When Gravity Sports in McCall, Idaho posted a job looking for a Retail Outdoor Store Manager last week, I wanted to make sure to pass along some more information about McCall to those of you who are not so familiar with the area. The fact is that this is a great full-time career opportunity located in a small town mountain paradise where you can still buy real estate … just what many of the MountainJobs.com “visitors” are looking for. I asked the owner of Gravity Sports more about McCall to get the local perspective, and he gave me an excellent summary of what McCall is all about …
Winter
- McCall has been known as “Ski Town USA” since the early 40s and is one of the oldest ski areas in the North West with a total of 3 Alpine ski areas within 1/2 hour from town, Brundage Mountain, Tamarack, and The Little Ski Hill.
- 5 Nordic ski areas, The Little Ski Hill, Ponderosa Park, Jug Mountain Ranch, The Activity Barn, and Tamarack.
- Host of the Nordic World Masters Championships the first week of March this year (just a few weeks away).
- Tamarack is hosting the Telemark National Championships Feb 14-17 (next week).
Summer
- Huge Mountain bike influx in the summer months with both Tamarack and Brundage hosting big races.
- Many high mountain lakes in the area and McCall sits right on Payette Lake.
- McCall is surrounded with whitewater, The Main Salmon class 2-4, North Fork Payette Class 5, Cabarton class 2-3, Main and SF Payette class 2-3, South Fork Salmon and tribs class 2-4+, and many creeks that are runnable. We are the gateway to the largest continuous Wilderness in the lower 48 states, The Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. And we are surrounded by the Payette National Forest.
Community
Housing prices are dropping after the jolt a couple of years ago. Houses right in town cost from $199,000 on up. You can still buy bare land throughout the valley.
Jeff went on to say … McCall sits at 5000 feet and the mountains go on up to about 9500 around town. Right now we have had over 300 inches of snowfall for this year, which is about 120% of normal. We have K-12 for the schools; we have our own hospital with a Life-Flight helicopter staged here (shows our passion for the outdoors!). The population of McCall sits at about 2500 residents, for those who need to live in a town where the elevation is higher than the population, this qualifies. During the summer months tourists and part timers can jump it up a couple of thousand staying in condos and rentals, the same happens during ski season. We are mainly a tourist town, the 4th of July, Christmas and the Winter Carnival will jump the temporary population up to around 10,000 on the weekends.
This is one of those incredible mountain towns where it is not always so easy to find a full-time career so when an opportunity like this one comes along, and you have the desire and the background for it, I say … go for it!