Endangered Huff Hills, North Dakota to Open for 2024-25 Ski Season

Long-term future remains unclear as officials consider “all options,” including relocation

Looking east from the west or west from the east, Huff Hills doesn’t appear to be much: 16 trails on 450 vertical feet, 70 acres, 40 inches of snow in a good year. Two Hall doubles, one moved from Holimont, New York and the other from Brian Head, Utah. In its best winters, the Thursday-through-Sunday operation clocks 40-some operating days.

But in rolled-flat North Dakota, Huff Hills is a small miracle, a prominence roughed out of the land by glaciers that once towered miles high. Gazing east from the summit, across the Missouri River, level, lake-dotted farmland marches toward the horizon and for hundreds of miles beyond. But here, less than 15 miles south of Bismarck, North Dakota’s state capital and second-largest city, is a ski area.

Huff Hills is the only skiing that Bismarck, metro population 134,869, has. Local middle and elementary schools roll busloads of kids out each winter as part of their phys-ed programs. The next-closest mountain is Thrill Hills (formerly Bear’s Den), 30 acres on 290 vertical feet two-and-a-half hours east. Two-hundred-vertical-foot Bottineau Winter Park lies three hours north. Slightly larger Frost Fire is four hours northeast. Terry Peak, an 1,100-foot Midwest outlier parked in South Dakota’s Black Hills, is five hours southwest.

That profile, an improbable ski center rising alone on the plains, injects Huff Hills with a significance that its underwhelming statistics fail to communicate. If Huff Hills goes away, so does skiing for Bismarck. And earlier this year, Huff Hills almost went away.