Photo courtesy of Big Mountain

Whitefish, Montana is a sleepy western town; at least it was at seven o’clock on a biting February dawn when I first saw it. I had just arrived from Seattle on the overnight Amtrak train, a screechy, lurching ride that stole my sleep and did little to provide rest for three days of skiing at Big Mountain. My husband Roy and I had come to find the famed backcountry and sparse crowds of this revered family ski resort. Big Mountain boasts pleasant weather and consistent snowfall due to its location, protected by the continental divide from arctic air and warm fluctuations.

Originally scheduled a month earlier, our first trip was cancelled in a twist of irony: too much snow. A surprise storm dumped four feet of snow across the west, which was great for skiers, but bad for trains. Amtrak was immobile for a week while crews cleared the tracks. Our only option was to reschedule on Valentine’s Day weekend, which also happened to be President’s Day Weekend and the start of winter school vacation.

I stood on the ice-covered concrete platform amidst a wash of colorful ski jackets, bibs and plastic boots worn by hundreds of chattering ski club students and families on vacation. I wondered just where, exactly, all these people were going to go.

"Don’t worry," my Montana-bred neighbor Kit said before we left, "even on the busiest weekend of the year there is hardly anyone there."

I hoped she was right, and that Big Mountain was big enough.

While porters tossed luggage onto the platform, shuttle bus drivers organized the arriving passengers according to destination. We would stay at Hibernation House, known for its reasonable prices, full breakfast buffet, over-sized hot tub and ski-in proximity to the lifts. Our friendly bus driver commented on the recent real estate boom and pointed out the home of actor Jim Nabors, aka Gomer Pyle, on the nine-mile, curving road up to the resort.

Big Mountain is in the Rocky Mountains of northwest Montana, partially within the Flathead National Forest. The ski hill is nearly 7,000 feet high with 3,000 skiable acres, and many more in the backcountry. It is surrounded by wilderness and the lofty peaks of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, located thirty miles to the east.

"This was the Montana I had come to ski. I was beginning to understand what all the fuss was about."

I had climbed in Glacier eight years before and was eager to refresh my memory of the broad, gray peaks dusted with snow. The Montana Rockies, and their sister peaks over the border in Canada, are massive walls that thrust upward during the last ice age two million years ago. Rivers of ice filled the valleys, and as they melted, left behind broad U-shaped basins with horn-shaped mountains rising ten thousand feet to knife-edge ridges.

The bus stopped at our lodge. Roy and I hoisted our ten-year-old Tua Cirques off the bus. The telemark skis were long, red boards we bought right before the shaped-ski revolution. The Tuas were fat at the time but were nearly half the width of the new skis. They worked fine, if you ignored their tendency to tunnel downward in deep powder or their ratta-tatta shake as they fought for control on packed powder slopes.

I stomped up the hoarfrost-brittle wooden steps, trying to shake life into my numb toes. The warm, pungent smells of bacon and chlorine greeted me at the entry way. Within ten minutes we had checked in and were seated at a table with cereal, toast and jam, and bacon and eggs. An hour later we locked into our skis and glided through town to the ticket booth. It was still early, and we schussed right onto one of two high-speed quads that serve the summit. No lift lines, for now.

As we shivered in our chair toward the summit, we left behind the overcast morning and entered a fog bank. The fog grew thicker and we lost sight of the skiers below. Big Mountain is known for its fog, likely due to the moist air lifting from the 1,500 lakes in Flathead Valley.

We cringed at the sounds of metal ski edges scraping on the groomed slopes below. The dump of snow that cancelled our original trip had melted out, leaving ice at the top and slush at the bottom.

On the first run I lurched and hesitated, unsure whether the white in front of me was fog or mountain. My depth perception was skewed, but I found I could stay upright by focusing on one skier in front of me. Roy volunteered to be the leader. A better skier than I, he balanced his way down the slope like a blind man. I followed his hazy blue shape down the crunchy slope.

On the final run we slipped off the chair into the thick white world and glimpsed a shadowy cowboy figure on skis. At first I thought the fog was playing tricks. He was a wiry, sixty-something dude dressed in cowboy hat and plaid shirt with Wrangler jeans and an old blue nylon jacket. He looked like an exhibit from the buckaroo wax museum. Then he planted his pole and yodeled his way down the hill.

Other than the cowboy and the steaming bowl of chili for lunch, the first day of skiing had few highlights. Crusty skiing in a windy white out was not what I expected from Montana. At least the crowds were light, but that wasn’t too surprising on a day like this.

Disappointed but still hopeful for the next day, we indulged in a heaping pile of nachos, local brew and brownie ice cream sundaes at Moguls Village Pub.

Four inches of snow fell that night. Sunday morning we raced through breakfast and hit the slopes, hoping our luck would change. In the five-minute lift line we met Bob, a teacher from Whitefish celebrating the start of winter break. He wore fat, shaped skis and invited us to follow him to the hidden backcountry terrain.

Bob led us down the back side to a T-bar. The T-bar then climbed back up to a tree-filled area we hadn’t seen the day before. Bob turned right onto a cat track and we skied cross-country for about two hundreds yards, then turned left onto a boot track that led up a steep opening through the trees.

I shouldered my skis and clomped for thirty minutes up the boot track. We emerged, sweaty and hot, on Windowpane Ledge, a windy, treeless knob known only to locals and backcountry skiers who venture off the groomed trails. The fog was lighter here, and I peered below to see what Bob had in store for us. Tall green firs drooped with ten-inch thick clumps of snow. The trees were tightly spaced, but with enough room for agile skiers to twist an exciting path of tree skiing. The fresh powder on this north side of the mountain was thigh-deep and confetti-light. Away from the lifts with not a ski track on it, the slope beckoned for a thousand feet through snow-covered evergreens.

Bob pointed out the general direction and was gone, carving the hill in parallel tracks. I followed on my skinny Tuas, tips plunging deep on every turn. I was not winning points for grace, but I was having a grand time. Bend and turn, swoop and dip through the laden trees, over mounds and around the babbling brook with mist floating from the surface. This was the Montana I had come to ski. I was beginning to understand what all the fuss was about.