Lone Mountain stands above the Big Sky valley like the Matterhorn: a lone sentinal, a triangle of a peak, perfectly sinister. It’s a mountain that inspires awe – straight out of a Tolkien book. Or a Warren Miller flick.
Mid-March, under a brilliant blue sky, not a hint of wind, and 18 inches of snow have fallen in 48 hours. I join Uncle Bill’s “Masters of the Mountain” ski class at Big Sky. We have Bill and Bob, in their sixties, Angela from Britain, in her sixties, and two other ladies, in their fifties. And Roger, our teacher and guide, who is 67. I am the youngest in the class, and, as I will shortly find out, in the worst shape.
Bill and I have already taken a couple of runs, the last one an endless groomer down the mountain that I called a thigh-burner. Angela from Britain, red-cheeked and good humored, has been skiing the bowls all morning, and is complaining that she must be doing something wrong because her thighs were on fire.
Roger has her exhibit her form, and promptly announces that she is leaning back too far. Weight on the heels. Bent at the waist, not at the knees. Weight forward, he admonishes, on the ball of the feet at all times! No wonder your thighs are on fire, that’s the first sign you’re doing something wrong.
I weakly smile at Bill, who did not think our last run was a thigh-burner.
Sure enough, within the first five minutes of skiing, Roger gently calls me over.
“You ski in a very relaxed position. Arms down, poles trailing, weight back. I want you to think about getting your weight on the balls of your feet. Start by holding your hands out in front, like you’re holding a tea tray. Just think about that.”
The next run, I hold my poles out in front. Feels better.
We all take turns following Roger, single-file, down a groomed run, and he assesses each of us. Actually, the other folks in the class have been taking this class together since January. They’re all locals, and Roger’s goal is to get them comfortable with every type of terrain on the mountain --- including the back bowls at the summit of Lone Mountain – only accessible by the 15 passenger tram. Last year, on their final class, Roger took them up to the South Face – with runs like the Dictator Chutes, The Wave Wall, Tohelluride, and Bone Crusher, with 30 degree pitches – extreme skiing at its best. To take any of these runs, you must sign out with the ski patrol. You are required to ski with a partner, and carry beacons and shovels. Bill said his knees were knocking. He made it down fine, and everyone celebrated with margaritas.
Roger watches us all ski down to him, assessing our styles. Since I have been the focus of the past three or four comments, this time he says to Bob, “Lose something on the ground? You keep looking at your feet. What does that do to your posture?” He leans forward, hunched over.
“I notice you do that, too,” he says to me. “Does this look like a good run for synchronized skiing? Where we all spread out and ski at the same time, when I turn, we all turn? I’ll take slow turns, just watch my pole to see when.”
It’s harder than it sounds, even though he was making slow, gently rounded turns. If one person gets off, it screws everyone up because you start running into each other.
The point, of course, is to keep all eyes down the hill, on Roger’s poles, and not at the ground immediately in front of us. Point well taken.
Big Sky is a mountain with endlessly long runs, and every kind of terrain imaginable. We took a couple of groomers, then hit some wonderful untracked powder, then took some moguls. Then moved into some glade skiing. Never once saw a lift line, not even at the bottom of the mountain.
I got my butt kicked. By a bunch of 60 year olds. Barely winded, they had to stop and wait for me to struggle down the mogul hill. “Good job,” they all cheered, “You’re doing great!” These men and women met twice a week, January through March, to ski everything the mountain has to offer. They are in incredible shape.
When the lift dropped us off at the bottom of the South Wall --- at most ski areas, this would have been the summit --- I literally gasped at the terrain above us. The wind blew great plumes of snow off of the 11,166 foot summit of Lone Mountain. The Lone Peak Tram crawled up an impossibly steep slope. The Big Couloir ---- a 50 degree slope, 2000 feet long ---- and the Gullies had a few fast-moving dots racing down their slopes.
Bill asked Roger to demonstrate the self-arrest: the technique a skier uses to stop a tumbling fall down these incredibly steep runs. Weekly, there are serious injuries suffered on the top of the mountain; occasional deaths. When you fall on a steep run like that, you usually fall at the point of lowest velocity; but once in motion, your body propels itself down the mountain, gaining momentum and speed, for nearly a mile straight down before you’ll crash to a rest. The natural impulse is to try to dig your heels in. Which works, but then the rest of your body continues its momentum and you’ll start to tumble, somersaulting down the mountain. The next impulse is to protect yourself, pulling your arms and head and legs in. This only turns you into a cannonball.
No, the self-arrest technique is all about making yourself as big as possible, spread-eagle. Try to dig your elbows in. If that doesn’t work, grab your pole and use it like a pickaxe, digging into the snow.
I am sufficiently in awe of this mountain, now. Our final run lasts forever --- blacks, blues, greens, endless runs down the mountain. I’m trying to use my yoga mind to keep the weight in the balls of my feet, my hands holding my poles out in front, and use my belly button as a searchlight, pointed straight down the mountain. It’s not until we’re on an untracked powder run that it all comes together, and even though my legs are on fire – not just the thighs, but all the muscles, I don’t want to stop, for I might never get it all to come together again.
I want to tell the world about this awesome mountain, but I’m torn. The locals joke that I’m now sworn to secrecy; we want to keep Big Sky small and secret.
