LOCAL

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 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.

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.

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

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

BY GABRIELLE GASSER

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.

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.”

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.” 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.

“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 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.”

General Manager of the Big Sky Transportation District Sam Luedtke waits in his bus at the Mountain Village Center stop. PHOTO BY GABRIELLE GASSER Skiers find seats on the Skyline bus headed back down to the Big Sky Town Center. PHOTO BY GABRIELLE GASSER Riders board the Skyline at the Town Center stop. PHOTO BY GABRIELLE GASSER