Summer skiing when the resorts are closed
Written: Dec 02 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: if you live for skiing- this is for you
Cons: For shucks sake- get some different hobbies
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| kristenulmer's Full Review: Bridger Bowl |
HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION BY KRISTEN ULMER
Three months in denial, a six hour drive, another week of procrastination then two days of hiking; all to reach this pathetic brown splotch of snow. It was a sad little splotch; maybe, oh, around 12 turns long if you swung 'em really tight. With a sigh, I pushed off, started to wiggle down and GODDAMN! if it wasn't worth it.
This is a story about the evils of summer. You know, that ugly time when the world breaths it's stinky, hot breath on our precious white mountains. That time when skiers squash their emotions and pad their lives with cheap filler sports in some feeble attempt to deaden their pain.
I ski 120 days a year. Last spring while skiing still had its tight grip on my psyche, a fellow vagrant by the name of Sinuhe flashed me a majestic photo of The White Tail; a 3000 vertical 55-60 degree chute in Montana that had been skied only a few times. He said Lama's could be hired to schlep in our gear. I gawked at the photo, wiped the drool off my chin and nodded with wide eyes.
I skied for another few months, but then summer came. That grip grew weak, memories faded, and slowly my mind got distracted by chlorine, barbecues and those frothy pink cocktails with little umbrellas. Out of some fading obligation I kept calling Sinuhe, but he always responded "it's no good, there's still too much snow, very dangerous." I just grabbed a toothpick and stabbed me another wiener and forgot about it.
"Go" said my subconscious. But it was June, I went rock climbing instead. And mountain biking and paragliding and soccer.
"Go!" said the magazine. It was July. Nobody cared about snow anymore. It was HOT! Doesn't that stuff ever melt? It was time to splat skin on asphalt or smear suntan lotion on stranger's backs. I didn't want to go skiing anymore. Yuck.
"GO!" All right! Hell, why not… it's Montana. I'd never been to Montana before; and I had memories of hometown east-coast boys moving there and sending post cards back to little girls like me who thought Montana was as cool and as far away as the moon. Then Sinuhe, never one to think small, suddenly announced he had a helicopter pilot friend who wanted to take us for some free rides. Free? You bet I went.
But it was August for God's sake. I loaded my ski stuff into the car, then threw in a paraglider, climbing gear, rollerblades, cleats, frisbee, footbag, bikini, mountain bike and leg waxing kit, just in case.
Now, I always envisioned Montana as a real serious place full of tofu eating mountain folk, cowboys in ball-squishing wranglers and rednecks driving around in pickup trucks super-glued to their girlfriends. But the first local I met was Blaine, who had a big metal pierced barbell jutting out from the middle of his face and a fat, curving tattoo on his forearm that says "White Trash". Apparently he sleeps in a coffin and designs Vinyl clothing for a living. If I brought this guy home my parents would drive the family car off a cliff. I'm sure the other locals really appreciate a guy like Blaine.
We tried to walk into town for a bagel when and I had a run-in with my second Montana local. A four year old boy sitting on a Bigwheel naked…waiting. It was a horrible sight.
He was staring dully at some nonexistent spot past us, expressionless. We walked past high above him on the sidewalk and I looked down upon his hairless little body and thought he seemed harmless enough. But once past him that little monster worked his machine up to high speed and tried to take us out. We had to dive into the bushes.
This is my summer ski vacation in Bozeman?
Of course Sinuhe was full of pucky about the helicopter. Or rather, there HAD been a pilot who wanted to take us up, but when the pilot "didn't hear from Sinuhe" he assumed "we weren't interested". WHAT? Then we called the Lama guy and found out the beasts had not been trained that summer and they were fat, lazy and uninterested. We were much better off letting them drool in a field of grass somewhere.
That would have been a good idea for me and my friends, too. With no big squeeling machine to haul our lazy butts around, or some slobbering load beast to carry our Foie Gras, what were we to do? I got on the phone and called Montana's finest; Tom Jungst, Jason Schutz, Bob Allen, Stan Evans and a few others. They all wanted to play, but no one wanted to ski.
They sure wanted to talk about skiing though. They droned on and on about Cook City, the enormous backcountry area on the NE edge of Yellowstone which almost got destroyed by mining plans until Clinton flew in and spanked everyone for thinking such abominable thoughts. Cook City is an easy-access scene for snowmobiling and back country skiing; kind of the bigger west coast version of Tuckermans Ravine. Go there in the spring or summer and you'll see hundreds of hard cores beating around, maybe the Burton Team hucking off cliffs shooting their catalog, or cinematographers emoting artistically and arguing with the ski heroes. Mining Cook City might have made the country richer, but at the expense of a dead-head wild life sanctuary.
Talk was big. Should we go skiing in Cook City? Lug our own gear into The White Tail? From town we looked at Elephant Peak through binoculars and checked out a long, skinny trickle of snow called The Ribbon. We looked at maps and laid out plans for hours, then unanimously decided we'd rather shop at yard sales instead.
Skiing in Montana is a real "you should have been here yesterday." kind of experience. There's lots of addicts who swarm the mountain tops, quietly getting the good lines before the hang-over groups show up. Turk, who lives in a Yurt, who rides his bike everywhere in the winter with his ski boots on, was still probably skiing every day. He's the type of guy you'd see jump out of the woods chasing a rabbit for dinner. There's also The Doctor, who graduated from medical school but likes being an unemployed ski bum better. Or Bob Dog, another rarely seen dirt-bag legend who's out all day, everyday. No one knows their real names, but you can always see their lonely tracks on long, faraway peaks; so we know they do exist.
Early one evening Sinuhe announced he wanted to learn to paraglide. Oh goody! I fiendishly rubbed my hands together and loaded up Sinuhe (herein referred to as "The Victim") with gear.
We marched for hours up and down paths, through private property, around bushes; wildly searching for the perfect pinnacle to hurl off (Licensed instructors are for squids). I kept rambling about what to do if the chute collapses and he drops from the sky like a lead piano, or how to avoid trees that grab his ankles and try to yank him to the ground, and what riser to pull if a random tornado tries to suck him in. He was feeling rather queasy when black clouds and a lightning storm forced us home and back safely onto the couch.
The Victim, often considered the extremist of the extreme skiers, extremely ran away from the sport of Paragliding. "Next time, let's go skiing instead" he begged. So, finally, we did.
It was decided: Bob, Sinuhe and I began our trek the next morning to ski "The Great One", a classic 40 degree wide chute just North of Bridger Bowl.
Some things were normal memories of wintertime ski travel; I loaded my gear unevenly so my pack straps were chaffing a new body part with every step and I was becoming more and more ANNOYED and was just about to SNAP when, of course we got really lost and I got to re-pack while Bob sniffed the air. Other things seemed different and more summery; like being attacked by an angry swarm of territorial butterflies, the fresh, oozing scabs of Bob's recent Mountain bike pileup, and the fact we had an awful lot of dirt under our fingernails.
Two hours lost in the woods, then three futile hours trying to claw up a 35-40 degree couloir of ball bearing rocks, tripping and spazzing more than Jim Carrey at his finest. There was no need to whine about any of this, Bob's dog did it for us. Leaving the dog behind, we then climbed 1500 feet straight up the glacial ice called The Great One.
Once at the top, we had a little problem. Neither Sinuhe nor I could remember how to ski. "You go!", "no YOU go!". Back and forth. Oh hell, I grudgingly pushed off and within seconds SHAZAM! fell in complete and utter love with skiing once again. The surface had big sunken craters like the face of a teenager, but it was soft and grippy. Every turn brought us closer to home, to our forgotten destinies.
Enraptured, we scrambled back to town and rousted a group to try an overnighter near Big Sky in search of more snow. They were really green; Jason wore a bright fruity Hawaiian shirt, and Stan didn't bother to pack a sleeping bag. Everyone hadn't tasted turns for awhile, so they dragged knuckles and packed slowly, and we didn't even start our hike until almost midnight.
Wildlife? Yeah we saw wildlife. Moose skipping by us during the night, mountain goats coming over to gawk, dead mice squished on the path. It was so different to winter, we woke up in a field of flowers (With Stan sitting nearby on a rock, white knuckled and mumbling something about his "terrible mistake"), ate pizza warmed by the sun, and fantasized about 250 lb Swedish masseuses (don't ask).
There wasn't much snow. Which was a bummer for those of us who ambitiously brought crampons. There were plenty of rocks though. In fact, Sinuhe unknowingly carried one for hours jammed in between his skis (a little trick Jason knows). Good thing we had so much experience climbing those rocks, because we had to bump up a steep wall with our skis and poles scraping and threatening to eject our sorry asses boom to the ground. But we did it, we crested the final rock pile and there on the other side appeared that dirty splotch of snow I told you about. It was steep and narrow enough to be somewhat exciting, but I liked to call it "The Lame One".
After all those emotional rinse-spin cycles, we were turning again. It wasn't great corn or anything, but it was snow, and it was worth it. Skiing isn't a winter sport, it's a summer sport. It just took us awhile to figure that out.
Back in Bozeman, all of us driving around feeling bad in Blaine's junky Cadillac convertible, someone shouted "Hey, look at that!" It was a hilarious sight, but here two miles on the other side of town was that same naked kid. He was standing, Bigwheels parked three feet away, peeing on a fire hydrant.
You know, I think I'll bag the rest of my summer and fly to the southern hemisphere…
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kristenulmer
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Member: Kristen Ulmer
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 91 members
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