Getting to Spokane

Chart Your Course to Winter Adventure!

TEDDI the Inland Northwest YETI

Getting to Spokane

When you’re flying in or out of Spokane International Airport, you can bet it will be more relaxing than most airports. Even though it’s the second-busiest in the state of Washington, with three concourses and seven different airlines (including Alaska, Allegiant, American, Delta, Frontier, Southwest and United) offering nonstop flights to 21 different destinations, you can be in and out in a flash.

Everything is closer to Spokane than you might think. The direct flight time from Los Angeles is just two hours and 40 minutes; from Denver, it’s 2:40; Seattle, with multiple flights per day, is just an hour away. Other cities with direct links include Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Phoenix, Dallas, Minneapolis, Las Vegas and Chicago. You can quick-hop to Everett, Boise or Portland. And perhaps best of all, Interstate 90 is right next door, with downtown Spokane just 10 minutes away. T he Inland Northwest is a winter paradise, with plenty of snowcovered nature to commune with surrounding the Spokane region. But as you can see with the Snowlander Winter Map on the following pages, it’s also perfectly situated to take in even more of the most rugged landscapes anywhere on Earth. Montana and the Rockies, heading toward Seattle and the Cascades, up into Canada with the many mountain ranges there — the Kootenays, the Selkirks, the Purcells, the Canadian Rockies. Bottom line: There are mountains all around us here — like, massive ones.

So there’s a ton to explore, both near and far from your home base in Spokane, all served by legendary ski resorts. In Washington, you’ll find 49 Degrees North and Mt. Spokane nearby; Idaho’s got Schweitzer and Silver Mountain, while up on the Montana border there’s Lookout Pass. Just over the northern border, there’s RED Mountain and Whitewater, both in British Columbia. You can learn more about all of them, and many other great ways to spend your winter, in the pages of this 2021 Winter Guide.

Who Wants Powder?

While weather systems on the West Coast, Midwest and East Coast are generally filled with more moisture, the interior parts of the West are drier. Less moisture in the air means that, when it snows, you get more of that powdery white stuff everyone wants. While California snow can have a 12 percent water content, interior places like Eastern Washington and North Idaho can be closer to 8 percent, according to AccuWeather. That’s just science.