Explore Big Sky - January 28 to February 10, 2022

Jan. 28 - Feb. 10, 2022 Volume 13 // Issue #2

Winter Fest skijoring: Interview with athlete Colin Cook

Schmeiding departs Big Sky, leaves legacy

TEDxBigSky is back Driver shortage forces reduced Skyline bus schedule Beacon search area opens at Community Park

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Jan. 28 - Feb. 10, 2022 Volume 13, Issue No. 2

Owned and published in Big Sky, Montana

OPINION ................................................................... 4 LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS .................................................6 LOCAL.........................................................................8 REGIONAL ................................................................12 OP NEWS ..................................................................14 SPORTS .....................................................................17 ENVIRONMENT & OUTDOORS...............................18

HEALTH.... ................................................................31 BUSINESS ................................................................33 ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ......................................35 FINANCE .................................................................41 DINING .....................................................................40 FUN...........................................................................45

PUBLISHER Eric Ladd | eric@theoutlawpartners.com

EDITORIAL

8

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, VP MEDIA Joseph T. O’Connor | joe@theoutlawpartners.com MANAGING EDITOR Bella Butler | bella@theoutlawpartners.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Gabrielle Gasser | gabrielle@theoutlawpartners.com DIGITAL PRODUCER Tucker Harris | tucker@theoutlawpartners.com

SENIOR DESIGNER Trista Hillman | trista@theoutlawpartners.com GRAPHIC DESIGNER ME Brown | maryelizabeth@theoutlawpartners.com

10 14

TEDxBigSky is back

19

Beacon search area opens at Community Park

36

Winter Fest skijoring: Interview with athlete Colin Cook

SALES AND OPERATIONS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Megan Paulson | megan@theoutlawpartners.com CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Treston Wold | treston@theoutlawpartners.com VP OF SALES EJ Daws | ej@theoutlawpartners.com VP OF EVENTS Ennion Williams | ennion@theoutlawpartners.com VP OF MARKETING Blythe Beaubien | blythe@theoutlawpartners.com MEDIA AND EVENTS DIRECTOR Ersin Ozer | ersin@theoutlawpartners.com MARKETING COORDINATOR Sophia Breyfogle | sophia@theoutlawpartners.com VIDEO DIRECTOR, CINEMATOGRAPHER Seth Dahl | seth@theoutlawpartners.com CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIST Mira Brody | mira@theoutlawpartners.com SENIOR ACCOUNTANT Sara Sipe | sara@theoutlawpartners.com

Dr. Peter Schmieding, 64, is leaving the Big Sky dental practice he’s run for 26 years. Taking up the mantle are Dr. Ryan Boswell and his wife and dental assistant, Jesse Littman. Schmieding will now work solely at his other practice in Ennis and continue an effort to open two dental clinics in Nepal through his nonprofit Tsering’s Fund.

Driver shortage forces reduced Skyline bus schedule

CREATIVE ART DIRECTOR Marisa Opheim | marisa@theoutlawpartners.com

Schmeiding departs Big Sky, leaves legacy

The Skyline bus system, operated by the Big Sky Transportation District along with Karst Stage, had to adjust its services late in 2021 due to a lack of drivers which eliminated key pickup times.

Skyline emphasized getting employees to work resulting in a limited late-night bus service.

TEDxBigSky returns with two nights of speakers on Jan. 29 and 30 as well as live music performances to cap each evening. Attendees will hear stories based on this year’s theme, “Resilience,” whether that be overcoming trauma, surviving two avalanches or solidarity in the face of climate change, among many other topics.

On Jan. 15, community partners unveiled a new beacon park at the Big Sky Community Park to provide local education and increase avalanche awareness and safety. The park offers the opportunity for backcountry travelers to hone their beacon skills in preparation for a rescue situation.

After throwing in the towel in 2019, two-time national champion Colin Cook is back behind the horse for the 2021-22 skijoring season. A Missoula native, Cook now resides in Bozeman and works on his startup excavation business when he’s not traveling to skijoring competitions. Next stop: Big Sky and Winter Fest on Feb. 5 and 6.

Opening Shot

ACCOUNTING MANAGER Taylor Erickson | taylor@theoutlawpartners.com PROJECT MANAGER Eli Kretzmann | eli@theoutlawpartners.com COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Meg Koenig | mk@theoutlawpartners.com EVENTS COORDINATOR, RETAIL MANAGER Connor Clemens | connor@theoutlawpartners.com DISTRIBUTION MANAGER, LOCAL SALES Patrick Mahoney | patrick@theoutlawpartners.com COPYWRITER Patrick Straub

CONTRIBUTORS Rich Addicks, Patty Bauchman, Jen Bennett, Dr. Kaley Burns, Kwame Dawes, Dan Egan, Kristin Gardner, Lukas Gojda, Samuel Gonzales, Denise E. Jones, Aleksandr Lesik, Max Savage Levenson, Sorcha Matisse, Scott Mechura, Jasper Poore, Khadijah Queen, Guy Sagi, Alex Sakariassen, Pepper Trail, Cy Whitling, Todd Wilkinson, Emily Stifler Wolfe

ON THE COVER: Colin Cook is pulled by Claudia Schmidt in the 2019 Best of the West Skijoring competition. Cook went on to win the Skijoring National Championship in Red Lodge that year. PHOTO BY SORCHA MATISSE

A moose moves through a neighborhood in Big Sky searching for some vegetation to munch on. A fully grown moose stands between 5 to 6.5 feet tall and bull moose can grow antlers with a span of up to 6 feet end to end. PHOTO BY TUCKER HARRIS

EDITORIAL POLICIES EDITORIAL POLICY Outlaw Partners, LLC is the sole owner of Explore Big Sky. EBS reserves the right to edit all submitted material. Printed material reflects the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the opinion of Outlaw Partners or its editors.

EBS will not publish anything discriminatory or in bad taste.

EBS welcomes obituaries written by family members or from funeral homes. To place an obituary, please submit 500 words or less to media@theoutlawpartners.com.

#explorebigsky

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letters to the editor allow EBS readers to express views and share how they would like to effect change. These are not Thank You notes.

Letters should be 250 words or less, respectful, ethical, accurate, and proofread for grammar and content. We reserve the right to edit letters and will not publish individual grievances about specific businesses or letters that are abusive, malicious or potentially libelous. Include: full name, address, phone number and title. Submit to media@outlaw.partners.

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ADVERTISING DEADLINE For the February 11, 2022 issue: February 2, 2022 CORRECTIONS Please report errors to media@outlaw.partners.

OUTLAW PARTNERS & EXPLORE BIG SKY P.O. Box 160250, Big Sky, MT 59716 (406) 995-2055 • media@outlaw.partners © 2022 Explore Big Sky unauthorized reproduction prohibited

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ALL INFORMATION PROVIDED IS DEEMED RELIABLE BUT IS NOT GUARANTEED AND SHOULD BE INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED. INFORMATION AND DEPICTIONS ARE SUBJECT TO ERRORS, OMISSIONS, PRIOR SALES, PRICE CHANGES OR WITHDRAWAL WITHOUT NOTICE. NO GOVERNMENTAL AGENCY HAS JUDGED THE MERITS OR VALUE, IF ANY, OF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS ADVERTISEMENT OR ANY REAL ESTATE DESCRIBED OR DEPICTED HEREIN. THIS MATERIAL SHALL NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL IN ANY STATE OR OTHER JURISDICTION WHERE PRIOR REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED OR WHERE SUCH AN OFFER WOULD BE PROHIBITED, AND THIS SHALL NOT CONSTITUTE A SOLICITATION IF YOU ARE WORKING WITH ANOTHER REAL ESTATE AGENT. NOTHING HEREIN SHALL BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL, TAX, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ADVICE.

4 January 28 - February 10, 2022

OPINION

Explore Big Sky

O p - E d : Gallatin River a treasure of southwest Montana

BY KRISTIN GARDNER AND ENNION WILLIAMS EBS CONTRIBUTORS

In a Jan. 4 article in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle titled “The right kind of protection for the Gallatin River,” the author shares selective information and strong opinions about how we are caring for the river, or, rather, how we are not caring for the river. Let’s be clear: Big Sky cares deeply about the river.

The Gallatin River is a treasure of southwest Montana. On that we can agree. We know threats facing the river should be taken seriously and addressed with vigor and urgency as if our lives, and livelihoods, depend on it.

Disregard the premise that any one community cares for the Gallatin more than the next. Let’s acknowledge that protecting the Gallatin River is the common thread for all who espouse information about the current and future state of the river and move forward with intention in doing what is right for the Gallatin to the best of our abilities, backed by science and resources.

For decades, protecting the Gallatin has been the mission of the Gallatin River Task Force. The organization’s credibility lies in trusting science, taking responsibility and exploring the most proactive ways to drive stewardship and community-led solutions for protecting this resource for today, and for future generations.

Millions of dollars invested, thousands of hours spent in research, clean-up and volunteer time, investments in technological advances, advocacy, education, community organizations and dozens of local, state and federal experts focused on the health of the Gallatin—all show, in real terms, how much we care about the Gallatin River.

Several factors play a role in the urgency for closer, more careful attention paid to this resource. Development is one. Climate is another, as is recreational pressure. Habitat, natural resource sustainability and managed access take equal stock in the future of the Gallatin, and several points made in the recent opinion piece make it difficult not to offer real facts for consideration.

Let’s start with “the Gallatin River has turned into a swamp of green algae the last summers” because of overdevelopment. Nuisance algae growth has been occurring on the Gallatin downstream of Big Sky since at least 2003 when the first scientific work on the Gallatin was started. The presence of nutrients at blame for the increase in algae is not new, nor is it the direct result of the recent years’ worth of growth. The more recent large-scale algae blooms of 2018 and 2020 occurred both upstream and downstream of the development in Big Sky, suggesting that there are multiple drivers associated with algae growth outside of development.

ILLUSTRATION BY CY Whitling

The author continues: “the wastewater holding ponds in Big Sky are discharging treated sewage from a pipe directly into the West Fork of the Gallatin.” The wastewater ponds are not discharging treated sewage directly into the West Fork from a pipe. The pipe is part of an underground drainage system permitted by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality that transports groundwater upgradient (like upstream but for groundwater) and around the ponds so that the groundwater flow does not rupture the pond liner. The nutrient concentrations in the pipe are less than the nutrient concentrations upgradient of the ponds.

There are criticisms of Big Sky’s methods for handling treated wastewater through irrigation of community golf courses and the newly approved, and DEQ-permitted, process of snowmaking. The golf course irrigation and the snowmaking “scheme” that the author refers to are in fact more advanced methods to replace other wastewater recycling processes that are more harmful to the watershed.

The most straightforward, far less expensive method to discharge wastewater—from a DEQ permitting perspective—is to do as most of our neighbors like Bozeman do, and discharge directly into the Gallatin. Alternatively, Big Sky has invested millions of dollars on solutions designed to protect our watershed, including over $50 million in a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment facility and even more millions slated over the next 10 years in river restoration projects. These are calculated, intentional steps backed by science, data and positive results.

Navigating the future of the Gallatin River requires collaboration. Prioritizing the health of the Gallatin, a group of stakeholders representing diverse perspectives— including conservation, development, government, science and agriculture—developed a comprehensive plan in 2018 to focus on solutions-driven initiatives around river restoration, monitoring, improved wastewater treatment, wastewater recycling and water conservation. This process is ongoing. It is a partnership between science and conservation, among key partners and community leaders with a shared end goal of preserving the Gallatin River.

The author makes a few correct points. The future of the Gallatin River is threatened by water pollution, and all Montanans do have the right to a clean and healthful environment. More important than our “right” to a clean and healthful environment is accepting the responsibility to take an active role in fulfilling that right. Accusations and misinformation will not protect the Gallatin; hard work, committed partners, science, financial investment and a community-led vision for a healthy river will.

Kristin Gardner is the CESO of the Gallatin River Task Force. Ennion Williams is the board chair of the Gallatin River Task Force.

Editor’s Note: Ennion Williams is also the vice president of events for Outlaw Partners, publisher of EBS.

BETTER TOGETHER A biweekly District bulletin The Big Sky Resort Area District is accepting Letters of Inquiry (LOIs) for the FY23 (7/1/22-6/30/23) funding cycle beginning on Tuesday, February 1st, 2022. Approved applicants will be invited to complete Project Applications beginning Tuesday, March 1st, 2022. More information can be found @ ResortTax.Org/Funding or by contacting the District Office @ 406-995-3234.

CALL FOR FY23 RESORT TAX FUNDING APPLICATIONS

January 31st, 2022 Application Training Session @ 9:30 AM - Virtual

1

FEB 2022

Projects might include:

PUBLIC WORKS

HEALTH & SAFETY ARTS & EDUCATION

HOUSING

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

RECREATION & CONSERVATION Did You Know?

In general, BSRAD doesn’t create or implement projects. If a community need is not being addressed, please encourage appropriate local organizations to formulate solutions and initiatives.

For short organization overviews and contact information visit: ResortTax.org/Community-Forum/

31

JAN 2022

February 1st, 2022 LOIs Available @ 9:00AM Training Session @ 3:00 PM - Virtual

February 15th, 2022 LOI Deadline @ 11:45 PM

15

FEB 2022

March 1st, 2022 Project Applications MARCH Available 2022 @ 9:00 AM

1

March 31st, 2022 Project Application Deadline @ 11:45 PM

6

JUNE 2022

31

MARCH 2022

June 6th, 2022 Application Review Meeting #1 @ 5:30 PM

June 9th, 2022 Application Review Meeting #2 @ 5:30 PM

9

JUNE 2022

Visit: ResortTax.org for more info

Administered by the Big Sky Resort Area District, Resort Tax is a 4% tax on luxury goods & services.

OUR VISION: “Big Sky is BETTER TOGETHER as a result of wise investments, an engaged community, and the pursuit of excellence.”

Info@ResortTax.org | ResortTax.org | 406.995.3234 |

6 January 28 - February 10, 2022

LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS

Explore Big Sky

Voters to decide on Ennis bond issue

GVLT preserves Peets Hill land, closes deal

EBS STAFF

EBS STAFF

MADISON COUNTY — Ballots for the $59 million bond issue proposed by Ennis School District for improvements to the 51-year-old high school building are in voters’ hands.

BOZEMAN — Gallatin Valley Land Trust and the City of Bozeman on Jan. 19 ensured that Peets Hill would remain free from development. The 120-acre parcel is now under the ownership of the City of Bozeman as public park land.

The existing high school building, built in 1971, is not meeting space and infrastructure needs, according to Casey Klasna, superintendent of Ennis K-12 schools. The district’s concern, he said, is that growth will outpace the existing facility, which is overcrowded with classes held in every available space.

After months of public fundraising and campaigning to raise both private and public money to purchase the 12 acres, in total costing $1.23 million, GVLT now can protect “Peets’ final piece.”

“The bottom line is we are doing this for our students and our education,” Klasna told EBS on Jan. 4.

Among the electorate to approve or deny the bond are registered Big Sky voters residing in Madison County, who make up nearly 12 percent of the Ennis School District voting bloc and contribute roughly 87 percent of the district’s property tax base, according to data from the Montana Department of Revenue based on levy districts.

Ballots for the election have been mailed out to Madison County voters in the Ennis School District and must be returned by 8 p.m. on Feb. 8. Ballots postmarked on Feb. 8 but received later will not be counted.

South Crazy Mountain Land Exchange completed CUSTER GALLATIN NATIONAL FOREST LIVINGSTON – The Custer Gallatin National Forest, Yellowstone Ranger District, is excited to announce that after more than a decade of work, the Forest has officially closed on the South Crazy Land Exchange, acquiring two easements and exchanging approximately 1,920 acres of National Forest for 1,877.5 acres of private lands. The Crazy Mountains are located northeast of Livingston and northwest of Big Timber.

The sections entering Forest Service lands are now available for public use.

“Our team is pleased to bring this exchange to the finish line and have these sections in the public estate,” said Mary Erickson, Custer Gallatin Forest supervisor. “While we recognize there is work ahead to continue improving public access and land consolidation in the Crazy Mountains, it feels good to pause to celebrate this step forward. We’re thankful for the interest and passion that people have for this area, and for the cooperation and support from landowners and partners in making this a reality.”

The benefits of the South Crazy Land Exchange are numerous, including the direct benefit to the public. The newly acquired sections consolidate National Forest System lands, creating a larger block of clearly identifiable public lands; benefiting dispersed recreation opportunities; reducing unintended trespass issues with intermingled private lands; and saving administrative maintenance costs. This decision further sets the stage for improving future public access in the southern part of the Crazy Mountains.

Visit https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=56687 for more information.

“In a matter of weeks, hundreds of people donated to raise $800,000 to help with the sale,” the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported on Jan. 20. “The land trust then turned to the city to ask for $485,000 to cover the rest of the costs and an additional $315,000 to be paid over the next two years to cover the cost of trail and land work planned for the parcel.”

Bozeman City Commissioners unanimously approved the funds in December from their cash-in-lieu of parkland fund.

GVLT hosted the Peets’ Final Piece Ribbon Cutting Ceremony on Jan. 27 at 4 p.m. at the southern end of the top of Peets Hill.

Yellowstone sets record visitation in 2021 EBS STAFF MAMMOTH — Yellowstone National Park hosted 4,860,537 recreation visits in 2021, up 28 percent from 2020 which logged 3,806,306 visits, making it the busiest year on record.

The months of May through September were the busiest on record. Visitations in July exceeded 1 million visits in a single month, making it the most-visited month on record in the park’s history.

2021 - 4,860,537 2020 - 3,806,306* 2019 - 4,020,288

2018 - 4,115,000 2017 - 4,116,524 2016 - 4,257,177

“Although the park accurately counted 4.86 million visits in 2021, a close analysis of visitor use data shows that over 350,000 vehicles re-entered the park in 2021 compared to 2019, before COVID-19,” NPS staff wrote in a Jan. 21 press release.

“This is likely due to approximately 20 percent fewer overnight stays in the park during the year.”

Construction projects and COVID-19 limitations were the largest contributors in reduced overnight stays, with approximately 20 percent fewer campsites and hotel rooms available in 2021 compared to previous years.

Visit https://irma.nps.gov/STATS/ for more data on park visitation, including how they calculate these numbers. *The park was closed March 24-May 18, 2020, due to COVID-19. Two entrances were open May 18-31 and the remaining three opened on June 1.

BSSEF Nordic Program holds Viking race for Winter Fest Racers have the option to participate in three distances: 1k, 3k or 5k races at three levels: Competitive Team, Development Team and the Club Team. The races are either classic or skate and a there is a fun relay event for the final Viking Race on March 8.

EBS STAFF BIG SKY — The Big Sky Ski Education Foundation Nordic Board has partnered with Outlaw Partners, publisher of Explore Big Sky, to hold a Viking Nordic Ski Race on Thursday, Feb. 3. The Winter Fest event will feature music, food trucks and a tailgate as well as a raffle and prizes for race winners. All experience levels are welcome, and the race will be broken down by age categories.

BSSEF Nordic Board and BSSEF board members host monthly Viking Races at the Big Sky Nordic Center to fundraise for BSSEF’s athletes.

“We are hoping to create events that would enrich our athletes and create community events, and that more people would take part in our world class facility that we have here at Lone Mountain Ranch,” said Nicole Barker, BSSEF’s Nordic coordinator.

Register Here!

Visit outlaw.partners/winterfest to register for the Winter Fest Viking race.

Visit bssef.com to learn more about the Nordic Ski Program.

Big Sky Medical Center now offers general, OB/GYN, vascular, and basic fetal ultrasounds.

Call 406-995-6995 to schedule an appointment for your ultrasound needs.

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8 January 28 - February 10, 2022

LOCAL

Explore Big Sky

Not just a dentist’s office

Peter Schmieding leaves practice in Big Sky, ushers in new talent

BY BELLA BUTLER BIG SKY – Whether it’s in dentistry or running a nonprofit in Nepal, Dr. Peter Schmieding leads with his heart.

Lhakpa Sherpa, one of Schmieding’s six adopted children from Nepal, is studying in Nepal to be a dentist, just like her father. Schmieding, beaming with pride for his daughter, said the first piece of advice he offered her when she started school was to treat every patient the way you’d want to be treated.

“In a small town if you treat people well, if you go out of your way to help them, then word gets around and you end up with a reputation of a place that people want to go to,” Schmieding said during a January interview in his Big Sky practice.

Schmieding, 64, is now stepping back from the dental practice he’s run in Big Sky for 26 years is and passing the baton to Dr. Ryan Boswell and his wife and dental assistant, Jesse Littman. Schmieding will work solely in his only other practice in Ennis.

Schmieding first moved to Big Sky in the ‘90s. He’s one of the few remaining residents who remembers a quainter Big Sky; His twin sons attended Ophir School when he first moved to town, and in their combined seventh and eighth grade class, they made up one-third of the cohort.

Reputation is indeed a tenet that’s floated his business from repairing a crown on the porch of his home to an established practice with a robust, loyal clientele.

In all his 40 years practicing dentistry, Schmieding said he’s never purchased an advertisement.

In reflecting on what the practice has been to him, Schmieding acknowledges that many small-town businesses are often more than what they seem. In his case, his office, located on the side of the U.S. Highway 191 just south of Big Sky, has doubled as the headquarters of an international nonprofit.

Schmieding started Tsering’s Fund in 2006 with his wife, Karen Fellerhoff Schmieding, and their Nepal-based friend, Tsering Dolkar Lama. The fund connects underprivileged children, young women and families in Nepal with private donations to support education, medical care and basic living assistance. “[My dental practice] is probably one of the main reasons Tsering’s Fund has been as successful, because you have a captive audience,” Schmieding said, thinking back to the days when he was spreading word of his new project to

Peter Schmieding, a Big Sky dentist and the president of the nonprofit Tsering’s Fund, sits on a Kathmandu terrace with his daughter, Maya Hyolmo. Schmieding is leaving his dental practice in Big Sky in hopes of continuing work with Tsering's Fund in Nepal. PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER SCHMIEDING

patients while they waited for their mouth to get numb for dental operations.

Now, Schmieding said, most people who walk through the door ask about Tsering’s Fund right away.

Service is at the core of Schmieding Dental Group and all that’s transpired from the community business, and it’s a value Boswell and Littman are tethered to in their own lives. Boswell, originally from a town in Iowa he says makes Big Sky look big, worked internationally and in public health with orphans, refugees and other underserved populations.

“Working with the underserved has always been a really big passion of mine,” he said.

The young couple met in Missoula, where Littman was in graduate school for social work. She now splits her time between The Sacred Portion Children’s Outreach in Bozeman, a child care ministry to orphaned and abandoned children, and the dental practice in Big Sky. Boswell initially reached out to Schmieding at the end of last year and joined the practice in December. Over the next few months, Schmieding will phase out of the practice and Boswell will take over his patients. Boswell will also assist patients in Ennis starting one day a week. Schmieding Dental Group will remain open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in Big Sky and five days a week in Ennis. Boswell said he hopes to soon open the Big Sky office on Mondays as well to give patients more options.

The son of a veterinarian, Boswell said he always knew he would go into medicine. An artist and entrepreneur, dentistry allowed him to combine his passions into a profession.

Next to plastic surgery, he said, dentist work is possibly one of the only areas in medicine where art can be employed. “In my 10 years of practice,” he said, “I’ve also been able to do a lot of high end and aesthetic work as well.”

Another part of dentistry Boswell enjoys is working closely with people.

“If you got your physician, hospital or clinic, you might get to see them for two minutes tops,” he said. “Whereas in dentistry you can really connect with people and see them pretty frequently and get to know them and their family. It creates long-term relationships that I think other areas in medicine don’t offer.”

Between a few weeks at Schmieding’s office and skiing and taking trips to Big Sky, Boswell and Littman said they’ve dipped their toes in the Big Sky community but look forward to delving deeper.

While Boswell and Littman are laying down roots in Big Sky, Schmieding hopes to deepen his decades-old connections and work in Nepal. With more time freed up thanks to Boswell and Littman, he’ll advance his mission to open two dental clinics in the Helambu region in Nepal, where he says most residents have never had dental work or have to travel at least a day for the service.

Ryan Boswell (left) and his wife Jesse Littman stand along the Pacific Crest Trail in fall 2021. Boswell will take over Schmieding’s practice in Big Sky as the new dentist and Littman will assist him. PHOTO COURTESY OF RYAN BOSWELL

He plans to rotate dentists into those clinics from the states to provide free dental work. Plus, he adds, they’ll have the option to take off on a trekking experience in the Himalayas after their rotation.

Schmieding hopes Boswell will be one of these dentists.

Life Well Liv ed

NEW LOFT RESIDENCES, COMING SOON. WILDLANDSBOZEMAN.COM

LOCAL

10 January 28 - February 10, 2022

Explore Big Sky

Skyline reduces bus schedule as driver shortage pervades Local bus system operating at 80 percent of normal

BY GABRIELLE GASSER

One longtime visitor to Big Sky, Heather Blease, has noticed the gap in evening Skyline services though she says they haven’t affected her trip. Blease has been able to get where she needs to go but the reduced schedule requires her to plan accordingly.

BIG SKY – The effects of a national shortage in commercially licensed drivers are being felt by the local

public transportation system which currently lacks drivers and is running at reduced capacity.

“I noticed there’s more focus on keeping things here in town and the connection between [Town Center and the mountain],” she said while waiting at the Town Center stop. “It just seems like that line is very thin.”

The Skyline bus system, operated by the Big Sky Transportation District along with Karst Stage, had to adjust its services late in 2021 due to a lack of drivers which eliminated some key pickup times.

David Kack, coordinator for the district and director of Montana State University’s Western Transportation Institute, has been working with the district since 2003 and said that in some ways, this has been Skyline’s toughest winter yet.

“I say there’s three key things for us to do what we need to do and that’s funding, vehicles and drivers, and if one of those is missing, then you have a hard time,” Kack said. “It seems we’re doing OK with funding and vehicles but drivers are the missing key right now.”

General Manager of the Big Sky Transportation District Sam Luedtke waits in his bus at the Mountain Village Center stop.

PHOTO BY GABRIELLE GASSER

The general manager of the district, Sam Luedtke has been driving a lot more frequently to fill in the gaps and try to keep the system running on schedule.

He called the current situation a “double-edged sword” that creates a tenuous balance between efficiency and capacity. According to Luedtke, the recently condensed schedule means that a lot of buses are nearing their limit. While their routes are more efficient, he says, there have been some instances where riders were unable to board a full bus.

“We don’t have enough drivers just like everywhere else doesn’t have enough employees,” Luedtke said. “People need to bear in mind that we can do [just] what we can do with what we have.”

In the middle of November 2021, Skyline had to adjust its schedule ahead of the winter season schedule on Nov. 22. The transportation district held multiple meetings with its board, along with Dan Martin, owner and general manager of Karst Stage, and representatives from large employers in Big Sky, to discuss what could be accomplished with the resources available.

“Skyline continues to be a great resource for transportation around the greater Big Sky area,” said General Manager of Moonlight Basin Mike Wilcynski. “David and his team are doing their best under challenging circumstances related to labor shortfalls that have impacted the overall capacity and frequency of the Skyline routes. We have had to rely on our employee shuttle program to supplement the Skyline services due to the reduced schedule.”

The resorts have the greatest ridership numbers, according to Kack, so it made sense to preserve as much of that service as possible as well as the Link service that takes riders to Bozeman. The priority was to get people to work in the morning, Kack said.

The result found late-night bus service much more limited than in years past with most routes ending between 6 and 8 p.m. and a three-hour gap in service from 4:35-7:35 p.m.

“We’re unfortunately not able to get people out to dinner and some later evening activities,” Kack said. “We just thought we’d put the resources where they’re probably going to be most used, but we would have really liked to have been able to do at least what we did last year.”

Skiers find seats on the Skyline bus headed back down to the Big Sky Town Center. PHOTO BY GABRIELLE GASSER

The other service gap this year is occurring in the Link schedule from Bozeman to Big Sky, which now offers 10 roundtrips as compared to 12 last year. The last bus departs from Bozeman to Big Sky at 12:40 p.m. and Kack said this can be an issue for tourists flying into Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport in the afternoon making it difficult for them to get up to Big Sky.

The solution would be to hire more drivers, but Martin with Karst Stage says that has proven difficult. Karst Stage is contracted to drivers for Skyline and Martin said they are actively recruiting and spending anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 per month on those efforts.

According to Martin, Karst Stage is offering hiring bonuses and increasing pay by 15 percent. Since 2019, he added, pay has increased by about 40 percent. The current hourly rate for a Skyline driver is $23 but the bump in pay isn’t bringing in more employees.

On a national scale, many drivers laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic are not looking to re-enter the workforce, Martin said. As spending habits shifted further to online shopping, companies like e-commerce giant Amazon began hiring more employees with commercial driver’s licenses which, according to Martin, has made it difficult to find drivers for public transportation.

“We’re frustrated by this whole thing as well,” Martin said of the failed recruiting attempts. “I’ve driven more in the latter part of last year than I’ve driven in the 15 years that I’ve been at Karst.”

To help support hiring efforts, Martin said this year he doubled the amount of staff housing he owns because he worries the rental market will prevent potential employees from making the move to the area.

Kack said a minimum of three drivers need to be hired just to cover the standard sevenday-per-week driving schedule. He estimated that Skyline is currently operating about 80 percent of the service that it did last year.

In the first six months of this fiscal year, July 1 through Dec. 31, ridership on local Skyline routes increased by 19.1 percent, something Kack says is a promising sign that ridership is returning to normal.

Martin anticipates this driver shortage to be an issue for another year or two and then hopes Karst and Skyline will be able to build back some momentum.

“The district has done a great job, we’ve all done a great job,” Martin said, “of adapting throughout this including the riders by the way. I know it’s not easy.”

Riders board the Skyline at the Town Center stop. PHOTO BY GABRIELLE GASSER

The ‘80s were

THEY WERE ALSO A LONG TIME AGO. A lot’s changed around Big Sky since the ‘80s. After four decades, it’s time to update how we protect the mountains, rivers, wildlife, and trails we love.

Now is our chance to keep our wild backyard the way it is for the next forty years, and we need to work together to make that future a reality.

Skiers, snowboarders, hikers, hunters, equestrians, anglers, mountain bikers, conservationists, and businesses are working together to find new solutions to protect the places we love most.

Learn about what we’re doing and what comes next at gallatinpartners.org.

12 January 28 - February 10, 2022

REGIONAL

Explore Big Sky

Gallatin Search and Rescue releases 2021 Annual Report EBS STAFF

GALLATIN COUNTY — Gallatin County Sheriff Search and Rescue just logged its busiest year in program history, according to its annual report. In a year full of change, 2021 marked the first year search and rescue had a full-time staff thanks to a mill levy passed in June of 2020.

The organization underwent major transformations over the past year and volunteers spent more time training in 2021 than ever before, according to the report.

0 1

“Search and Rescue ended 2020 hoping for a ‘breath of fresh air’ in 2021,” the report read. “What we got instead was more lost or injured people in the backcountry. We started the year strong with more snowmobile accidents than any previous year, but we ended the year quiet, with less than 10 calls in the last three months of the year.”

Below are some of the statistics from SAR’s activity in 2021.

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SUBJECT ACTIVITY

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16 14 12 10 8

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Guns or marijuana, but not both

Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits simultaneous possession of guns and controlled substances

BY MAX SAVAGE LEVENSON MONTANA FREE PRESS

HELENA — While marijuana became legal for adults to purchase in Montana on New Year’s Day, a key federal agency has confirmed a fact underreported in coverage of the state’s new marijuana program: It remains illegal under federal law for individuals to simultaneously possess marijuana or marijuana products and firearms, and penalties for violating that law are severe.

The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed the policy to Montana Free Press last week, noting that the federal Gun Control Act prohibits a person who possesses a controlled substance from possessing a firearm or ammunition. Cannabis is currently recognized as a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance.

“The Gun Control Act prohibits a person who uses a controlled substance from possessing a firearm or ammunition,” ATF Public Information Officer Crystal McCoy told MTFP. The question is complicated by a federal form required for purchasing a firearm.

It asks the applicant, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” The form does not specify that even if marijuana is lawful in the applicant’s state of residence, it remains unlawful in the eyes of the bureau.

“Anyone who is currently using marijuana, whether for ‘medicinal’ purposes or otherwise, should answer ‘yes’ [on the form],” McCoy explained via email.

13 January 28 - February 10, 2022

REGIONAL

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McCoy further noted that the Bureau’s position is longstanding. She cited a 2011 open letter penned by Arthur Herbert, the Bureau’s Assistant Director of Enforcement Programs and Services, offering guidance on the subject. “Marijuana, as mentioned above, is listed in the [Controlled Substance Act] as a Schedule I controlled substance … and Federal law does not provide any exception allowing the use of marijuana for medicinal or recreational purposes, even if authorized by state law,” Herbert wrote at the time.

McCoy additionally cited a 2011 case in which S. Rowan Wilson, a medical marijuana patient in Nevada, claimed in court that the policy violated her constitutional rights. In 2016, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Wilson and in favor of the U.S. Department of Justice and ATF. In Montana, enforcement of the policy largely hinges on self-reporting, since the state is prohibited from tracking marijuana customers or putting them on a list. The Montana Department of Revenue and Department of Justice both declined to provide comment for this story. DOJ suggested contacting a federal agency.

Violations of the law are punishable with a fine of up to $10,000 and a jail sentence of up to 10 years.

It remains illegal under federal law for individuals to simultaneously possess marijuana or marijuana products and firearms, and violations are punishable with a fine of up to $10,000 and a jail sentence of up to 10 years. PHOTO BY GUY SAGI/ADOBE STOCK

As the libertarian Reason Foundation points out, the policy is unlikely to change until either marijuana is descheduled from the list of federally controlled substances or the Gun Control Act is amended to include exceptions for medical marijuana patients or states with legal marijuana markets.

Max Savage Levenson is a Missoula-based reporter on the cannabis beat. He is the founder of Montana Cannabis Weekly, a newsletter covering the state industry. His writing on cannabis and pop culture has appeared in outlets including Pitchfork, NPR’s All Songs Considered, Leafly, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Reason.

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14 January 28 - February 10, 2022

OP NEWS

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News from our publisher, Outlaw Partners

Introducing the 2022 TEDxBigSky speaker lineup

BY MIRA BRODY BIG SKY – Solidarity. Responsibility. Fortitude. We’ve heard a lot of iterations of what resilience means to each of this year’s TEDxBigSky speakers.

This year, TEDxBigSky is paired with another great Big Sky Ideas Festival featuring a roundtable discussion about trust in the media on Thursday, Jan. 27 at 5:30 p.m. as well as live performances by musicians Monique Benabou and Bruce Anfinson on Friday, Jan. 28 at The Independent at 6 p.m. Be sure to purchase your tickets to all events at tedxbigsky.com.

As we approach this year’s event, we’d like to remind you to find your own sense of resilience in life—whether it’s working together to save the planet, starting your own company, writing some good music or changing the culture of our community for the better.

NIGHT 1 Lisa Senters-McDermott The CEO and founder of Jet Senters Aviation, Lisa Senters-McDermott is frequently quoted as one of the leading experts in aviation. She’ll be speaking about resilience as an entrepreneur and her belief in trusting her instincts in the face of disbelievers and that success does not come without failure. “Resilience is essential,” Senters-McDermott says. “You have to follow your gut, trust your instincts and allow yourself to dream.”

Ken Scott For Ken Scott, resilience is laying trapped under 9-anda-half feet of snow and regaining the control necessary to survive after two successive avalanches buried him on Silver Mountain in Idaho. In addition to physical and mental recovery from that experience, both Scott and his wife have experienced health scares on top of grieving the death of his friends who did not survive the avalanche.

Resilience, Scott believes, is surviving against these hardships and odds, which will be the cornerstone of his talk.

Rev. Briana Lynn Rev. Briana Lynn, who practices nature-based spirituality, believes resilience is an intentional choice not to live as a victim of one’s traumas. Lynn’s talk will follow six microstories from her own life’s ups and downs, accompanied by an eclectic mixture of spoken word, slam poetry, deep breathing and fun. Lynn draws strength from her community—she lives alongside eight other people who share 1.5 acres of land in Los Angeles, a project they call The Mother Tree.

Saul Martinez Saul Martinez is a former Army Infantryman and Purple Heart recipient who made Bozeman home for his family a decade ago shortly after participating in a Warriors and Quiet Waters fishing experience. He is now the chief program officer for WQW, a nonprofit whose programs have helped provide veterans respite from the stresses of war and help integrate them back into their home community through the healing power of the outdoors.

To Martinez, resilience is an everyday practice, which he will discuss in his talk. “It’s a pursuit,” he says. “It’s hard work.”

Nick & Mike Fiorito Brothers Nick and Mike Fiorito founded Blankets of Hope in 2016, which has since partnered with 500 schools across 46 states to provide 60,000 blankets to those experiencing homelessness. A key component of the nonprofit is their Kindness Workshops, through which they educate children about the importance of compassion, which is one of “the most important things we can teach the future generation,” Nick said. The Fioritos will talk about how resilience led them to found Blankets of Hope and move forward with a positive attitude, despite all obstacles.

Todd Dittmann Todd Dittmann spent more than 25 years in energy finance with investing and board experience in both public and private companies. He joined Angelo Gordon in 2013 to lead the firm’s energy strategy and today is a managing director and member of the firm’s executive committee. He believes there can be a happy ending to the fight against climate change, but that it relies on the concept of solidarity, a trait he believes is waning in our culture. Dittmann’s talk will spur the conversation of solidarity and the power it has to change the future of humanity.

Monique Benabou Musician Monique Benabou asks attendees of TEDxBigSky to arrive with an open heart and “prepare to be triggered in the best way.”

Benabou will close out night one speakers with a musical set she calls “transformational.”

Her music is powerful and vulnerable, a culmination of her own breakthroughs and rock bottoms; lessons and healing she hopes will facilitate listeners’ discovery of their own intimate truth. “My biggest prayer in connecting with this audience is to make them feel seen and understood at an unspoken level,” Benabou says. “I want people to feel not alone, inspired, a little scared.”

15 January 28 - February 10, 2022

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NIGHT 2 Jan Winburn With four decades of journalism behind her, Jan Winburn is no stranger to covering traumatic events and processing the aftermath of those events. “There’s a reaction to trauma, but that is kind of all it is in the beginning,” Winburn says.

“It’s with the passage of time that we can understand things better. And I think that’s true of everything … like what we’ve gone through with this pandemic.” Winburn will discuss the importance of facing trauma head on and the resilience that comes with it.

Tom Spruance Tom Spruance believes the key to saving the ecosystems around Big Sky and other booming mountain towns relies on something called the ripple effect. President of the Spruance Foundation, a supporter of the Gallatin River Task Force, Jack Creek Preserve and Yellowstone Forever, his fear has always been that developers will gain the upper hand and pave away natural beauty—an attribute that brought many here in the first place. In his talk, Spruance will discuss the application of the ripple effect, and how he believes we can find a balance between the growth Big Sky is experiencing and preserving its irreplaceable natural resources.

Benjamin & Azrya Bequer Benjamin and Azrya Bequer aren’t afraid to ask you hard questions. The husband-wife force of nature is devoted to helping humanity achieve its full spectrum of aliveness, a process they call “Beqoming” that is outlined in their new book “BEQOMING: Everything You Didn’t Know You Wanted” and will soon be joined by a podcast and a sixmonth online course. In their talk, Azrya and Benjamin will speak of their own journey of Beqoming, as well as their use of plant medicine, particularly ayahuasca.

Timothy Tate While nature and nurture are important factors in a person’s psychological growth, Timothy Tate, who has been a professional psychotherapist for over three decades, believes in a third force, which he calls the “unique genius.” It’s a theory outlined by James Hillman in his book “The Soul’s Code” and one Tate has integrated into his psychotherapy work. Tate’s goal is to help people realize their unique genius through three core modes: dream, imagination and creativity.

In his TEDxBigSky talk, he will draw from examples from his life to illustrate this concept.

Ryan Busse Once a member of the National Rifle Association and former firearms executive, Ryan Busse, author of the critically acclaimed memoir, “Gunfight,” has since taken a stance against his former industry. He believes the firearms industry and the politics related to it, combined with a lack of societal responsibility, has created disillusionment around gun culture that is responsible for events like school shootings, inner-city gun violence and domestic terrorists. “The balance between our freedoms and responsibility is really badly out of whack,” Busse says. In his talk, he’ll discuss his belief that resilience just may be able to lead us to rediscover our sense of responsibility as a nation and change the culture of gun ownership for the better.

Bruce Anfinson Singer/songwriter Bruce Anfinson grew up along the Missouri River in Great Falls and today lives in a home he built himself near Helena recording music (in a studio he also built himself ), raising horses, huckleberries and a family.

He has performed all over the world including at the famed Berlin, Germany Volk Festival and has shared a stage with Merle Haggard, Michael Martin Murphy, Big Sky Mudflaps and many more. Anfinson will close out night two of TEDxBigSky with a set that beautifully illustrates what is it to live in, and love, Montana.

FEATURED BOTH NIGHTS

You can help preserve fish and wildlife habitat and scenic open spaces in Montana.

Tom Levar Tom Levar is a retired University of Minnesota research scientist who returned to his birthplace near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness with his wife and their dog. His career spanned four decades of natural resource management. His scientific background and the serenity of their new home inspire him to write haiku daily.

Daniel Kern Daniel Kern lives in Bozeman and has Big Sky roots that run deep. After college in the midwest and a long stint in the urban jungle, the mountains called him back home. Daniel's passion is simple: bring the present moment to life. He supports this by weaving together music, embodiment, nature, art, ceremony, and service to create enlivening and memorable experiences. You'll find him behind the DJ decks, guiding dance/singing/breathwork sessions, adventuring in the wilderness, and ripping down the slopes of Lone mountain.

Contact Jessie Wiese at jessie@mtlandreliance.org for more information Ad donated by supporters for open land | mtlandreliance.org | 406.594.1570

Bozeman

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15 Aspen Leaf Drive, Big Sky 1 8 3 6 Ta r g h e e Pa s s H i g h way , W e s t Y e l l ow s t o n e

ID

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17 January 28 - February 10, 2022

Explore Big Sky

SECTION 2: SPORTS, ENVIRONMENT & OUTDOORS AND HEALTH Humility in the mountains pg. 18

Love thy neighbors pg. 26

Recharging after illness pg. 31

Big Horns fall in ‘Battle of 191’ matchup Varsity boys earn first district win

BY GABRIELLE GASSER

On Saturday, Jan. 15, the Big Horns hit the road to play the Twin Bridges Falcons. The Lady Big Horns fell to the Lady Falcons 54-39 and the boys lost to the Falcons by 10 points with a final score of 56-46.

BIG SKY – The latest “Battle of 191” contest between rivals Lone Peak High School and West Yellowstone High School put the Wolverines two wins ahead of the hometown Big Horns in the ongoing Class C rivalry.

On the evening of Jan. 18, only the varsity boys faced off against the Ennis High School mustangs on their home court.

On the evening of Friday, Jan. 14, the Lady Big Horns took the court first in a fast-paced and tight game.

The Lady Big Horns showed promise in the first quarter keeping the score low and leading 9-7. The Lady Wolverines began to pull ahead in the second quarter scoring 16 points.

The Big Horns built an early lead bolstered by home court momentum and an aggressive full-court press.

Though the Mustangs began to close the gap in the first quarter, junior Big Horn guard Gus Hammond sank two 3-pointers in quick succession to pull ahead.

Late in the third quarter, a crucial free throw from junior Maddie Cone gave the Lady Big Horns a one-point lead over the Lady Wolverines. Lone Peak fought back in the second half and ended the third quarter down 31-30.

Lone Peak struggled to deliver on offensive possessions in the second quarter scoring just eight points to Ennis’ 20. Hammond and Romney led the Big Horns’ offense with jumpers and layups respectively.

As the scoreboard ticked down in the fourth quarter, junior Kate King added two points from the foul line bringing Lone Peak within five points of West 40-35.

Just when the momentum started to swing back to the home team however, a traveling call gave possession back to the Lady Wolverines.

Ennis’ scoring streak put the Big Horns behind 40-32 at the half.

Junior Maddie Cone shoots over two Lady Wolverine defenders.

PHOTO BY RICH ADDICKS

Despite the ref ’s ruling, the Lady Big Horns fought hard until the buzzer, and a final score of 45-39 favored the Lady Wolverines.

The Big Horns came out fired up in the third quarter with Hammond sinking a jump shot on the first offensive possession. He had a standout game contributing 34 points to the Big Horns for the evening.

As the third quarter wound down, the Big Horns struggled on the defensive end of the court and missed important rebounds that gave the Mustangs second- and third- chance shots.

“We ran the two-on-two zone well and we passed the ball reasonably well,” LPHS Head Coach Loren Bough said of his team’s performance. “We looked for the fast break and ran hard tonight.”

Following the Lady Big Horns, the boys varsity team took the court against the Wolverines.

Another momentum shift sent the Big Horns into the fourth quarter strong, with a 3-pointer keeping the score close at 50-49 Ennis. Six minutes into the quarter, the score was tied at 54 and play became frenzied with both teams becoming more physical.

The Big Horns put up consistent scores each quarter, but the Wolverines slowly drew ahead as they outscored the Big Horns each quarter.

Hammond and Saad sank a 3-pointer apiece to keep the Big Horns within two points of the Mustangs as they tried to pull ahead.

At the end of the first quarter, the Wolverines led 17-10.

Big Horn junior Ben Saad contributed a 3-point play, making his free throw after being fouled on a layup.

With mere seconds on the clock, the Big Horns called a timeout and Hannahs drew up a play for the Big Horns to make a bid to tie the game. As the seconds fell away, the Big Horns had a few unlucky breaks that cost them those vital points.

In the second quarter, the Big Horns drew even with the Wolverines after junior Pierce Farr tied the game at 23 with a layup and free throw. Though the Wolverines pulled ahead again, one second from halftime junior Max Romney, high scorer for the Big Horns with 19 points, sunk a free throw to bring the score up to 27-28 West ahead of the break.

Junior Ben Saad shoots a layup over a Mustang defender. PHOTO BY GABRIELLE GASSER

After the half, Lone Peak continued slipping behind, unable to catch up to the Wolverines. The Big Horns wrapped the third quarter trailing the Wolverines by 12 points.

Late in the fourth quarter Big Horn senior John Chadwell hit a shot, the last offensive contribution from the Big Horns as the Wolverines shut them down for the rest of the game.

The final score was 76-50 Wolverines.

LPHS Head Coach John Hannahs said recent games have not gone their way, but he is focusing on a positive attitude with his team.

“Right now, we are concentrating on the small victories and building off them while addressing some areas that are holding us back,” Hannahs wrote in an email to EBS. “We have hung with all of these teams, we just need to string that strong play together all game and limit lapses in offense and defense.”

The Big Horns played with heart for four hard quarters, but those last 20 seconds decided the game and the final score of 71-65 with the Mustangs on top.

“I think we played extremely well the whole game overall, we had our best offensive game of the season, but we didn’t play as well on defense as we usually do,” Hannahs wrote in an email to EBS. “We got some steals out of our pressure, but then forced passes and gave the ball right back. If our offensive momentum continues and we button up the defense I think we can get some district wins this final stretch of the season.”

On the evening of Saturday, Jan. 22, the Big Horns hit the road to play the Sheridan High School Panthers. The varsity boys team notched their first district win of the season with a final score of 47-38. The boys now have a 3-9 record for the season.

The Lady Big Horns also earned a W beating the Lady Panthers 53-31. Their record for the season is now 5-7.

Next up, the Big Horns again travel to play the Manhattan Christian High School Eagles on Thursday, Jan. 27 Joseph T. O’Connor contributed reporting to this story.

18 January 28 - February 10, 2022

ENVIRONMENT & OUTDOORS

Explore Big Sky

Humility in the mountains

Gaining avalanche knowledge for safe travel in the mountains

BY MIRA BRODY TOBACCO ROOT MOUNTAINS – The rhythmic sound of 10 sets of skins bounces off the limber pines as we glide along a narrow track of packed snow.

Under clear sunlight, pillowy powder is mounded across the imposing peaks of the Tobacco Root Mountains which welcome us into their embrace. We will eat, sleep and work in this wild landscape for three days of undistracted, immersive learning.

I am one of eight students accompanying two guides with Big Sky Backcountry Guides who are leading us up the 2.5-mile, 1,600-elevation gain skin to the Bell Lake Yurt to earn our Avalanche 1 certification.

For those who recreate during the winter in Montana’s many mountain ranges, avalanches are a very real threat. The 2020-21 winter season saw a recordmatching mortality rate, with 36 avalanche-caused deaths recorded in the U.S. Two occurred in Montana, one locally in Beehive Basin. Winter backcountry sports is a game of risk versus reward—the pull of those wide-open mountains of fresh powder you earn, weighed against the risk of losing a friend, or your own life.

A yurt permit has existed in the Tobacco Roots, a 43-peak range sandwiched between the Jefferson and Madison rivers, for around 40 years under various ownership. Drew Pogge, owner and lead guide of BSBG has skied the Tobacco Roots for years. He was a patron of the yurt while on assignment with Backcountry Magazine before he jokingly asked the previous owners if they were looking to sell.

Guides Nicolas Westfall and Shannon Regan demonstrate a fine search beacon rescue. PHOTO BY MIRA BRODY

What started as a joke turned into reality in 2008 when Pogge—who was teaching at Montana State University at the time and looking for a career change—was offered the sale. He saw an opportunity to bring the yurt to life, initiating cosmetic and functionality updates so it could be used as a classroom and comfortable place to enjoy the backcountry.

Now in its ninth season with Pogge and BSBG, the Bell Lake Yurt has been the hub through which many adventure-seekers have gained the knowledge necessary to stay educated and safe in the beautiful, treacherous mountain ranges of Montana.

“I’ve been avalanched a couple times in my career as a skier,” Pogge said. He’s a longtime member of the American Avalanche Association, a nonprofit devoted to avalanche safety education and outreach, and has taught avalanche courses for most of his life.

“Once I sort of figured it out and sought out education elsewhere, it opened my eyes to not only how dangerous the backcountry can be but also how easy it is to manage once you get the proper education,” Pogge said.

As we approach the yurt, our guides pause and point to a ridgeline jutting off from the prominent Long Mountain. The slope will be the site of our field education and we will later learn it’s between 34 and 45 degrees steep; prime avalanche terrain. One of the guides, Shannon Regan, explains there was a fatality here back in 2019 due to a persistent weak layer that slid, throwing two of the four men on a self-guided tour down the mountain, killing one and severely inuring the other.

When a long day of lessons are over, students take some time to relax with a round of games in the yurt.

PHOTO BY MIRA BRODY

According to our guides, the average amount of snow you’ll be shoveling to retrieve a buried partner after an avalanche is between one and two tons. The gravity of that statistic weighs on our minds during day two of our course.

We’re standing along the side of the mountain we’ve just skinned up in snow pits we’ve dug. The crest of each pit reaches the tops of even the tallest student’s head and wind gusts peak at around 45 mph. My fingers and toes are completely numb.

Inside our pits, we conduct a series of snow stability tests: identifying weak layers by poking the snow with our fingers, hand and fist; the compression test, a series of methodic arm taps atop a shovel to test the weight- and impact-bearing ability of the snowpack; and the extended column test, pulling an isolated snow column toward us to see where exactly it breaks free. All of these tests gather data about the characteristics of the snow and ultimately help determine our decision about whether or not the snowpack is safe to ski on.

While there are many courses that offer the same information, there’s nothing quite like being in the mountains while doing it. The two-mile-long skin up to our practice site raises the stakes and makes the rescue drills feel that much more real.

“As soon as you step out of the yurt, you’re in avy territory,” Pogge said. “It’s virtually impossible to show people how to travel in avy terrain if you’re not in avy terrain. You can’t approximate it in a parking lot or ski area. It’s about practicing traveling through it with guides who can explain the real questions you have as they come up.”

The North American Avalanche Danger Scale is a tool used by avalanche forecasters to communicate the potential for avalanches to cause harm or injury to backcountry travelers. GRAPHIC COURTESY OF AVALANCHE.ORG

Although he doesn’t think we’ll ever reach the point where no one dies in the backcountry, the good news, says Pogge, is that even with the explosive growth

19 January 28 - February 10, 2022

ENVIRONMENT & OUTDOORS

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in recreation since the 1990s, death statistics have remained relatively flat, “a huge win for avalanche education and safety,” Pogge says.

or mountains or myself … really the idea is to get better every day. These are perishable skills.”

Later that night we sit huddled around the yurt dinner table, warm mugs of tea and coffee cupped in our hands. Regan is in the kitchen prepping garlic bread for roasting while marinara sauce bubbles away in a large pot. After a long day on the mountain, the smell of fresh, homemade food is unparalled.

We clip into our bindings and take turns snaking our way through the fresh, untouched powder down to our meeting spot by the shore of the lake. The lessons we’ve learned—the meticulous pre-planning and decision-making and intricacies of snow science—are fresh in our minds as we take flight down the mountain, leaving the yurt one last time on our ski down to Petosi Campground where society awaits once more.

Our second guide, Nicolas Westfall, is at the head of the room with a whiteboard in his hand, teaching us about the human factor of avalanche risk. While snowpack and weather are all very important datapoints when mitigating risk in the backcountry, it is the decisions we make as humans that determine whether an outing turns deadly.

Pogge says a reoccurring theme with every avalanche report he studies in the U.S. is that for the most part, they are completely predictable based on snow pack and human decisions made beforehand. As humans, it’s our job to be informed and use our own judgment to recognize unstable conditions before they cause a fatality. According to Pogge, a lot of avalanche fatalities involve highly experienced people, and as we develop better, lighter, faster gear, our risk only increases.

five

There are red flags to watch for in the backcountry:

“Humility is one of the biggest things that keeps people in the mountains long term,” Pogge said. “That’s something I’ve definitely learned as the cocky 18-year-old moving to Bozeman thinking I’m going to be a badass in the mountains. The mountains are pretty good at smacking us down and reminding us of who is in charge.”

On our final day at the yurt, our class stands on a small level portion of the mountain called Picnic Bench with Upper Peanut Butter Bowl above us. The frozen Bell Lake glistens below and the sun threatens to peek through the otherwise overcast skies. We munch on sandwiches as we transition from uphill to downhill gear. A long morning of planning—mapping out our route, checking the weather and avalanche forecast, and packing the appropriate gear—preceded our arrival to Picnic Bench.

"Learning about avalanches is a lifelong endeavor,” Pogge said.

“Every time I go out, I learn something new about the snow

1. Recent avalanche activity 2. Cracking or whoomphing 3. Recent snow or rain accumulation (about 12 inches in 24 hours) 4. Rapid thawing 5. Wind loading

Beacon park opens in Big Sky

BY BELLA BUTLER

was a key consideration for the new beacon park. When choosing a location, Dreisbach said the team at CMS ruled out popular backcountry areas and instead opted for the community park which is “immediately centralized for everybody,” according to Dreisbach.

BIG SKY – Following the 2021-22 winter season that matched the national record for avalanche deaths in the U.S., community partners on Jan. 15 unveiled a newly established beacon park in Big Sky to provide local education and increase avalanche awareness and safety.

Funded by Big Sky-based contractor Cornerstone Management Services, the beacon park creates an opportunity for backcountry users to search for buried transceivers to hone their beacon skills so if the time comes to perform a rescue, they’re proficient with their gear. The park, currently made up of four buried transceivers, is located at the softball fields at the Big Sky Community Park and is free and open to the public.

Avalanche transceivers, or beacons, are worn during travel through the backcountry and are used to locate victims who are buried by avalanches. The survival rate for victims buried beneath an avalanche drops significantly after 15 minutes. As a partner performing a rescue, time is of the essence, and a life is at stake.

Executing each component of a rescue efficiently is critical, beginning with the beacon search.

On Jan. 15, participants in the BSCO Avalanche Awareness event watch a probe demonstration in the new Big Sky Beacon Park.

PHOTO BY JOSEPH T. O’CONNOR

The concept for the park originated in 2020 when then Lone Peak High School senior Laney Smith proposed the park to community funding partners. Since then, CMS has taken the seed planted by Smith and brought the $12,000 project to fruition.

Having performed many rescues as a search and rescue volunteer, Dreisbach said general backcountry knowledge is important, but practice is the tandem component, and an active avalanche search is “not really the time to practice.”

The other piece of this, according to Dreisbach, is understanding the difference between owning gear and knowing how to use it, a distinction many avalanche safety instructors open introductory courses with.

“In stressful situations, we as humans perform at the level of our training,” said Matt Zia with Friends of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center. “If we train to a really high level then we’re going to be ready to perform in those stressful situations of an avalanche rescue.”

Currently the only beacon park in Big Sky is located at the base of the Challenger lift at Big Sky Resort, which requires a lift ticket and the ability to ski a blue run to access. According to Andy Dreisbach, owner of CMS and a volunteer with Gallatin County Sheriff Search and Rescue Big Sky Section, broader access

The Big Sky Community Organization, which is lending the land for the park, hosted the park’s opening day on Jan. 15, which was attended by approximately 10 people and included demonstrations by GNFAC. BSCO Youth Program Manager Richard Sandza said the main goal of the event was to connect people to their resources and open the park to the community.

“Ownership does not warrant knowledge, if you will,” Dreisbach said. “Practice and purposeful practice give you the basis for that knowledge.”

The new Big Sky Beacon Park offers anyone the chance to practice avalanche rescue skills or learn new ones. PHOTO BY JOSEPH T. O’CONNOR

Joseph T. O’Connor and Gabrielle Gasser contributed reporting to this story.

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22 January 28 - February 10, 2022

ENVIRONMENT & OUTDOORS

Explore Big Sky

According to ecologist Pepper Trail, humans have unleashed the fire-predator with our choices such as greenhouse gas emissions and land management among others. PHOTO BY ALEKSANDR LESIK/ADOBE STOCK

A new predator stalks the West

BY PEPPER TRAIL

WRITERS ON THE RANGE

wildland fires everywhere, and ending the use of prescribed fire in forests as a management tool. This led to a huge build-up of flammable fuels.

The grizzly bear. The wolf. The cougar. These magnificent creatures, apex predators, how can we not admire them? People cross the world for the opportunity to see one in the wilds of Yellowstone or Alaska.

Second, industrial-scale logging eliminated over 90 percent of fire-resistant old-growth forests and replaced them with highly flammable tree plantations.

Finally, we vastly expanded our human footprint, building houses right where the fire-predator likes to roam, at the brink of forests and grasslands.

There, we view them from a distance, free to indulge our awe in safety. It has been a long time since Americans lived in fear of wild beasts.

Reconciling ourselves to the depredations of wildfire requires that we take the long view – the really long view. The fuel-choked forests resulting from our (mis)management need to burn, and they will burn. The best we can do is to preserve the old forests that remain and manage younger forests to increase their resilience to moderate-intensity fire. It could be a century or more before a new forestland equilibrium is reached, one with lower fuel loads, better adapted to the high fire-frequency climate we have created.

But now that fear has returned. Fear felt not just in the woods, but also in cities and towns: Paradise, California; Talent, Oregon; and now in suburban Superior and Louisville in Colorado’s Boulder County.

The dangerous predator we’re facing these days is wildfire, charging even out of grasslands to destroy our very homes. And no one is safe.

As an ecologist, I know that predators are essential to the health of wildlife communities, keeping prey populations in check. They’re also a driving force in evolution, favoring the faster or stronger or smarter animals able to escape their attacks. Of course, civilization long ago freed us from the evolutionary pressure exerted by predators. But that freedom has come at a cost.

When populations and ecosystems grow badly out of balance, there must come a correction. Humans and the environments we have created are not immune to this rule, and we must recognize that we have unleashed the fire-predator through our own choices.

What choices? On the global scale, we have released vast amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This was done at first in ignorance, but for at least the past 30 years, it truly was a choice made in the face of increasingly desperate warnings.

The resulting greenhouse effect has raised temperatures and decreased rain and snowpack throughout the West, contributing to “fire weather” like the hurricane-force winds that shockingly bore down on the suburbs of Denver in the dead of winter.

We also made land-management choices that strengthened the threat of fire.

First, we behaved as if we could banish fire from the landscape, suppressing all

Meanwhile, what about us? Colorado’s Marshall Fire proved that wildfire is the one predator we can’t eliminate. Far from any forest, this was pushed through tinder-dry grasslands by howling winter winds and burned more than 1,000 suburban homes in a matter of hours. So, like any prey species, we must adapt as best we can. As individuals, we can create defensible space around our homes.

We can get skilled at escaping wildfire by having evacuation plans ready.

As a society, we can adopt sensible policies to limit sprawling development in fire-prone areas. Recent events prove that these include not just remote forestlands, but even grasslands near suburbs. Faced with predators, animals try to get into the center of the herd. We need to do the same, avoiding exposure to the fire-predator at the vulnerable edge.

Finally, we can — we must — embark on an urgent global effort to end the burning of fossil fuels within the next few decades. If we do not, the West will face year-round fire weather, and a future at the mercy of fire.

Yet there is reason for hope: the uniquely human capacity for rapid social and cultural evolution. Let’s harness that strength, and work toward the day when fire is a predator no more, but our powerful partner in the stewardship of the land.

Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is an ecologist in Ashland, Oregon.

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24 January 28 - February 10, 2022

ENVIRONMENT & OUTDOORS

Explore Big Sky

Love thy neighbors

BY EMILY STIFLER WOLFE EBS CONTRIBUTOR

Thirteen stunning photographs of area wildlife grace the downhill-facing side of the new Swift Current 6 chairlift seatbacks. The chairback photos are the biggest display yet of the Forever Project, an initiative by Big Sky Resort’s parent company, Boyne Resorts, committing all of its 13 properties to sustainable business practices, including reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2030. Each of the three stories in this series focuses on one of the photographers—their work, their stories, and their passion for protecting the Greater Yellowstone.

Photographer Patty Bauchman has contributed images to conservation groups and now has work hanging in the BozemanYellowstone International Airport.

PHOTO COURTESY OF PATTY BAUCHMAN

Near the top of the whitebark pine tree, the black bear sow reached for a pine cone with her open mouth.

Grabbing it, she dropped it to the ground to eat later. Nearby, her cubs picked at the cones, learning to harvest the high-fat, high-protein nuts so important for survival.

This wouldn’t be an uncommon occurrence in the backcountry of Bauchman said she captured the image of this fox in Big Sky while it was hunting in an empty lot. PHOTO BY Yellowstone National Park. Except PATTY BAUCHMAN it wasn’t in the backcountry. The tree was next to a guardrail, and 20 feet below the sow, people watched, standing on Dunraven Pass Road, a high point on Yellowstone’s in an empty lot, and it wasn’t paying any attention to me, because I was in my car.

Grand Loop Road. Without a ranger present, the crowd continued growing.

I refer to it as my car blind. But then somebody else drove by and the fox stopped for that moment and looked my way. Foxes are quite prevalent here. A lot of people “It’s unusual for a mama bear to put her cubs so close to the road and stay when so enjoy having them around, and some may have fed them. Feeding wildlife is illegal many people approach so close,” said Big Sky-based wildlife photographer Patty in Montana, and it’s a big issue in Big Sky, especially bears.

Bauchman, who came upon the scene one fall day in 2016. Bauchman was horrified, but didn’t yet understand why the bears were willing to come so close to the road.

ESF: Why is that a problem?

PB: Fish, Wildlife & Parks will sometimes relocate a black bear that has been “Photography led me to find out more,” she said. captured in a neighborhood, and relocate it to more remote locations. But once a bear is habituated, they’ll euthanize it. This summer, we had multiple bears that What she learned was that whitebark pine are a “keystone species,” meaning many got into unsecured trash cans so many times that when the neighborhood called to animals and environmental functions depend on them and that the trees have been report it, they were euthanized instead of being relocated. devastated by mountain pine beetles, blister rust and climate change, and that mama bear was desperate for the whitebark’s fat-rich nuts.

ESF: But aren’t all trash cans bear-proof in Big Sky now?

Previously owner and operator of horse farms in North Carolina and Las Vegas, PB: Many, but not all. Often, it’s [people] who may not understand. They’ll have Bauchman has visited Big Sky since 1981, introduced to the area by her husband, scads of garbage, and the trash can lid won’t close, and that’s just an invitation John, whose father’s business installed the first power lines to the resort. When they to bears. retired here in 2010, Bauchman dove into photography.

ESF: Pikas are one of my favorite animals. Where did you take that photo?

Part of the International League of Conservation Photographers, Bauchman has PB: That was in the northern tier of Yellowstone. Pikas are another very important contributed images to conservation groups and now has work hanging in the critter in terms of climate change. They’re highly affected by warming temperatures, Bozeman-Yellowstone International Airport. and since they already live at higher elevation, they have nowhere to go for relief.

They’re like a canary in the coal mine.

“When you get into wildlife photography, you can’t help but care about their environment,” Bauchman said. “I want to use my images to build awareness and ESW: And the pine marten photo? help effect positive change.”

PB: A group of youngsters was having a ball jumping on each other and running around, snow flying. They’re pretty rare to see, so that was really fun to see. It was in Q&A WITH PATTY BAUCHMAN Yellowstone, and it’s the only one I’ve seen other than in my backyard.

Emily Stifler Wolfe: Tell me the story of that gorgeous fox image.

Patty Bauchman: The fox I love, because it was in Big Sky. I was watching it hunt

ESW: Why wildlife photography?

PB: I love living so close to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park, and then finding wildlife so prevalent in Big Sky, like the herds of elk in our neighborhood. I’ll be headed to Yellowstone before it’s even light, and as soon as I turn on Lone [Mountain] Trail, boom. I brake because there’s a big bull elk in the road. I think, ‘huh I’m going to Yellowstone to photograph the elk rut, and here it is right down the street.’

ESW: Have you seen any accidents?

PB: The elk often cross Lone [Mountain] Trail on the curves above Lone Mountain Ranch and below Antler Ridge. I see them hit there often. I wish there could be an underpass or overpass like they have in Canada.

ESW: How does this work influence and inspire you?

PB: It’s fun to connect with other like minded photographers and see what they do, conservation-wise. I always want to do more, see more, experience more, and help more.

Find more of Patty Bauchman’s work at patriciabauchmanphotography.com and on instagram @pbauchmanphotography. Read more about the Forever Project and the photographers involved in the Swift Current 6 chairlift chairbacks here.

Bauchman saw this pika in her viewfinder in the northern tier of Yellowstone. She emphasized the effect climate change has on the little critters saying they have nowhere to go to find relief. PHOTO BY PATTY BAUCHMAN

Emily Stifler Wolfe is a writer and business consultant based in Bozeman, Montana. Find her at emilystiflerwolfe.com.

This article originally appeared on Big Sky Resort’s blog: The Way I Ski It on December 6, 2021. For more stories, visit blog.bigskyresort.com.

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26 January 28 - February 10, 2022

ENVIRONMENT & OUTDOORS

Explore Big Sky

Strategy and tactics trump technique

BY DAN EGAN

Or how about glades? Rather than dropping right off the top and accelerating around a clump of trees, maybe there is a traverse to take into a small clearing. From there you can decide your line by looking for alleyways down the fall line that provide the best options and locations for stopping where needed.

EBS COLUMNIST

Many skiers are focused on their technique. They want to improve and firmly believe that if the technique is mastered, they can then tackle more difficult terrain. But these skiers are missing two key elements of the sport: strategy and tactics.

In all these examples the key is to provide yourself the best chance for success by easing your way onto a slope or run, shaking off any tension and developing a plan that works for you.

What do I mean by strategy and tactics? Well, to simplify the statement, what is your plan? When looking down a mogul field, glades, powder slope or chute I would argue an intermediate skier can enjoy these types of runs with a strong strategy and focused tactics on where to go and why to go there. In other words, having a purpose and moving in the direction of that purpose is more powerful than technique.

At my camps and clinics, I’ve been able to take skiers of all abilities into incredible terrain, incredible powder runs, through breath-taking scenery and often their technique is far from perfect. This is always accomplished through planning, having a strategy for where and how to enter a slope and having the tactics of building confidence in simple skills of traversing, stopping and safely changing direction.

One of the most important tactics I teach is having a starting and stopping point and breaking the mogul run, steep slope or glades into sections. It is important not to be overly aggressive on the distance you ski. Remember, if you feel comfortable making three or four good solid turns and stopping then do that. Most skiers get into trouble making too many turns and have no idea what a good stopping point is, mainly because they haven’t thought about it.

Extreme skiing pioneer Dan Egan skis through moguls demonstrating his advice to find a rhythmic line with rounder shaped moguls. PHOTO BY JEN BENNETT/ RUMBLE PRODUCTIONS

Let’s start at the top as it can often be the most intimidating. Rather than staring off the top thinking you must make perfect turns from the get-go, find a way in, stop, take a couple of deep breaths, look around and develop a plan for the next few turns.

If it’s a mogul trail, search out the side of the trail where there are likely to be more rhythmic lines and rounder shaped moguls, rather than the middle of the mogul trail which tends to be chaotic with choppy bumps and deep ruts. In this case the strategy would be don’t ski the middle of the trail.

Now consider dropping into a steep chute. Entering onto the slope tactically could determine the entire run. Often the lower entrance will avoid cornices, or maybe a rut that is formed. Or there might be an option of skiing along the ridge prior to dropping in and finding untracked snow then maybe a traverse into the middle of the chute and through the gut. Here the strategy would be finding the smoothest entrance, get to the middle of the chute and chill for a bit, then have a clear plan on how many turns you want to make and where you will stop.

By breaking the run into sections, you gain confidence in having a beginning and end to each section. Over time as you get comfortable on a certain run you can lengthen the distance you ski. It is always better to make four great turns, stop and continue than to blow the fifth turn, lose your balance and fall on the sixth one.

Now consider the most important strategy of all: imperfection. Even the best of skiers can’t make 100 percent perfect turns. I once asked a World Cup racer after they won a race how many perfect turns they made that day. They answered, “maybe 50 percent.” Imagine if one of the best skiers in the world won a World Cup race with 50 percent perfect turns, us mere mortals are having the run of our lives if we are making 20 percent to 30 percent perfect turns.

In other words, lighten up on yourself. If you make a bad turn, don’t let it contaminate the next good one. By adopting the strategy of imperfection and being less critical of your technique over time you might start to enjoy the journey.

Extreme Skiing Pioneer, Dan Egan coaches and teaches at Big Sky Resort during the winter. His 2022 steeps camps at Big Sky Resort run Feb. 24-26, March 10-12 and March 17-19. His newest book, “Thirty Years in a White Haze” was released in March 2021 and is available at www.White-Haze.com.

Egan skis a steep chute off the Headwaters ridge at Big Sky Resort. PHOTO BY JEN BENNETT/RUMBLE PRODUCTIONS

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28 January 28 - February 10, 2022

ENVIRONMENT & OUTDOORS

Explore Big Sky

Gallatin Canyon book brings timely appreciation for busy corridor

BY TODD WILKINSON EBS COLUMNIST

In a region known for its scenic drives through the mountains, this one, too, ranks right up there, wending literally along the banks of a blue-ribbon trout stream, connecting the fastest growing micropolitan area in America to a quainter western entrance to Yellowstone National Park.

Two-lane U.S. Highway 191 is a marvel of engineering that’s about to get a major upgrade and yet, paradoxically, the more conducive it becomes to carrying higher loads of traffic, the poorer it bodes for the wild sense of nature through which it circuits.

Nothing transforms wild places more, eminent conservation biologist Reed Noss has said, than a road built into previously little-developed landscapes.

Indeed, the bulging presence of Big Sky, which is steadily displacing one of the last great concentrations of large mammals in the Lower 48, would not exist were it not for U.S. Highway 191.

Ranked among the most dangerous roads in Montana, with white cross markers adorning its asphalt, and every year notching grim statistics related to roadkilled elk, deer, bighorn sheep, bears and even wandering pets, Highway 191 has a notorious reputation, especially during icy winters.

And yet this stretch, which brazen semi drivers use as a shortcut for hauling freight, also has a storied history, one recounted with brilliant and inspiring detail by Gallatin Canyon resident Duncan T. Patten. Patten’s book, “The Gallatin Way to Yellowstone” has been sitting on my desk for a while, becoming dog-eared and marked up with highlighted passages from its pages.

Long before Highway 191 became the hair-raising experience it can be, parts of it were old trails for indigenous people moving to and from the mountains we know today as the Gallatins and the interior of what became Yellowstone.

Subsequently, after Yellowstone was founded 150 years ago in 1872, it was given the poetic sounding moniker, “The Gallatin Way” and it became the focus of continuous upgrades.

First it was turned into a muddy pathway for stagecoaches, advocated by the Bozeman Chamber of Commerce, to give tourists a shortcut to the back west door of the world’s first national park and its geyser fields. Then it provided access for dude ranches, livestock growers, prospectors and timber people. Over time, it became an economic lifeline, of sorts, and then, following the birth of Big Sky, a road underbuilt for the high volume of traffic it holds—levels that today resemble the bumper-to-bumper commuter traffic of any urban suburb.

Unfortunately, state and federal highway engineers who now want to straighten, widen and expand the footprint of U.S. Highway 191 also stand accused of being callous, or at best indifferent, to the added negative impacts of their work.

One passage struck me in the early pages of Patten’s book: “Long-term residents of the canyon and locations farther south often viewed Big Sky as a blemish on the beauty of the canyon, while others now see it as an integral part of today’s canyon and the Gallatin Way,” Patten writes. “Change is normal—everything changes over time; thus, how the canyon and the Gallatin Way have changed is a lesson to recognize that we ‘cannot burn back the clock.’”

Lest anyone mistake Patten’s intention, he is not a booster for the kind of development that continues to erupt largely unchecked in the Gallatin Canyon, nor is he condoning the thoughtless forms of commerce that continue to exact a toll. He is imploring all of us to pay better attention, to appreciate the canyon not as a Colorado-like thoroughfare leading to a major resort, but heed that this road actually passes through the northwestern corner of Yellowstone National Park.

As I often do, let’s highlight the significance of this: Yellowstone and the Gallatin Range hold all of the major mammals that were on the landscape prior to the arrival of Europeans on the continent. Patten wants travelers to take stock of this as they motor through the canyon—slowing down, being more attentive and knowledgeable, soaking in that amazing fact.

Patten is not only a fine writer; he’s an astute ecological thinker, counted among the best in the West. Wielding a specialty in hydro-ecology, he’s known for examining how river ecosystems—the most biologically rich parts of landscapes—function. During his career, he’s been involved with a number of different studies on Greater Yellowstone issues undertaken by the prestigious National Academies of Sciences.

Most of all, Patten, his wife, Eva, and their family have been denizens of the Gallatin Canyon, owning a historic ranch themselves and their care for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has turned them into avid conservationists.

It’s fair to say that likely the majority of people, who cumulatively log millions of miles passing through the Gallatin Canyon every year, are unfamiliar with the history of how the road beneath their tires came to be. Patten’s book and its trove of imagery provides a fascinating remedy for their lack of awareness and ought to be required reading for all public land managers, realtors, developers, and anyone headed to ski, hike, hunt, fish, ride mountain bike or horseback, or even race between Bozeman and West Yellowstone.

“The Gallatin Way to Yellowstone” invites us to ponder how we can secure more respectful treatment of nature by pondering the past and should be on every bookshelf.

Author Duncan T. Patten and his book, which is both a fine tribute to the history and beauty of the Gallatin Canyon and a reminder that all human decisions have consequences, some that can never be erased. PHOTO BY TODD WILKINSON

Todd Wilkinson is the founder of Bozemanbased Mountain Journal and a correspondent for National Geographic. He authored the book “Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek,” featuring photography by famed wildlife photographer Thomas D. Mangelsen, about Grizzly Bear 399.

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31 January 28 - February 10, 2022

HEALTH

Explore Big Sky

Recharging after illness

BY DR. KALEY BURNS EBS COLUMNIST

Whether you’re tired from viral recovery, caregiving, working extra shifts, or mentally and emotionally exhausted with the pandemic, we’ve all been "infected" in one way or another in these last few years. Beyond this, we are expected to continue functioning at home and at work, exercising, and perhaps tending to others’ needs as well. However, more and more of us are feeling suboptimal and it’s taking a toll on our overall health.

How can we support our health as we move forward?

The good news is that there are lifestyle techniques and holistic methods that have been found to support a healthy immune and inflammatory response.

The following suggestions can be adopted to support your recovery and general health. *Always make sure to speak with your healthcare provider before making any changes.

First and foremost: Rest.

Rest your body, your mind, your eyes, your soul. During rest the body is able to repair and rejuvenate. Unfortunately, sleep patterns can be disturbed after a viral infection. If you are struggling with sleep, aim to go to bed at the same time each night in a dark, temperature-controlled environment and allow for at least eight hours. Another option for healthy sleep promotion is a warm bath with magnesium salts and lavender oil. You may also find that your body needs a daytime nap. Try to nap at the same time each day and for just an hour or two, so it does not impact your nighttime rest.

Secondly: Nourish.

The goal is to model your intake as an anti-inflammatory diet. This means to include an abundance of fresh vegetables and low-sugar fruits; healthy fats in fish, nuts and avocados; wholegrains such as steel cut oats, quinoa, millet and sprouted grain breads; and organic grass-fed meats for protein. At the same

time, try to reduce fried foods, grain-fed meats, sugary drinks and treats, alcohol and highly processed foods. Utilizing food as medicine to reduce inflammation, improve gastrointestinal health, rebalance the microbiome and support the immune system enables the remaining therapeutics to be more effective.

Thirdly: Build.

Glutathione is the body’s most powerful antioxidant and protects from damage caused by infections. It also plays an important role in decreasing inflammation and facilitating proper detoxification. Foods naturally high in glutathione include avocados, spinach and okra.

I often recommend liposomal glutathione for the best oral bioavailability.

However, my preferred method is providing glutathione via IV therapy to ensure direct delivery into the bloodstream.

Vitamin D has been shown to have powerful immune-supporting properties associated with reduced progression, severity and duration of illness. Symptoms of post-viral syndrome resolve more efficiently by optimizing vitamin D levels.

Finally: Collaborate.

You are not alone on your health journey. Whether you are building back from illness or optimizing overall health, regular and proactive connection to your multidisciplinary care team will ensure your needs are best being met throughout your recovery. The providers at Big Sky Natural Health combine holistic family medicine, nutrient IV therapy and traditional Chinese acupuncture for whole-person care and recovery.

Hydration, movement and managing stress have powerful reaches for preventing and supporting recovery from any illness. Remember to focus on the basics, build when necessary and recruit your care team for further support.

Dr. Kaley Burns is the founder, owner and Naturopathic Doctor at Big Sky Natural Health. She embraces a natural approach to health and aims to similarly inspire and guide others on their health journey. Dr. Burns has advanced training application of regenerative and intravenous injection therapy. She also serves as the Vice President and CE Liaison of the Montana Association of Naturopathic Physicians.

An acupuncturist works on a patient at Big Sky Natural Health while receiving IV therapy. PHOTO COURTESY OF KALEY BURNS

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BUSINESS

33 January 28 - February 10, 2022

Explore Big Sky

SECTION 3: BUSINESS, ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT, DINING AND FUN

Best of the West Skijoring Competition pg. 36

A drink to pair with a lifestyle pg. 40

Report: Maverick Mountain owners find reality in a skier’s dream pg. 46

Making it in Big Sky: Natural Retreats

BY MIRA BRODY BIG SKY – While Big Sky as a full time community is growing, the area sees around a million visitors a year. Serving these visitors are businesses like Natural Retreats, who provide high-end luxury rental homes so those visiting can be at ease during their stay.

Natural Retreats also provides transportation and touring outfitter services so guests can gain the full Big Sky experience.

managers, owner services and guest service to a team of ten, increasing staffing levels in every area of our operations. We also partner with several long-time local vendors for specialized services, and we consider these key partners an extension of our team.

I am proud of not only the performance we have provided our homeowners, but more importantly the fact the we are able to offer more local Big Sky residents well-paying fulltime careers with industry leading benefits.

EBS: Tell me about the different services offered at Natural Retreats?

T.D.: Natural Retreats is a full-service luxury vacation rental management company.

Explore Big Sky spoke with Natural Retreats’ Regional Manager of Business We provide a full scope of property management services and vacation rental Development, Tim Drain. Drain says Natural Retreats’ focus is on quality service for renters and homeowners, and stresses that they are selective about the properties in their representation to the homeowner partners in our portfolio. We take the stress out of portfolio. Natural Retreats favors properties that would not be well-suited for long-term owning a vacation rental home by handling all of the maintenance, housekeeping, vendor relationships, bookings and guest service so our homeowners can focus on housing so as not to add to the housing market challenges for locals in Big Sky—a their lives back home while generating income and balance of brand standards and community needs. [enjoying] spending their vacations at their homes here in Big Sky. I am proud of not only the performance we This series is part of a paid partnership with the Big Sky Chamber of Commerce. The following answers have been edited for brevity.

Explore Big Sky: I’d like to start with a little background information on you, when did you come to Big Sky? Tim Drain: My wife Kristin and I moved here in the fall of 2010 from northwest Washington and have lived and worked in Big Sky ever since. Kristin had spent the ten years prior in the San Juan Islands where we met while I was splitting my seasons between Mt. Baker in the winters and the San Juans in the summers. We planned initially to spend the winter in Big Sky and return to the San Juans for the summer but then seasonal work led to year-round work for both of us and after spending the first summer of life and the first in many years of Kristin’s life away from the ocean, we were hooked and we never looked back.

EBS: Tell me about the history of Natural Retreats. When did it first open? What is your role there?

T.D.: Natural Retreats opened its doors in Big Sky late in 2015 with the acquisition of Vacation Big Sky. I was the General Manager from shortly after that time until the summer of 2021. At that time I moved into a new role as the Regional Manager of Business Development for the Big Sky market.

“

have provided our homeowners, but more importantly the fact the we are able to offer more local Big Sky residents well-paying fulltime careers with industry leading benefits.

”

-Tim Drain, Regional Manager of Business Development, Natural Retreats

We also operate a transportation business and Yellowstone touring outfitter. Shuttle To Big Sky provides private and shared airport transfers between Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport and Big Sky as well as local transportation services ranging from shuttles between our visitors’ accommodations and their favorite restaurants to private event charters.

Yellowstone Luxury tours provides private, custom day tours of Yellowstone National Park for visitors staying in Big Sky, Bozeman, West Yellowstone and Paradise Valley.

EBS: What is the best part of working at Natural Retreats?

T.D.: There are a lot of benefits to working at Natural Retreats. One of my favorites is what we call “NR Days,” which is an additional five paid vacation days on top of our PTO plus a lodging stipend for any of our destinations across the county. On top of the benefits, we have a great team of passionate hospitality and property management professionals, all of which have their own love for the endless adventures Big Sky provides.

Tim Drain is the regional manager of business development at Natural Retreats in Big Sky. PHOTO COURTESY OF TIM DRAIN

EBS: How has Natural Retreats grown over the years?

T.D.: Natural Retreats has grown in many ways since 2015. We have grown locally in Big Sky both in terms of business levels and our team. Over the past six years we have grown and refined our portfolio to focus on the highest-end luxury homes here in Big Sky. We have proven with our team of local property managers and access to well-qualified luxury travelers that we are the experts in managing luxury vacation rental homes ranging from ski-in/ski-out condos to one-of-a-kind custom homes.

EBS: How big is your team?

T.D.: In the six years Natural Retreats has been operating in Big Sky we have doubled our local on-site team from five fulltime year-round employees including property

EBS: What is the best business advice you have ever received?

T.D.: It all comes down to work ethic and doing what you enjoy. Do what you love, work where you want to spend your time and don’t take anything for granted. Success—for you and your customers—will follow in due time if you put in an honest day’s work every day and feel good about putting your signature on your work.

EBS: Anything else you would like to add that the Big Sky community should know?

T.D.: I consider myself very lucky to not only live in one of the most special places on earth, but also to be a part of the evolution of Big Sky both as a destination and as a community. I’m proud that Natural Retreats invests in the communities where we operate, from providing well-paying careers to supporting local community events and initiatives.

34 January 28 - February 10, 2022

BUSINESS

Clockwise from top left: Jeff Knaub, circa 1991; Lone Peak on a bluebird day; Bruce, Carolyn, Tyler and Taylor Erickson on a Big Sky family ski day; Claude Erickson with friends; Tyler Erickson; Kristi Knaub Borge Big Horn Downhill; Bruce Erickson. PHOTOS FROM KNAUB AND ERICKSON FAMILY COLLECTIONS SPECIAL ADVERTISEMENT

This Pivotal

Moment

CELEBRATING THE JOY OF WINTER IN BIG SK Y Youth ski racing has been part of the fabric in Big Sky since the 1970s, when strict Austrian ski instructors—some of them former World Cup racers—coached local kids, many competing in weekend NASTAR races below the Explorer Lift.

“T

here was a headwall between the outrun of Mr. K and Lone Wolf, which was called NASTAR Knob,” said Jerry Pape, Jr., a participant at the time.

Those instructors demanded perfect execution, Pape said, requiring kids to stop if they made even a small mistake and hike back to the top of the course.

“It got to the point where if I was skiing down Mr. K recreationally and I made a bad turn, I would stop, take my skis off, hike back up to the top of the headwall, and do it again.”

Then in the 1980s, ski instructor Sarah Doyle convinced ski school director Robert Kirchschlager to start a separate team.

“Sarah pestered Robert long enough that he said, ‘OK, give it a try. But you have to do it all,’” said Hans Schernthaner, who succeeded Kirchschlager.

At the time, Big Sky was a small, remote place with only a handful of kids around. Still, there was enough interest that Doyle rallied parents to buy the equipment that the ski school couldn’t supply—gates, a drill, bibs and team hats. The Mad Wolf Ski Team was born.

As the team grew, the resort hired Red Lodge native and hotshot coach Scott Zahn as a ski instructor and part time ski coach. Soon, they were traveling to races around Montana, and in 1993, Zahn and a group of volunteers incorporated the nonprofit Big Sky Ski Education Foundation.

Grassroots as it was, the team’s inception was a cultural milestone for Big Sky. It was the start of a program that’s

since had upwards of 1,500 participants, some of whom have gone on to race for the U.S. Ski Team.

Today is another defining moment. Thanks to the hard work of many, Big Sky has key community and economic structures including the high school, hospital, arts center, hotels and the new community center. Now we’re celebrating our first ever winter carnival, Big Sky Winter Fest. This is a stake in the ground that establishes us among the ranks of legendary ski communities like Steamboat, Whitefish and Stowe. And with impeccable style and incredible heart, the event will donate proceeds to our local nonprofit ski team, BSSEF. At American Bank, we couldn’t be prouder. Our founding family, the Ericksons, have been skiing Big Sky Resort since it opened in 1973, and we’ve had a branch in Big Sky since 1999. Our logo has graced every team jacket since the original Spyder coats of the late ‘80s, and we’re thrilled to continue supporting BSSEF’s more than 250 kids today.

For us, 2022 is also a defining moment: 75 years since our founding in Livingston in 1947. Today, we’re as committed as ever to our role as a foundational support structure for our communities and a key partner for our customers, ultimately in support of a healthy economy.

In Big Sky, that means celebrating the transformative power of skiing and the pure joy of winter.

See you at Winter Fest.

Explore Big Sky

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

35 January 28 - February 10, 2022

Explore Big Sky

Absolute Zero Ice Design brings ice carving talents to Big Sky Winter Fest

BY TUCKER HARRIS

It has really gone hand-in-hand and made things a lot easier.

BUTTE ­— Corey Gransbery began his ice carving career 13 years ago in his hometown of Butte at the local Ice Carving Contest with a one-inch chisel from the hardware store and the process of trial and error.

Now, he and his wife, Lisa, travel to give ice carving demonstrations and deliver beautiful sculptures throughout Montana for events through their company Absolute Zero Ice Design.

An artist in many respects, Gransbery works full-time as a graphic designer and video editor, which he attributes much of his ice-carving success to. He and Lisa enjoy teaching carving demonstrations and showing people that they could be surprised by what they can do with a 300-pound block of ice—you don’t have to be a professional sculptor to create something beautiful, he says.

Once it’s all done, I kind of clean it up, get all the snow—a lot of the tools will create a lot of snow. And then you kind of hit it with a blowtorch, and it really clears out the ice…and see how it looks. I try not to nitpick too much. Sometimes, I get so into the art that I am trying to make it perfect, but you know, it’s really so fragile that it’s never going to be perfect. You learn over time that it’s just one of those things you have to think on the fly and adapt and overcome.

EBS: What is the greatest challenge with ice carving?

Corey Gransbery and his wife, Lisa Gransbery, pose next to a picture frame ice sculpture they carved in Missoula. PHOTO COURTESY OF COREY GRANSBERY.

The Gransberys will be joining Outlaw Partners, publisher of Explore Big Sky, at the 2022 inaugural Winter Fest for a free ice carving demonstration outside of the Wilson Hotel in Town Center Plaza on Friday, Feb. 4 at 4 p.m. There, they will demonstrate their techniques and answer questions from passersby.

On Saturday, Feb. 5, the professional ice sculptors will spend the day judging the Winter Fest Ice Carving competition, where four carvers will show off their talents to Big Sky residents and visitors alike.

EBS spoke to Corey before the event to learn more about his ice carving background and the work that goes into each of his works.

Some answers below have been edited for brevity.

C.G.: For me the greatest challenge with ice carving is the delivery. You finally finish a piece and it looks great but now you have to move it to a location. Anything can happen in transport if you’re not careful so that is really stressful. During a demo the greatest challenge is probably the weather. Being able to freeze multiple blocks together requires the right temperature.

EBS: What are you most looking forward to at the Winter Fest event?

C.G.: We are scheduled to carve an ice “Freeze Frame” selfie station in advance. We’ll set that up first thing when we get there so that people who are walking around can already start to enjoy it.

We are really looking forward to doing the demo, because…we are going bigger than they wanted… When I get an artistic idea, I’m just gonna do that and I want to try to impress too right… So I’m super excited. We are going to do two fish swimming around…But it’s gonna be out of five blocks of ice. So yeah, like 1,500 pounds of ice.

We have four people locked in to carve that have done stuff in Butte contests and Bozeman contests, and they’re [going] to do really well. So I’m excited to see what they complete [on Saturday].

Explore Big Sky: How did you first get into ice carving?

Corey Gransbery: I’m into art, I love…and work in different types of medias so it was just one more thing to try. I really fell in love with it because you’re able to complete a sculpture in like six hours with a hand tool. You actually sculpt something out of a block and get a result a lot quicker than you would, say, with wood or marble or something like that.

And then the ice bar is going to be a fun one too because we’re going to be doing it outside there in that same area. We are excited to see people utilize it and have fun with the built in drink luges. I know 406 Agave is sponsoring it and their logo works perfect for the way we do logos in ice. So I’m stoked to see how that comes out.

EBS: What is the process and what are the tools needed for ice carving?

C.G.: You could start with a one-inch chisel from a hardware store. My process now and the tools I use now though, I’ve used a lot of power tools over the years. After winning a couple of those contests, and people would ask me to do a [sculpture for a] wedding, I’d invest that money into a power tool—whether it was an electric chainsaw, or a die grinder or a new bit for a die grinder—that would speed up the process, help me be more efficient.

So my process: You start with the block of ice produced by Andy Nye and The Ice House which has locations in both Bozeman and Twin Bridges. The average carving block is 40 inches by 20 inches and then about 8-10 inches deep. So I usually come up with a design on the computer that I’m going to do or talk to a client, see what they want… get approval on the design, and then I start laying it out.

I really like to utilize all the ice I can out of a block and try to figure out ‘okay, if we take this piece out, it can go here to really make the designs that I have come up with happen.’

I start out with a layout and then I can either print it out onto a paper and then spray the paper with water laid on the block and it freezes to it. And then I go around all the lines and kind of rough edge in the design, and then start taking away the negative space or blocking it out. I also have an alcohol marker that can draw right on the ice. Sometimes I lay it out that way as well. Having a graphic design background helps…

Corey gives an ice carving demonstration at the Butte Christmas Stroll. PHOTO BY SAMUEL GONZALES

36 January 28 - February 10, 2022

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Explore Big Sky

Colin Cook returns to Best of the West Skijoring Competition

Outlaw Partners and Big Sky Skijoring bring thrill to Big Sky

BY TUCKER HARRIS BIG SKY — Colin Cook told himself he was done with skijoring for good in 2019.

Cook was the national champion, cashing in over $30,000 in checks in just two months. But after seeing one of his friends and fellow competitors get badly injured at the skijoring championship held in Red Lodge, he decided he wanted to keep his body healthy and intact before heading into hunting and fishing seasons.

Skijoring, derived from the Norwegian word skikjøring, meaning "ski driving," is the competitive sport of being pulled on skis by a horse through a course filled with jumps. The fastest trio wins.

Cook took a brief hiatus from skijoring in 2020 instead trying out gelande— think high-stakes Nordic ski jumping—in Missoula. However, he quickly realized skijoring was not as dangerous as he thought. In his first gelande competition, Cook jumped 183 feet, but crashed, injuring his shoulder and knocking himself out.

“The whole idea of not wanting to skijor anymore because it was too dangerous was out the window after that,” Cook said.

Cook has returned to the adrenaline rush of skijoring this 2021-22 season and will be competing at Big Sky Skijoring’s Best of the West Competition on Feb. 5 and 6 as part of Big Sky Winter Fest hosted by Outlaw Partners, publisher of Explore Big Sky. Cook, now 32, grew up ski racing with his older brother in Missoula though he said this eventually led to burnout.

“It took five to six years until I actually enjoyed skiing again,” Cook admitted.

When he’s not traveling to skijoring competitions, Cook lives in Bozeman and is in the midst of starting his own excavation business, Cook Civil Contracting.

Cook originally decided he wanted to give the fast-paced sport of skijoring a try at age 25 after seeing his brother take up the sport.

“I caught wind of it and tried it,” said Cook “And that was that; the rest is history.”

Since beginning his skijoring career, Cook has claimed two national titles: once in 2017 and again in 2019. He has competed in, organized and helped design courses for numerous skijoring events across the country. When it comes to course design, Cook is always ready to step up.

“I generally give my input on every one of [the courses],” Cook said. “I set the gates and design the course wherever it’s needed.”

Cook will help design the course in Big Sky and has been asked to design the skijoring course in West Yellowstone as well for this season. The two main factors that go into building and designing a course, according to Cook, are snow for the jumps and the safety of the footing for the horse.

Colin Cook gets air at the Skijor USA San Juan Skijoring event in Ridgeway, Colorado in Jan. 2022.

PHOTO BY DENISE E. JONES

WINTER FEST SCHEDULE FEBRUARY 3-6

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3 5 pm | Viking XC Ski Race | Big Sky Resort Nordic Center SPACE STILL AVAILABLE!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4 3 pm | Frozen Foot Obstacle Course | BASE Community Center NO REGISTRATION NECESSARY, JUST SHOW UP!

4 pm | Ice Sculpting Demonstration | Town Center Plaza FREE EVENT, STOP ON BY!

6 - 7:30 pm | Retro Movie Night | The Independent SOLD OUT

7 - 9 pm | Silent Disco | Town Center Plaza FREE FAMILY-FRIENDLY EVENT, SWING BY!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5 9 am - 4 pm | Winter Fest Ice Sculpting Competition | Town Center Plaza FREE EVENT, STOP ON BY!

12 pm - 4 pm | Best of the West Skijoring Competition | Town Center TICKETS AVAILABLE ONLINE AND WALK-UP DAY OF EVENT

6 pm | Skijoring Calcutta, 406 Agave Ice Bar | Tips Up NO TICKETS NEEDED, STOP BY!

7 pm - 9 pm | Winter Street Dance | Town Center Plaza FREE EVENT!

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 6 11 am - 4 pm | Best of the West Skijoring Championship | Town Center TICKETS AVAILABLE ONLINE AND WALK-UP DAY OF EVENT

5 pm | Closing Ceremony and Awards | Town Center Plaza FREE EVENT, COME CELEBRATE WITH US!

37 January 28 - February 10, 2022

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Explore Big Sky

“It’s extremely important that the horses’ footing is as perfect as it possibly can be to make sure they’re safe,” Cook said. “And that’s more important than the skier course.”

Cook helped put on the first Best of the West Skijoring event in Big Sky in 2018 with the passionate and determined help of Justa Adams; Richard Weber, one of Cook’s go-to riders; and skijoring competitor, Tyler Smedsrud. In just four short weeks, the team miraculously put together the first Big Sky Skijoring event, with the tremendous help of the Big Sky community including numerous donors and the Simkins family and Erik Morrison, Big Sky Town Center’s events manager, helping find the right location in Town Center.

“There has never been a sport or anything in my life that I’ve watched that has made my heart pound like skijoring—ever,” Adams said. “It gives me goosebumps, it absolutely fills my soul…I’m so proud to have been here from the start and to have brought it to Big Sky.” Big Sky Skijoring has continued to be a proven success in its skijoring events over the past few years growing to 130 teams competing at the 2020 Best of the West Competition—the second largest event in the country that year. This year, $15,000 has been added into the winners’ pot that goes directly to the competitors.

Cook skijors for the thrill. Pulled behind racehorses moving 35-45 mph there is no wonder he returned to the speed and the risk of skijoring.

Claudia Schmidt pulls Cook through the 2019 Best of the West Skijoring Competition in Big Sky. PHOTO BY SORCHA MATISSE

But for Cook, it’s more than just the thrill; it’s the people.

“It’s so eye-opening to everyone, the outsiders, to see how close knit everybody is,” Cook said. “We will bend over backwards for each other to make sure everyone’s safe.”

Cook just completed another successful skijoring event in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, raking in more than $19,000, and he’s ready to continue this success closer to home in Big Sky. Watch Cook compete in the heart of Big Sky at the Best of the West Competition Feb. 5 and 6.

When it comes down to it, the sport is about the skijoring family, he said.

Visit outlaw.partners/winterfest for more information and to purchase tickets.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

38 January 28 - February 10, 2022

Explore Big Sky

BIG SKY EVENTS CALENDAR Friday, Jan. 28 – Thursday, Feb. 10

If your event falls between Feb. 11 and Feb. 24 please submit it by Feb. 2 by emailing media@outlaw.partners

Friday, Jan. 28

Film: “50 First Dates”

Live Music: Cole Thorne

Live Music: The Damn Duo

Monday, Feb. 7

The Independent, 8 p.m.

Friday, Feb. 4

The Independent, 7 p.m.

Live Music: South of Wisdom

Len Hill Park, 3 p.m.

Tuesday, Feb. 8

Winter Fest: Ice Sculpture demonstration

The Independent, 7 p.m.

Big Sky Ideas Festival: Live Music with Bruce Anfinson and Monique Benabou The Independent, 6 p.m.

The Independent, 7 p.m.

Tips Up, 9 p.m.

Jazz Night: Craig Hall Trio

Winter Fest: Frozen Foot Obstacle Course

Tips Up, 9 p.m.

Saturday, Jan. 29

Big Sky Town Center Plaza, 4 p.m.

TEDxBigSky

Warren Miller Performing Arts Center, 5 p.m.

Live Music: Brian Stumpf

Big Sky Serenity Seekers Al-Anon meeting All Saints Chapel, 4 p.m.

Winter Fest: Retro Ski Movie Night

The Independent, 8 p.m.

The Independent, 5 p.m.

Live Music: Austin English & Josh Langston Tips Up, 9 p.m.

TEDxBigSky

Live Music: Moonlight Moonlight Tips Up, 9 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 5

Film: “The Long Strange Trip”

Winter Fest: Best of the West Skijoring

The Independent, 7 p.m.

Big Sky Town Center, 12 p.m.

Tuesday, Feb. 1

Winter Fest: Ice Sculpture demonstration Big Sky Town Center Plaza, 9 a.m.

The Independent, 7 p.m.

Winter Fest: Community Street Dance featuring Forester

Wednesday Feb. 2

Big Sky Town Center Plaza, 7 p.m.

Trivia Night

The Independent, 7 p.m.

Live Music: Chris Cunningham and Jim Averitt The Independent, 8 p.m.

Live Music: Kent Johnson Tips Up, 9 p.m.

Live Music: Take a Chance with Jenn & Juice

Thursday, Feb. 3

Tips Up, 9 p.m.

Big Sky Serenity Seekers Al-Anon meeting

Sunday, Feb. 6

All Saints Chapel, 4 p.m.

Winter Fest: Viking Race

Tips Up, 9 p.m.

Wednesday, Feb. 9 Trivia Night

The Independent, 7 p.m.

Thursday, Feb. 10

Monday, Jan. 31

Film: “Torn”

Open Mic Night

Jazz Night: Craig Hall Trio The Independent, 8 p.m.

Peets Hill/Burke Park, 6:45 p.m.

Film: “Miracle on Ice”

Live Music: Daniel Kosel

Warren Miller Performing Arts Center, 5 p.m.

Monday Night Ruck

Film: “Beats, Rhymes & life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest”

Winter Fest: Silent Disco

Big Sky Town Center Plaza, 7 p.m.

Sunday, Jan. 30

The Standard, 7 p.m.

Tips Up, 9 p.m.

Big Sky Serenity Seekers Al-Anon meeting All Saints Chapel, 4 p.m.

Film: “When Harry Met Sally” The Independent, 7 p.m.

Live Music: The Damn Duo Tips Up, 9 p.m.

Featured Event: Big Sky Winter Fest, Feb. 3-6 Outlaw Partners is hosting the inaugural Big Sky Winter Fest. With four days of family-friendly winter celebrations, events will include nordic ski races, an obstacle course, skijoring, ice sculpture carving, live music, a retro movie night and silent disco, and a street dance all in the heart of Big Sky, Montana. Big Sky Winter Fest will raise funds to benefit the Big Sky Ski Education Foundation. Visit outlaw.partners/winterfest for more information.

Winter Fest: Best of the West Skijoring Big Sky Town Center, 11 a.m.

Big Sky Nordic Center, 5 p.m.

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DINING

39 January 28 - February 10, 2022

Explore Big Sky

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

BY TUCKER HARRIS

Method: 1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

I always feel guilty about letting overripe bananas go to waste. Fortunately, they’re the perfect ingredient to make delicious banana bread, to add to a smoothie or my personal favorite: making banana chocolate chip muffins. This recipe is quick and simple and will create the perfect grab-and-go breakfast before hitting the slopes or a much-needed treat to get you through an afternoon slump.

These muffins are not too sweet, stay moist and will last you all week or up to three months in the freezer.

Ingredients: • 4 ripe bananas • 1/3 cup melted butter cooled • 2/3 cup sugar • 1 egg • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract • 1 teaspoon baking soda • 1 pinch of salt • 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour • 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

2. Grease muffin tins or fill with muffin liners.

3. Peel bananas and add them into a big bowl with the melted butter.

4. Mash the butter and bananas together with a fork, blending until smooth.

5. Add sugar, egg and vanilla extract and mix until combined.

6. Stir in salt and baking soda.

7. Add flour and chocolate chips, mix until combined, but not overdone.

Divide into muffin tins.

These banana chocolate chip muffins are not too sweet, stay moist and will last you all week or up to three months in the freezer. PHOTO BY TUCKER HARRIS

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8. Bake for 18 min or until a toothpick pulls out clean.

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Investment products and services are offered through Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, LLC (WFAFN), Member SIPC. Shore to Summit Wealth Management, LLC is a separate entity from (WFAFN).

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40 January 28 - February 10, 2022

DINING

Explore Big Sky

A drink to pair with a lifestyle 406 Agave Premium Tequila

BY MIRA BRODY

SPECIAL ADVERTISEMENT

If Big Sky were distilled into a drink, what would it be?

Clear as the skies on a bluebird day, fueled with adrenaline after your last lap down Lone Mountain, your knees aching from fresh powder laps and your heart yearning for the warm bar below where your friends await?

Or maybe amber brown like the pine bark forest that surrounds your hardearned campsite after a long hike into the Spanish Peaks, a welcome fire crackling and the silhouettes of your family gathered near, clinking glasses in victory.

Big Sky is home to handcrafted adventure that draws all walks of life, and why Payton Hueler founded 406 Agave Premium Tequila—so we could have a drink to pair with our lifestyle.

“I moved here about two years ago and immediately felt a very strong sense of community,” says Hueler, who has been visiting Big Sky with his family since he was eight months old.

His parents have deep roots in the Helena area and to him, Big Sky felt like a natural fit.

“Whether you belong to a club or are working as a lifty, everyone seems to gather at the same places, so I wanted to create a drink that was very approachable and accessible to everyone,” Hueler said.

That’s what 406 Agave is about—gathering around familiar faces.

While traditionally most high-quality tequilas come with a steep price tag, 406 Agave chose a different route with accessibility in mind. Hueler was careful about selecting a distillery. He connected with a family in Jalisco, Mexico

406 Agave Premium Tequila is the perfect pairing for family and friend gatherings. PHOTO BY JASPER POORE

which has been producing quality, handcrafted, small batch tequila for four generations, right down to hand-dipping the wax labels. 406 Agave is the first American brand the distillery has worked with and is proud to do so because of the passion they share with Montanans for heritage and tradition.

Right now 406 Agave produces two varieties of tequila: a Blanco and Reposado.

The Blanco, priced at $35-40 a bottle, has sweet aromas with a hint of mint and tasting notes of vanilla and clean tropical fruit. It is an incredibly clean and smooth Blanco tequila that appeals to those who love a crisp, fresh flavor on the palate. Hueler describes it as young, aged at about a week and a half, and the vanilla is applied by spinning the tequila in vanilla-spun casts, keeping it soft but traditional.

The Reposado, priced at $45-50 a bottle, has aromas of caramel, vanilla and honey oak with an authentic, smooth and bold taste. A bit more complex than the Blanco, the Reposado is aged for four and a half months in honey oak barrels to give it a rich, warm and bolder finish. Natural vanilla and caramel gives it a signature sweetness and smoothness.

406 Agave is proud of its Montana roots—the team is 100 percent locally employed here in Big Sky. Following Winter Fest, you can find bottles of the Blanco and Reposado at most bars and liquor stores around town including The Cave Spirits & Gifts, Scissorbills Saloon, Tips Ups, Lone Mountain Ranch, Blue Buddha Sushi Lounge, the Drunken Monk, The Independent, Montage Big Sky and Spanish Peak Mountain Club.

“I’ve had so many great experiences with friends tailgating, après ski or around a campfire with a bottle of tequila and I think it just brings out great stories and great laughter and I wanted to produce a product that reflected that,” Hueler said.

Whether you’re looking to impress a host, fuel some campfire banter or relax post-ski, 406 Agave is sure to satisfy the full spectrum of Big Sky.

DINING

41 January 28 - February 10, 2022

FEATURED COCKTAIL Get toasty at your next gathering with this 406 Agave signature cocktail recipe.

Explore Big Sky

DRINK WITH YOUR FRIENDS. TEQUILA IS FOR SHARING.

406 Martini 1.5 oz. 406 Agave Blanco 05. oz. St. Germane 0.75 oz. Lemon juice 0.5 oz. Simple syrup 1 tsp. Frozen huckleberries The 406 Martini is a Big Sky twist on the classic you know well. Combine all ingredients in a shaker tin. Add a scoop of ice and shake vigorously.

Strain into coupe glass and serve with a dehydrated lime wheel with huckleberry bull’s eye.

Try a signature 406 Agave cocktail the next time you’re playing host. Available at most Big Sky restaurants and liquor stores.

PHOTO BY JASPER POORE

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All information contained herein is derived from sources deemed reliable, however, is not guaranteed by Pure West Real Estate, LLC., Managing Broker, Agents or Sellers. Offering is subject to error, omissions, prior sales, price change or withdrawal without notice and approval of purchase by Seller. We urge independent verification of each and every item submitted, to the satisfaction of any prospective purchaser.

SEE A SHOW IN BIG SKY 0 2 .0 3.20 22

JAN. 15 — APRIL 2 2022 BEYOND THE FOURTH WALL

A V A I L A B L E AT BIG SKY WINTER FEST

@ 4 0 6 A G AV E 4 0 6 A G AV E . C O M

CLASSIFIEDS Friends of Big Sky Education Seeking Part Time Accountant/Bookkeeper

44 Jan. 28 - Feb. 10, 2022

DINING

Explore Big Sky

AMUSE-BOUCHE Amuse-bouche refers to an appetizer, and by French translation means, “to entertain the mouth.” It offers a glimpse into what you should expect from a meal. Also it’s free, compliments of the chef.

The fall of food, part III

BY SCOTT MECHURA EBS COLUMNIST

Friends of Big Sky Education (FOBSE) is currently seeking a part-time (.3 to .5 FTE) accountant/bookkeeper. FOBSE is a charitable organization that supports education of Big Sky students and the community. Initiatives include the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center, the Community Scholarship Program, the Superintendent’s Fund and other cultural and athletic endeavors. For more information about FOBSE, visit www.friendsofbigskyeducation.org Skills needed include: a working knowledge of Quickbooks Pro, including treatment of categories, classes, bills, and invoicing, and an understanding of accounting concepts, including cashflow, assets, liabilities, income statements and balance sheets. Our ideal candidate possesses excellent verbal and written communication skills, effective interpersonal skills, and is an enthusiastic supporter of education.

Please send indications of interest along with a resume/qualifications and contact information to David Gasser at mgm894@cs.com and John McGuire at johnmcguiremt@gmail.com.

Eating is hard.

As if what we eat isn’t challenging enough, how and when we eat has long been something many of us throw our hands up at.

Maybe you’ve heard that the key to a healthy metabolism is eating a healthy, sensible breakfast within 30 minutes of waking up. Maybe a couple of eggs and avocado. Or perhaps oatmeal with chia seeds, blueberries and oat milk.

Or perhaps you should fast for an extended period of hours.

Only eat within an eight- to 10-hour window, they say, thereby allowing your body a controlled fast. Make your body crave food. Because when it does, it then burns calories.

For every person who says early breakfast is key, another will tell you to fast. In the end, we’re just left confused.

The amount of food products in grocery stores today is beyond overwhelming. How many of those items do you really buy? You enter the store with your list, which probably contains only about 50 items. Yet the average grocery store contains no less than 82,000 items.

So just who exactly is buying all this stuff ?

From Hot Pockets to Mountain Dew; from Gogurt to Lunchables, we’ve traded health for convenience. Quality food takes time to purchase and prepare. Meals in a plastic bag, sealed in a cardboard box in the freezer section with 37 ingredients, of which you only know four, sure do heat easily and often times taste good, due to the discovery of the bliss point. But they also hit us where it hurts.

We began to patronize McDonalds in the mid-20th century and they began to slowly increase the fat content, corn content and portion size of our food.

The workplace began to get busier and our jobs sped up. So, “big food” created meals to coincide with the increase in life’s pace. Well intentioned? Maybe. But with mass-produced, convenient ready-made meals, they needed to taste good or no one will buy them. So, as I’ve written about before, many of these meals contain either a combination of, or all three of, the holy trinity of flavor: salt, fat and sugar.

Remember, if it comes from a plant, you should probably eat it. But if it’s made in a plant, you probably shouldn’t. And along with speed and convenience, the portion sizes grew.

BIG SKY’S

TEXTILE CLEANING SPECIALIST SINCE 1988

Another milestone after steel canned foods and high fructose corn syrup was what we thought at the time to be an innocuous food creation. Small by today’s portion standards, 1967 saw the introduction of the Big Mac. To have multiple toppings, three buns and two patties in one burger changed the way we viewed the indulgence of fast food forever.

In 1955, a McDonalds hamburger was 3.7 ounces. Imagine that! By today’s standards, that’s a slider.

A McDonald’s soda in 1955 was a mere 7 ounces, but today it can tip the scales at 30 ounces. That equates to about 4.5 ounces of sugar in those 30 ounces of soda.

Measure out half a cup of sugar and then imagine drinking that.

So, what do we do?

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We find time to exercise in today’s fast-paced world and constantly try to find foods and ways to eat that optimize our health, while simultaneously being inundated with more and more Hot Pockets, Gogurts and juice boxes every day.

It’s as if the conglomerates want us to remain obese, addicted to sugar and stuck at a certain life expectancy which, according to the American Medical Association, has actually decreased.

A final tip to combat the holy trinity and bliss point of flavor: Do not eat until you are full; eat until you are no longer hungry.

I’ll be concluding this series with a return to where it began: a deeper exploration into canned foods and high fructose corn syrup to see exactly what it was that we got ourselves into.

Scott Mechura has spent a life in the hospitality industry. He is a former certified beer judge and currently the executive chef for Horn and Cantle restaurant at Lone Mountain Ranch.

45 January 28 - February 10, 2022

FUN

Explore Big Sky

American Life in Poetry

BY KWAME DAWES More and more, poets, like everyone else, are confronted with the news and physical evidence of change in our weather patterns and landscapes, and we find ourselves trying to find language for this unsettling sense that the world is changing rapidly. Khadijah Queen, in her poem, “Undoing,” has a haunting sense while driving through a snowstorm, that somehow our machines and our voracious appetite for fuel have something to do with this “undoing” of our world. Like many of us, she is arrested by this knowing. Poetry does not always give us answers, instead, it helps us meditate on the questions, and this, sometimes, is enough.

Undoing

BY KHADIJAH QUEEN In winter traffic, fog of midday shoves toward our machines—snow eclipses the mountainscapes I drive toward, keeping time against the urge to quit moving. I refuse to not know how not to, wrestling out loud to music, as hovering me—automatic engine, watching miles of sky on the fall—loves such undoing, secretly, adding fuel to what undoes the ozone, the endless nothing manifested as sinkholes under permafrost.

Refusal, indecision—an arctic undoing of us, interrupting cascades— icy existences. I cannot drive through.

Corner Quote

BIG SKY

BEATS

Songs of Resilience

BY TUCKER HARRIS

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”

– Albert Camus

The sixth annual Big Sky Ideas Festival will feature a live performance by musicians Bruce Anfinson and Monique Benabou on Friday, Jan. 28 at The Independent at 6 p.m. The two musicians will also perform at the TEDxBigSky event on Jan. 29 and 30, closing out two nights of moving talks centered around this year’s theme, resilience.

Anfinson’s music paints intimate pictures of the Montana way of life; the people, landscapes and history we love so much. Benabou describes her music as transformational, powerful and vulnerable, and a culmination of her own breakthroughs and rock bottoms.

Explore Big Sky has put together a playlist featuring both of the artists’ music for you to enjoy before heading over to the Independent on Friday, Jan. 28 or to the TEDx event at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center on Saturday, Jan. 29 and Sunday, Jan. 30 to hear them perform live.

1. “Home is where Montana is” by Bruce Anfinson 2. “Under Pressure” by Monique Benabou 3. "Throwing Horseshoes at the Moon” by Bruce Anfinson 4. “Mr. Know it All – The Voice Performance” by Monique Benabou 5. “Handmade Saddle” by Bruce Anfinson 6. “Just Breathe” by Monique Benabou 7. “Fresh Bread” by Bruce Anfinson 8. “Goin’ nowhere” by Monique Benabou 9. “Ballad of Minnie and Pearl” by Bruce Anfinson 10. “Is That Too Much” by Monique Benabou

46 January 28 - February 10, 2022

BACK 40

Explore Big Sky

For Explore Big Sky, the Back 40 is a resource: a place where we can delve into subjects and ask experts to share their knowledge. Here, we highlight stories from our flagship sister publication Mountain Outlaw magazine.

Noun: wild or rough terrain adjacent to a developed area Origin: shortened form of “back 40 acres”

Report: Maverick Mountain owners find reality in a skier’s dream

BY ALEX SAKARIASSEN A few ski seasons past, Erik Borge found himself patching together a broken grooming machine on the slopes of Maverick Mountain about 40 miles west of Dillon, Montana. It was well after midnight, the temperature was in the neighborhood of 40-below, and Borge had already driven the three-hour round trip to Butte twice—once to buy a replacement hydraulic hose, and once to get the hose remade when it wouldn’t fit. Borge says a side of him wanted to give up, to announce to the ski area’s guests that there’d be no groomed snow today.

But with a youth ski race slated for the following day, the internal debate was short lived.

“I literally didn’t have a choice,” he says.

The job got done that night, as so many have in the five years since Borge and his wife, Big Sky native Kristi Borge, sold their lives in Bozeman for the prospect of owning a ski area. They were 29 and 27, respectively, when they purchased Maverick Mountain. On paper, the couple’s story sounds like the Hollywood version of a skier’s fantasy: A chance mention by a friend of a forsale ski area during a dip in the Boiling River; a new home put back on the market to raise capital; months of uncertainty culminating in a purchase on

the eve of the next ski season. As Borge’s frigid night of groomer maintenance attests, reality was—and is—vastly different.

“I think the general concept is you buy a mountain, you ski, you do a little bit of people management, you answer a couple emails, and then in the spring you shut it down and you go on vacation,” Borge says. “That’s not even close.”

Nowadays Borge smacks of that reality, from the top of his worn beanie to the hems of his grease-soaked coveralls. He kicks back inside Maverick’s lodge on a blustery early-October afternoon, sipping a bottle of Bud Light and cracking jokes about windblown shingles with the frank, easy-going manner of a ranch hand. Kristi is down valley at Polaris’ one-room schoolhouse, where she got a job as a teacher before they’d closed the deal on the mountain. The couple’s new pup BB chases flies against a window that looks out on the steep snowless pitch of the ski trail Remely, where during a 2001 demonstration, former pro mogul skier C.J. “Turbo” Turner hit nearly 90 mph on a rocket-propelled monoski.

Replacing the lodge roof would be nice, Borge says after another strong gust. It’s currently on his list of dream projects.

To get to that list, though, the Borges first have to check off the essentials, a task which starts the moment Maverick’s single chairlift closes down for the season at the beginning of April. There are chairlift components to repair or

Early on in his tenure as co-owner of Maverick Mountain, Erik Borge found himself fixing a broken snow cat in the wee hours of the morning in 40-below weather. PHOTO BY LUKAS GOJDA/ADOBE STOCK

47 January 28 - February 10, 2022

BACK 40

remake, a lift terminal to lubricate, safety systems to check, firewood to stock up on, equipment to pull apart and put back together. Borge says he’s lucky just to stay on top of the many things a ski area needs to survive another season. And the work only gets tougher when the snow starts flying. Borge estimates he gets between four and five hours of sleep a night during the winter. The couple spent their first few seasons living in an RV in the ski area parking lot, before moving to a cabin at nearby Elkhorn Hot Springs, which they and their fellow collegebuddy Maverick investors purchased about two years ago. On the eve of the couple’s fifth season helming Maverick, Borge has yet to pay himself in anything other than a ski pass and beer.

“There’s dream things that you wish you could do, but you just have to do the best you can with what you got,” Borge says. “Nobody that buys a ski area is going to make it rich.”

For the Borges, Maverick has quickly become a labor of love. Love, in part, for the sport they grew up with. Both were competitive ski racers as children, and actually met as ski instructors at Big Sky Resort in 2009. Neither had skied Maverick as adults, but Kristi still recalls racing there during elementary school and her parents, Marjorie and J.C. Knaub, himself a former ski patroller at Big Sky, still live in the area.

“The fact that [skiing] was a huge part of our lives is a big reason why it happened,” she says of the Maverick purchase.

Looming equally large in their decision, however, was a desire to return to their rural roots. Borge was raised in a small town near Oregon’s iconic Timberline Lodge ski area. Kristi spent her childhood in a Big Sky still relatively untouched by the past decade of development, and was inspired to become a teacher by her years attending Ophir Elementary. Prior to the name “Maverick Mountain” entering their lives, the Borges had discussed a move to the countryside and commutes into Bozeman.

Stepping inside the lodge to join Borge for a beer, longtime local skier Dave Miller confesses the Polaris community was apprehensive when the couple first arrived. But their willingness to buckle down quickly and keep the mountain operating proved what both the Borges claim: that neither sees themselves as

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Maverick’s owners, rather as caretakers of a place belonging to the town.

“I think you’d have a hard time finding anybody that’d complain,” Miller says, before heading back out to pick up his son from Kristi’s classroom.

Life has a funny way of coming full circle. After making such a drastic and unexpected life change five years ago, Kristi’s primary role at Maverick is now as coach of the new youth ski racing team. The team skied 36 kids from the greater Dillon area last season, she says, and her long-term goal is for the mountain to host a U.S. Ski and Snowboard Northern Division race once again.

“I have pictures of myself racing at Maverick when I’m 10 years old, and that really puts it in perspective,” she says. “I’m wearing the same racing bibs, these cloth bibs, that we still have in the lodge. That’s kind of wild to see.”

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