White Pine Lodge @ Schweitzer

Fantastic location, so wonderful to be able to wake up and head straight to the lifts. Extremely quiet at night. Nearby activities: Right in Schweitzer Village so very easy access to all the amenities. Walkability: You can walk to restaurants, coffee shops, pool, the spa, etc Food & drinks: My favorite meals are at Gourmandie, Crow's Bench, and the Sky House. (The Sky House is only accessible by chair lift or a really really long hike.)
Nov 13th, 2023

Beautiful place, very inconvenient parking
May 24th, 2023

Interesting set up. I'm having a good time so far.
Oct 5th, 2022

May 14th, 2022

My dad and I recently came to Schweitzer for a 5 day ski trip. We stayed in White Pine unit 502. Ill start by saying we were very impressed with Schweitzer as a ski mountain. We usually ski together in Utah, but wanted to change it up this year. We werent expecting Schweitzer to be as big as something like Park City, but we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of skiable terrain. The mountain has a lot to offer all levels of skiers! And their claim that you wont wait in long lift lines is absolutely true. Its definitely still a best kept secret mountain. Unfortunately, we were very disappointed in the accommodations. We paid what I would consider a pretty hefty sum for the opportunity to stay right in the village and I do not think we got our moneys worth. I would not recommend staying in White Pine. First and foremost, we had wifi issues the entire trip. They claim they have high speed internet, but at one point I did an internet speed test and we were getting 3 MBps. This isnt enough to watch Netflix or even load basic websites. Normally, when we ski for a week, I work for a day or two; luckily I didnt plan to work this trip because the wifi could not have supported video calling. To make the wifi issue even more annoying, it became abundantly clear when we reported the issue, that Schweitzers staff is not prepared to manage the property appropriately. From my understanding the White Pine lodge is a bit unique in that all of the units are privately owned, but if the owner wants to rent their unit, its managed through Schweitzer. This model would be fine if Schweitzers staff was trained and prepared to support the units, but that was not the case. To be clear, the staff was wonderful and did everything they could to try to troubleshoot. Kelly in particular was extremely helpful, so I dont fault the staff at all. I do fault Schweitzers management, because it was clear that the staff isnt trained to troubleshoot issues in the owned units. We had two people come to our room to try to troubleshoot and once they saw the owners had a different box than what they were familiar with, they couldnt help. If Schweitzer is selling the properties on their website they need to be prepared to manage and support them when a guest has an issue. In addition to the wifi issues, I was very disappointed in the quality of the hideaway bed in the living room. It was clearly very old and the mattress pad was pretty gross. The blinds on the balcony door in our unit were also completely broken and unable to be lowered, so the person sleeping in the living room couldnt close the blinds for privacy or light reduction. Its also worth noting that I called Schweitzer the week before our arrival to see if our unit or building had a washer/dryer. The woman at the desk told me no, White Pine does not have laundry, but we could access coin machines in the building across from us. Based on this, it was quite surprising to find that there was a shared building washer/dryer literally right outside of our door in White Pine. In my mind all of these issues point back to the model Schweitzer has adopted where they manage the owned units as rentals. If we had booked through Airbnb I could have seen other peoples reviews on our specific unit and may not have booked. I also would have had direct access to the owner to try to troubleshoot wifi/technology issues or ask questions about things like the washer/dryer. I think the managed model can work, but if Schweitzer is going to manage these units they need to train their staff to troubleshoot or answer questions correctly. They also need to set a standard for quality so renters dont deal with low quality beds or broken blinds. Overall not worth the money. Ill definitely come back to Schweitzer to ski, but I will also definitely opt to stay in an Airbnb in standpoint. Nearby activities: The village isn't huge but there are a few decent restaurants and of course the ski mountain. Walkability: There's a small village at the base of the mountain and it's very easy to walk the whole village in about 5-10 minutes from this hotel.
Apr 26th, 2023