When Gabriel Navarro and his family partners first heard of Tamarack Resort, they’d never even stepped foot in the Gem State. “I didn’t even know you could ski in Idaho, honest,” Navarro recalls with a laugh. Reflecting on the moment someone from his network reached out about a potential investment opportunity, that was the first time he’d learn about a struggling mountain resort two hours north of Boise. It’s a fitting origin story for an ambitious tight-knit clan whose recent history was defined by unexpected pivots, and seizing opportunities outside of their wheelhouse.
For 45 years, Navarro’s family built their fortune in South Florida drugstores—a steady, predictable business as removed from mountains, snow, or ski culture as possibly exists. But after selling that pharmacy empire in 2007, the Navarro family were introduced to a unique opportunity: acquiring ground-floor retail spaces across seven top-tier North American ski villages, including Mammoth, Copper Mountain and Whistler. Sure it was retail, which they understood, but in an category they’d never touched. Still the move worked. Word quickly spread the team knew a little something about navigating the unique universe of ski resorts.
“We certainly were not looking to acquire a ski resort,” Navarro explains of the first time someone called him about Tamarack. “You know, we were born and raised in South Florida. All of our business was in South Florida up until then. But through that [retail opportunity], people came to think of us as being in the ski resort space. And when the opportunity came across to acquire Tamarack, it piqued our interest.”
What happened next would change the trajectory of central west Idaho as a winter destination forever. Navarro’s first trips to Tamarack, located in the remote Payette River Mountains range, were strictly business. He, his brother and brother-in-law—partners in both their retail ventures and eventually Tamarack—arrived in Idaho for due diligence, nothing more. But on the third visit, Navarro brought his wife and three sons to see what they’d been considering investing in.
What they encountered was surreal: construction fencing surrounded the base village; unfinished residential buildings stood frozen mid-development. The entire project had sat idle for more than a decade, creating a ghostly landscape that felt less like a ski resort and more like an archaeological dig. Among locals they dismissingly referred to the area as ‘Tyvek Village,’ an unflattering nickname for the ubiquitous white protective sheeting found on unfinished buildings everywhere. Beneath the entire development sat a massive underground garage, a cavernous space time forgot. “You walk through there and it was eerie,” Navarro remembers. “It looked as if the construction crews had walked out yesterday. The plans were still laid out on the table, their tools, even coffee cups. It was like it was just frozen for 10 years.”
What transformed those early reconnaissance missions into genuine investment wasn’t the infrastructure or the potential—it was the people. After those first two trips, Navarro began spending time with homeowners, understanding what had kept them at Tamarack through 15 years of construction chaos and missing amenities. He discovered something worth protecting. When Navarro and his partners finally signed the papers in 2018, they weren’t just acquiring a ski resort, they were inheriting a fractured community. The original developer’s bankruptcy had scattered ownership across multiple parties, but the intrepid homeowners’ association had kept the lifts open and operational to maintain property values.
Once they’d assembled the scattered puzzled pieces, however, Navarro’s team made a symbolic first strike: reinstalling a lift dubbed Wildwood. When the original developer went bankrupt, the owning bank repossessed the lift—literally flying out the poles and machinery with helicopters. Reinstalling it cost a staggering sum for a resort that wasn’t yet operational, but it sent a crucial message. “The first thing that we chose to do was invest in reinstalling that lift, just to show to the homeowners and the Idaho residents that we were committed to moving the resort forward,” Navarro says. “Lifts are expensive. That lift today is probably $20 million.”
Since then, Navarro’s philosophy has remained consistent: make one transformational investment each year, and they’ve committed no less than $200-million to the endeavor. The beautiful Mid Mountain Lodge, which homeowners had cynically called the “Someday Lodge” (as in, ‘Someday it’ll open.”), finally debuted last winter after almost 15 years squatting halfway up the mountain as an empty shell. The Osprey Meadows Golf Course, originally ranked Idaho’s number-one public course when it opened decades ago, was painstakingly reassembled, rehabilitated and reopened two summers ago. Designed by acclaimed golf course architect Robert Trent Jones II, the 18-hole championship playground features a spectrum of landscapes from lakes to wetlands, with dramatic mountain peaks looming over aspens and namesake Tamarack pines, renowned for their brilliant yellow foliage.
Huge untouched backcountry bowls and glades spread from two gates on West Mountain, gifting adventurous boarders and skiers access to over 5,000 acres of fresh powder after snow dumps.
But what makes Tamarack Resort genuinely different isn’t just its history or its investments. It’s the experience it offers in an era when major ski resorts have become annoyingly congested, ridiculously expensive, and increasingly corporate. “A lot of people are tired of the crowds and the lines and the pricing,” Navarro observes. “You know, some people get out to Tamarack and on a holiday, you might have a 10-minute line.” After visiting in early February, we can attest to having the entire 2,800 feet of vertical mountain nearly to ourselves, zooming to lifts and boarding instantly. Of course weekends and holidays might be busier, but nothing compared to what you’d face in better known resorts.
Navarro shares how the editor of Powder magazine visited recently and coined the phrase “soul skiing” that’s since become central to Tamarack’s identity. It’s the kind of skiing you can’t do at Aspen, Vail, or Killington—the kind where you access terrain that feels genuinely wild and remote. Here outbounds skiing isn’t forbidden, it is actually encouraged. Huge untouched backcountry bowls and glades spread from two gates on West Mountain, gifting adventurous boarders and skiers access to over 5,000 acres of fresh powder after snow dumps.
Après ski, should you be looking for some entertainment, the nearby town of McCall offers wide gastronomic options and a bustling bar life, including Rupert’s, a charming mountain restaurant located in the historic Hotel McCall, built in 1904. The acclaimed Narrows Steakhouse served one of the best prepared tomahawk prime ribeyes we’ve had anywhere, along with a raft of dirty martinis and Michter’s old-fashioneds. Many restaurants can offer a French onion soup, blue cheese-laden wedge salad and shrimp cocktail—but it’s the quality of ingredients and cooking execution of the Narrows that distinguishes the steakhouse from most (the dimly lit, wood-paneled ambiance doesn’t hurt, either).
Should you be looking to get a little loose, a string of bars from Foresters to Lardo’s will happily fill your pint glass. Then there’s The Mill, a wood-paneled restaurant that could double for a Clint Eastwood Spaghetti western saloon. Thousands of retired beer taps line the rafters. At the octagon-shaped bar next door, vintage Japanese mopeds hang from the ceiling, with huge oil-painted murals that tell the tale of an Italian mistress. The vibes here are so thick you could cut them with a stag horn Bowie knife. The not exactly aptly named Yacht House supplies ample, and notorious, late night antics. They all can assure you of conversations with some very interesting mountain folk. Just remember to always respect the local wildlife.
With over 300 inches of average annual snowfall plenty of other options exist in Valley County, such as peerless snowmobiling. With an outfit called CM Backcountry we took a five-hour tour to Burgdorf, a small ex-mining outpost only accessible by snowmobile for more than half the year. Despite the harrowing isolation, some 30 courageous souls live here year-round. You can rent a cabin and do your best Carole King imitation, who lived here six months songwriting. For a day visit simply pack a flask of Distillery 291 bourbon, and soak in the natural hot springs for a couple hours to let your muscles return to form. On the way back to McCall you can swing by Stage Stop, a quintessential dive bar located in Secesh—another village reachable only by snowmobile half the year. Moreover, because of altitude changes and unkept roads, the town is completely inaccessible for a couple months till the snow melts. Close your eyes and you can almost imagine what the owner /bartender is like. Only brave this place if you boast a tough skin, money to tip and empty belly to fill.
Should you want to visit the area when things are more popping, there are events like the upcoming Snowfort music festival, as well as regular semi pro and pro races, and the 5th Annual Bikes, Brews & Bluegrass Festival. Meanwhile the broader nearby landscape provides experiences like multi-day whitewater rafting trips down the Piguette River that simply don’t exist in more developed ski regions.
Even with all these options Navarro is careful not to invoke comparisons to Rolls-Royce resorts like Vail or Aspen. Instead, he describes Tamarack as capturing “the best of the Idaho west”—a region defined by authenticity, remoteness, and genuine community rather than pretense and crowds. Yet the ambitious plans ahead are substantial. Within the next year, Tamarack expects final approval for a 7,000-acre ski terrain expansion on federal land—the first such expansion in roughly 20 years. This will more than quadruple the resort’s current 1,600 skiable acres and require significant new lift infrastructure. A four-star-plus hotel is in development to support group business and increase midweek visitation. And in May, the resort will open its new marina on Lake Cascade with 100 slips and fueling services—making Tamarack the only ski, golf, and lake resort in all America.
“Lake Cascade is bigger than it looks,” Navarro points out. “It has almost 100 miles of shoreline. It’s actually a reservoir with an average depth of about 28 feet, so even a South Florida guy like me can jump in the lake and recreate in the summer. Whereas in a typical alpine lake, I’d probably need to put on a wetsuit.” While Lake Tahoe resorts offer lake views, none actually sit on the water offering integrated ski, golf, and lake recreation. Tamarack will be unique in that regard—a true four-season destination with downhill biking, championship golf, world-class skiing, and lake recreation all within a single resort footprint.
“I anticipate in not too many years,” Navarro predicts, “we’ll be seeing as many visitors during the summer as we do in the winter.” For a man who didn’t know you could ski in Idaho just a few years ago, Gabriel Navarro and his family have become the unlikely stewards of one of America’s most distinctive mountain experiences—one that proves that in an age of mega-resorts and Instagram-ready Veuve Clicquot pop-ups, there’s still room for something genuinely authentic in that world. One where the lack of attitude, entitlement and all-around pretension is only eclipsed by the lack of lines and crowds.
Follow Deputy Editor Nicolas Stecher’s F&B travel adventures on Instagram at @nickstecher and @boozeoftheday.
