Great Divide Ski Area Closes Early Due to Low Snowfall This Season

Great Divide's Taylor family announced this week the mountain had insufficient snow for a Saturday opening, ending the 2024-2025 ski season before schedule and cutting off the final weeks for roughly 130 youth enrolled in the mountain's All-Mountain Ski Team.

The closure arrives before Great Divide's typical late-March end date, with the Marysville mountain, located seven miles up Marysville Road off Highway 279 about 23 miles northwest of Helena, unable to build the snow base needed for safe, skiable terrain. For families whose children were part of the seven-week All-Mountain Ski Team program serving ages 7 to 19, the premature finish meant an abrupt end to a season that had opened with promise on November 30 at a discounted $20 ticket. Friday night sessions, which normally run from 4 to 9 p.m., also ended with the mountain's closure.

The snowfall shortfall extends well beyond Mount Belmont. Bridger Bowl shuttered its lifts weeks earlier in the same season after recording a 204-inch precipitation decrease compared to the prior year, a figure that signals a regional collapse in snowpack rather than a localized problem. At Great Divide, where annual snowfall averages around 150 inches and February historically delivers 35 inches alone, the 2024-2025 season never accumulated enough base to sustain full operations.

Despite the difficult conditions, KXLH reported that skiers continued making the drive up Marysville Road throughout the season, taking advantage of snow when it was available. The mountain's pull on Lewis and Clark County residents goes back to 1941, when the Belmont Ski Club opened the area as Belmont Ski Hill and built its first trail to host the 1942 Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Races.

Kevin and Nyla Taylor purchased the area in 1985, renamed it Great Divide Ski Area, and installed the first chairlift, the Mt. Belmont Chair, the following year. The mountain has since grown to roughly 1,600 acres across three peaks with 127-plus trails, five chairlifts, and a 1,500-foot vertical drop from a 7,330-foot summit on Mount Belmont near the Continental Divide. Adult lift tickets run approximately $36, with youth ages 6 to 18 paying between $16 and $28.

Known as Montana's sunniest ski area and historically the first in the state to open each fall, Great Divide's seasonal advantage offered little protection in a year when below-average snowfall left both the Helena-area mountain and Bridger Bowl closing ahead of schedule.