A skiing family in Big Sky, Montana
The wind whipped around so hard that I had to lean into it to keep from falling over. I stood at the bottom of Big Sky’s A to Z Chutes looking up into the dumping snow. I’d just picked my way down in herky-jerky jump turns, stopping and starting as I pieced together a line in pathetic 20-foot increments.
In between the whiteout gusts, I watched Maria Lovely drop into Upper Pinnacle Chutes a few hundred feet above. Her turns were not like mine—surfy and rhythmic, her turns tightened in radius but not in style as the chute narrowed. Nearing the mouth, she straight-lined, picking up speed into the runout.
And then another gust hit, obscuring her view of an undulation in the snow. She hit it with speed, double ejecting as she somersaulted before coming to a stop headfirst in the powder.
“You okay?” I yelled as she crawled her way out.
Covered in snow, she yelled back, “That was so much fun!”
In the two days we’d been skiing together, I’d heard this from her frequently, seemingly out of the blue, while standing in a lift line or hiking Big Sky’s Headwaters to get up to the steeps. After getting to know her, I asked her just exactly what it was about skiing that she loved so much.
“What don’t I love?” she said. “I love all the feelings associated with it. For me it has been something my family does together. It’s what we talk about at the dinner table, and it’s what we look forward to and what we do on the weekends. It’s important to us, and it’s the thing that connects us.
“And then outside of my family, it’s also this big world of connection with all sorts of people that it brings together. It’s just this feeling of freedom and creativity, but you’re also working hard and pushing yourself. Something that I like about it is that you can always improve. You can always just keep pushing yourself and pushing the limits.”
I’d never met anyone whose love for the sport was so obvious and genuine, so infectious. That is, until I got to know her family. It seems that everyone in Big Sky knows the Lovelys.
The Patrol Shack
I’d met Maria the previous morning in the ski patrol shack at the top of Lone Peak. Sausage grease sizzled on a hot plate atop a desk, while, outside, thunder and avy bombs exploded in equal parts, so loud that I felt the percussion deep in my bones.
“I hope this storm cycle develops and it just pukes on us,” a patroller said as he turned the sausage links with his pocket knife.
This was last April, and the snow gods had dumped on Montana all winter long, which is why I happened to be there. I was working in the marketing department at Backcountry.com, and we’d followed the snow north from a disappointing winter in Utah to collect some photos and content.
In addition to skiing for our cameras, Maria had volunteered to show us around the mountain, a new one for most of us in the Backcountry crew. We all became fast friends with the 19-year old Montana State student who is now a member of Nordica’s freeride team.
After a night of constant snow, we’d been thrilled to get chair and tram rides to the top of the mountain before the lifts opened to the public. We were pumped for those precious first tracks. But for the time being, we were on lightning hold.
As the snow kept dumping outside, the shack reeked of sausage grease, a haze of it settling on us like the inversion we’d left behind back in Salt Lake City. But the vibe in the shack was good. All the patrollers knew Maria. They talked and laughed easily with her, as had all the lifties. It seemed that everyone in Big Sky knew and liked her.
Eventually the lightning stopped, and we took off on what would become my best run of the season. It turns out that the snow would keep on dumping for three days straight, and that each consecutive run would become my new best run of the season. With each run we took, the grandeur of Big Sky’s terrain loomed around us, and everyone in our group said something along the lines of I can’t believe this stuff is in bounds.
Combined with the incredible spring conditions and terrain, the highlight of my time in Big Sky was getting to know Maria and her family. At age 19, Maria has a poise and depth of character of someone much older and a charming personality that continually conveys her deep-down love for skiing and zest for life. I could tell that she was milking every last bit of fun from the dream season before heading up to Kalispell for the summer to fight wildfires.
As we neared the last chair on our first afternoon in Big Sky, we randomly ran into Maria’s parents, Mike and Mona Lovely, at the bottom of Challenger chair. We took a lap with them, and two things became clear: the Lovelys are rippers themselves–and they are the source of Maria’s endearing personality.
On the chair, Mike talked about how forecasters often call for 12 inches of snow, and then the storm slows down over the mountains and drops four feet. Then I mentioned fly fishing—how we’d driven along the Gallatin River on the way into town and how I wished I’d brought a fly rod to hit the river on one of our upcoming off days. As the snow continued to dump on us, he offered to loan me a rod. “Come on by the house. We’ve got plenty,” he said. “But I think the next few days are going to be ski days.”
The Lovely Family
Maria’s parents first got her into skiing before they lived in Big Sky, when she’d decided in fifth grade that she didn’t want to play basketball anymore and wanted to try skiing instead. Her parents reply? “That’s OK. We don’t want to sit in the bleachers anyway.”
They started making the couple-hour drive from their ranch near Big Timber, Montana, to Big Sky on Friday afternoons after school. They’d ski the whole weekend and leave Monday morning at 4 a.m. to be back in time for school and for Mike and Mona’s work weeks.
Maria told me about signing up at age 12 for a freeride event with her younger brother, Jack. They showed up to freeride practice with Craigslist skis, used boots, Carhartt bibs, and hunting packs, and the other kids made fun of them.
“The kids were extremely unkind,” Maria recalled. “They made fun of us, pushing Jack to tears, saying things like, ‘How much were those skis? 25 cents?’ as they bragged about their brand new gear.”
Rather than having the kids join the freeride team, Mike decided to learn how to coach them himself. He told them that if they did well on the used skis, they could move up to newer equipment. After a couple of months of practice, they entered their first competition.
“Jack and I both won our age categories on our Craiglist skis,” she said. “And we were like, ‘Heck yeah–we like this!’ So it just kind of took off from there, and we eventually moved to Big sky and started competing a ton. I knew this was a sport I wanted to continue forever.”
Skiing Goals
Undoubtedly Maria has progressed beyond those early competitions, working with various filmmakers and photographers, and joining Nordica’s freeride team this year. I asked her about her goals as a skier. Yes, she wants to travel and ski for the cameras, but her real ski ambitions are more altruistic.
“I want to encourage more girls to get into the sport of freeride,” she said. “To my disappointment, there were always fewer girls than boys competing. There are so many young shredders at my home mountain, and I want to help mentor them–introduce them to the steeps and into competing. I’ve recently started a scholarship fund specifically for girls and am putting together various camps and workshops. Skiing is extremely empowering, and having a community to share your passions with makes it even more so.”
Despite her lofty ambitions, Maria often has the most fun while skiing with her family. Her younger brother, Jack, is a 16 year-old ripper who has become her favorite skiing partner
“It’s pretty great,” she said, discussing the time she spends on the mountain with her brother. “We’ve definitely both learned from each other and pushed each other, and we take turns being better than each other.”
The most memorable run of her last season came while skiing with Jack. “My perfect ski run,” she said, “the best run I had this season, I hit a super big cliff in Moonlight Basin on the Headwaters called the Lily Pad. By the sounds of it from all the locals, I may have been the first female to ever hit it. It was cool. I followed my little brother off of it. It was a huge adrenaline rush, and after that I was just pumped the entire day. And I knew this is why I love skiing and this is why I want to do it and keep doing it.”
Surf and Turf
The Lovelys invited us to their home for dinner before the annual Big Sky Shootout ski film festival. Ram and mule deer heads adorn the wall of their beautiful home, set back in the trees. Also on the wall hangs a set of antlers from the family’s most recent elk, shot in the yard, and the one we would be eating that night. The family’s numerous border collies roamed freely as Mike told us how the dogs run a bear up a tree in the yard just about every morning.
Our dinner was Montana-style surf-and-turf: Mona combined the delicious elk steaks with king salmon given to the Lovelys by some angler friends up in BC. Throw in the Montana mules we enjoyed–whiskey and ginger beer–and a genial conversation involving the family’s outfitting business and the upcoming film festival, and this dinner became one of the best I’d had in quite a while.
I plated up seconds and thirds, urged on by the entire family. “We usually cook extra because somebody’s going to pop in,” Mona said.
Mike showed us where he’d set up the rope tow in the yard: Building it out of a jacked-up ’81 Ford truck, 1,400 feet of aircraft cable, and a bullwheel made from a tractor wheel, he would throw the truck in third gear and whisk his kids up to the top of the hill so they could hit jumps and rails in the yard after the lifts closed.
The Shootout
Something is magical about ski movies—the vicarious thrill of watching that perfect slow-motion powder turn up there on the big screen, of being in a theatre crowded with skiers all hooting and hollering at every face shot and cliff drop.
It’s even more magical when it’s a local phenomenon, when the people up on the screen and the filmmakers behind it are sitting next to you, when there’s beer flowing in the lobby, and the mountain featured in the films is right outside the front door.
The Shootout is a locals-only type thing, and that night, because of the Lovely family’s hospitality, I definitely felt like a local. The Shootout gives videographers and teams of up to five people a week to shoot at Big Sky and a week to edit before the event. Over the last several years, Maria has skied in many of the films, beginning with an all-girls movie called Big Sky Girls Rip. This year, Maria and Jack both filmed with Chris Kamman of Skylab Media House for his film, Snow Dreams.
“We all gather at the local movie theatre and it’s just this big stoke fest,” Maria said. “Everyone’s excited; everyone’s hyped. We watch all the films, and there’s a live band afterwards. Everyone votes for the best film, and it’s just a big old fun party.”
I didn’t really know what to expect when we showed up to the Shootout, except that I figured we would have fun and the local films would be amateurish. Instead, the films blew me away. Snow Dreams, with its outstanding kaleidoscope visuals, editing, and riding, ended up winning the festival, the third Shootout victory for director Chris Kamman. Find the edit on Youtube and you will not be disappointed.
What came across most for me while attending the event was just what a tight-knit community Big Sky is and how passionate they are about their sport.
“It’s one big family,” Maria said. “You never have to worry about not having someone to ski with. If you go up to the resort alone you’ll bump into a million friends in the tram line. There’s a lot of support from everyone, from the school, to the locals, to the lifties. We’re just all out here to have fun and ski hard.”
The Perfect Ski Day
After the festival, Maria and Jack drove home together, and Mike and Mona took us out to The Brothel, a bar by night and bike shop by day where Jack started working before he knew what the name meant. Over rounds of Silver Devils–peppermint schnapps and tequila–the Lovelys talked about moving four years ago from their ranch to their home in the big town of Big Sky to ensure a great childhood for their children. How the kids helped with their outfitting business. How they’d take the horses out into the backcountry to fish honey holes in the summertime. They showed us Maria’s senior prom photos: the kids in dresses and suits and skis, taking the chairlift up for a run in their formalwear.
It all confirmed what I’d been thinking all along: Big Sky would be a great place to grow up.
Another powder day dawned–which meant more skiing with Maria. Standing with her atop the Headwaters and looking down a gnarly chute, she said “I’m pretty lucky to have grown up in this terrain. It’s made me a better skier, for sure.” Then she dropped in, charging a tough, aggressive line. A couple of surfy, perfect pow turns later and she popped out the bottom. I looked at her line, considering it for a minute before dropping into something a bit gentler.
Back on the chairlift, I asked Maria to describe her perfect ski day; her answer perfectly illustrates everything I’d learned about her and her family over the last few days, everything that makes me glad to know the Lovelys and glad to know that I’ll have people to ski with and a seat at the dinner table the next time I’m in Big Sky. Which I hope will be very soon.
“The perfect ski day? Wake up in the morning. Probably Dad would be knocking on the door saying, ‘Get out of bed. There’s a couple feet of snow.’ Whip up some scrambled eggs, run up to Big Sky Resort, and start off the morning in the first tram car because we got up there extra early. Take North Summit down and then hike the Headwaters the rest of the day. Super pow, lots of smiles. Fun. Family. Friends.”
Written by Colin Clancy and featured in the Strung Magazine – Upland issue, September 2019
Photos by Ben Christensen & Colton Stiffler
