In the spring of 1997, my wife Laurie and I were living the good life in Vail, Colo., skiing almost every day when I was invited to take a ride on a private jet to Bozeman, Mont.
On board were former Vice Presidential candidate Jack Kemp, Jon Reveal and the man who had invited us, Tim Blixseth.
We were going to look at Tim’s 14,000 acres of private property where he wanted to build the world’s first private ski and golf club. We all wondered why he thought he could sell someone a lifetime lift ticket/membership for $200,000 and also sell a $2 million piece of property before they had the right to use their ski lift ticket.
Tim had incredible vision along with being naïve about the ski business.
Fortunately, at least we thought, he had deep enough pockets to carry out his initial vision and I signed on as the Director of Skiing, Jack signed onto his board of directors, and Jon was hired to layout the runs where the chairlifts should be built.
Before I knew it, Laurie and I had sold our Vail home and moved into a condominium at the bottom of nearby Big Sky.
I had not lived at a new ski resort since the winter of 1949-50 when Squaw Valley opened. On that first trip, there were no roads other than a narrow, bumpy logging road that took an hour to drive the 12 miles to the bottom of the mountain.
The top half of Pioneer Peak is steeper than the cornice at Mammoth and the bottom half is like Snowmass at Aspen. With the help of a helicopter, it only took a couple of hours for the four of us to ski and survey the entire mountain. Jon and I both agreed it was a perfect mountain for every member of the family regardless of their ability to ski or ride a snowboard.
Within a couple of years, the chairlifts were running and a crowded day on the five quad chairlifts would be as many as six people, not counting Jon and myself. That first winter, Jon and I quickly forgot how many days of untracked powder snow we enjoyed.
The next three or four summers, Jon carved out more nearly perfect ski runs that you could ski all day and never take the same run twice, and that’s a lot of skiing with no waiting in lift lines.
Nearby Bozeman has just about the same population as the Vail Valley in Colorado. Many of the employees live there and for someone who flies into the Bozeman International Airport is it is only a 45-minute drive to the Yellowstone Club. As you have heard, it can be as long as a six or seven-hour-drive from Colorado resorts back to Denver on an icy, Sunday afternoon. Colorado’s epic ski pass has as many as 25,000 skiers getting to ski Vail on any given weekend.
The Vail skiing is still fabulous. However, if you have never had a mountain virtually to yourself with a choice of 15 quad chairlifts, come visit us some time.
Don’t forget, you can only make one turn at a time and as long as the snow is on the side of a mountain you can still enjoy places such as Bintz Fruit Farm where they dug a big enough hole in the ground to build four or five rope tows and 150 vertical feet of downhill skiing.
From small resorts such as Bintz come many of the skiers who eventually save up enough money to fly to Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, California, Washington or Oregon for their life-changing experience on some big mountains. I call areas like Bintz the kindergartens of skiing
Adjacent to the Yellowstone Club is Big Sky with the most vertical rise of any other ski resort in America. On the northern slopes of Big Sky there is Moonlight Basin that is full of chairlifts and condominiums. On the eastern side of Big Sky is Spanish Peaks with their ski-in ski-out home sites. The area provides an amazing amount of ski terrain. I’m so happy we ended up in the area.
Unfortunately, I had to quit skiing four years ago when I fell and broke my back. Fortunately, I was only going 4 mph at the time and it did not cause other permanent damage. I’m lucky I can sit by the windows in our living room and watch the skiers go by.
Some old-timers lament the fact that skiing has changed a lot, but I disagree. The setting has changed, no longer is there just a base lodge, a picnic table for your brownbag lunch and a place to hang your wet socks from ski boots that were not waterproof. Now things are much nicer, and skis, of course, have changed radically since I started in 1937.
There are 16 different ski resorts in Montana; many small but with incredible terrain. Most are only open from Thursday through Sunday and the lift tickets start at $23. Parking places are free and all the base lodges have brownbag picnic areas. Great for families and beginning skiers.
Come join us, and enjoy some of the freedom I have had for the last 60 years.
Warren Miller is history’s most prolific and enduring ski filmmaker. Visit warrenmiller.net or his Facebook page at facebook.com/warrenmiller. Read more of Warren’s stories at TheTahoeWeekly.com.
