while enjoying the short lift lines and dry Western Rockies snow, I settled into a lawn chair with a local microbrew at Silver Mountain’s waterpark and watched as my kids tried to surf.

A look at the two ski areas:

Silver Mountain: The resort, originally called Jackass Ski Bowl (after a prospector’s donkey), got a huge boost in 1990 when a bold bit of congressional pork paid for a 3-mile gondola ride linking the resort with the struggling former mining town of Kellogg.

The gondola is based in a 9-year-old ski village on the outskirts of Kellogg with 277 condos, three restaurants and the waterpark, just off Interstate 90. Outside the village, Kellogg is dreary, having been effectively annexed by the sprawling Dave Smith auto dealership.

The gondola carries skiers up to the base of Kellogg Peak and Wardner Peak, which offer diverse ski terrain — steeps, trees, cruisers, three snowboard parks, a tubing center — and 2,200 vertical feet of skiing across 1,600 acres and five lifts.

Silver Mountain has the feel of Stevens Pass, and similar complaints. There are no frills in the lodge and a few slow, old double lifts among the newer quads. But it also offers sparse crowds and consistent snow at $53 for an adult lift ticket, $38 for a youth ticket. Skiers age 6 and younger are free.

Back at the base, the waterpark, which is the size of a football field, kept my preteen children heavily occupied for two straight nights. A lazy river snakes between a children’s water fort, the surf wall, two tube slides and spray areas. The family next to us, from Shoreline, were regulars. “Like Great Wolf Lodge, but with skiing,” the father said, raising his glass. Cheers.

Lookout Pass: Driving to Lookout Pass, which straddles the Idaho-Montana border, it doesn’t seem like the ski area can get 400 inches of powder a year. Driving through Silver Valley, on the way to Lookout Pass, the ground was barren of snow.But five miles west of the pass you round what locals call “magic corner” — a bend that magically triggers big dumps of powder.

The resort is limited by topography, with 1,200 feet of vertical drop spread across mostly intermediate runs, and the U.S. Forest Service, which owns the surrounding land and has limited development of a village. Don’t go expecting thigh-burning 30-minute runs at a resort with 540 skiable acres and just three lifts.

But Lookout makes the most of it. It offers consistently better snow and less fog or wind than Silver Mountain, and a family-friendly vibe in style and price.

“The mission is to let people who might not have means ski,” said Chuck Schmidt, the resort’s marketing director.

Lookout fulfills the mission with its famous free ski school — 2-hour lessons for kids 6 to 17 years old, every Saturday from January through March — and ridiculous promotions, such as $25 lift tickets on “Boomer Fridays” for anyone older than 40. On a weekend trip there, we just missed getting free tickets by donating three cans of soup in a food-bank benefit. Regular-priced adult lift tickets on weekends are $40, youth tickets are $29, and children under age 6 ski free.

Look for ski and stay packages in nearby Wallace, a historic mining town featured in the film “Dante’s Peak.” It is so authentically Old West that it had an openly operating brothel into the 1990s.

The quaint feel of Lookout Pass may not be around much longer. It is planning a $20 million, 2,000-acre expansion, with eight proposed new chairlifts and two new lodges. That transformation still is being considered by the Forest Service, but Schmidt said the resort is hoping that some of the new lifts will appear within a few years.

Until then, Lookout remains perhaps the best bargain in Pacific Northwest skiing.