Call of the Couloir
by John Burbidge
If you’re an adventurous skier who likes to ride the Tram at Big Sky to the summit of Lone Peak, it’s a good bet you’ve looked out the window at the Big Couloir below and wondered if you could
ski that line. If by chance anybody happens to be making turns down the narrow, rocky chute as the tram sweeps by, you’ll often hear comments from Tram-riders new to Big Sky, such as Let’s ski that, which will draw nervous laughter from others in the group—yeah, right. There are plenty of challenges to be had on the flanks of Lone Peak without jumping into that thing.
True enough, but if you fancy yourself a certain kind of skier who seeks out the steep, then you want to ski the Big Couloir. In fact, you have to ski it. That’s how I felt after moving back to Montana a couple of years ago and starting to ski Big Sky regularly. I stared at the Big Couloir every time I rode the Tram for two years, thinking, I can ski that. Can’t I?
One day last season a friend and I resolved to find out. As we rode the Swiftcurrent chair in the morning, Tom mentioned a guy we knew who claimed skiing the Big Couloir was one of the scariest things he’d ever done. The guy was a good skier, so this was surprising. We speculated optimistically that conditions must have been icy that day.
From Swiftcurrent we took the Lone Peak Triple chair and then rode the Tram to the top of the mountain where we went into the patrol shack. A couple of groups were signed in ahead of us, so we killed time for 30 minutes until finally the patroller in charge nodded our way. “You guys are up.”
Without a word we went out the door, put on our skis, and side-slipped down the icy, windswept ridge toward the sharp drop that marks the entrance to the Big Couloir. Jumpy with adrenaline, we inched to the edge and peered down the chute for the first time in our lives. We knew what we’d come to do. Now we just had to do it.
***
As it happened, I skied the Big Couloir four times that winter, including twice in one day, which wasn’t planned—I skied it in the morning with a friend, and later that afternoon I arrived alone at the summit to find a guy yelling out for a partner. A partner is required if you want to ski the Big Couloir (along with an avalanche transceiver, shovel, and probe). The guy seemed really bummed his buddy had bailed, and just as elated when I said I’d go.
But that was last year, when conditions were great; this year is a different story, of course, and when I went down to Big Sky in early January to ski the Big Couloir again, Lone Peak hadn’t landed a snowflake in six days. Worse, the weather had recently warmed and then cooled, a classic recipe for “firm” ski conditions. But commitments had conspired to keep me off my skis for almost two weeks, so conditions be damned, today was my day to ski the Big Couloir. At least that’s what I thought.
When I arrived at the summit, the lift operator opened the tram door and gave everybody a heartyhello. “It’s a little scrapey out there today, so be careful,” he added in what you assumed was classic lifty understatement, and then he told us to have fun.
I went into the patrol shack. The four guys staffing the place looked up as if surprised to see anybody. “What can we do for you?” one of them asked.
I asked if I could get a cheeseburger, and that seemed to soften things up a little.
Then I asked if the Big Couloir was open.
“It’s open, but nobody’s signed up yet. A patroller went down this morning. It’s pretty firm in there.” I could tell the lead patroller was sizing me up. “You have to be on your game to go in there today. You need sharp edges.”
I thought about my edges, somewhat battered from eight days of early-season ski conditions. I told him I didn’t have a partner, and he shrugged. “I’ll go down with you, if you really want to go.”
So much for that excuse. “I could probably get down it,” I said, “but the question is, Would it be fun?”
The patroller shrugged again. “Depends on your definition of fun.”
No mistaking the subtext: Was my definition of “fun” wimpy or hardcore? Maybe at one time in my life it was hardcore, but that was a couple of kids ago.
In any case, nobody else was coming into the shack, so I asked if I could pry the group with some questions about the Big Couloir, and for the next twenty minutes we talked, with everybody volunteering a little knowledge, and even a phone call made to clear up some history. They showed me the ski patrol’s guidebook to the mountain, their primary reference for avalanche control work, and I spent another fifteen minutes poring over that. Think you know all the runs at Big Sky? Think again.
When our chat was over, the patroller who’d offered to ski with me asked what I wanted to do. “I haven’t even warmed up,” I said. “Let me take a run, then I’ll decide.”
He seemed to think that reasonable, so I went to ski Marx, assessing the conditions and deciding they were firm, but not quite icy—big difference. Then, on my way back up to the summit, I saw two skiers coming down the Big Couloir. So clearly somebody had the guts to do it in these conditions. Did I?
***
The Big Couloir was first skied on June 23, 1973, when Mark Kalitowsky descended the line solo. Kalitowsky was a Big Sky employee and later a patroller, and that wasn’t the end of his exploits on Lone Peak: According to Tom Turiano’s book “Select Peaks of Greater Yellowstone,” Kalitowsky skied the Big Couloir again a couple of years later with Brian Leo on New Year’s Eve, when the duo climbed to the summit in seventy-mile-an-hour winds and minus twenty-degree temperatures. After picking their way down the couloir in the dark, they arrived back at the base of the mountain at 11:30 p.m., totally spent. No word on whether alcohol was involved in the decision-making process that evening.
Kalitowsky was also first to ski the more difficult Little Couloir, located looker’s right of the Big Couloir, with partners Dougal McCarty (via the Apple Core entrance) and Jon “Yunce” Ueland (direct entrance). The upper part of the Little Couloir’s direct entrance is a sustained 60-degree pitch; by comparison, the steepest pitch in the Big Couloir is between 47 and 50 degrees, depending on conditions and how you enter. However, if so-called “extreme skiing” encompasses slopes between 45 and 60 degrees, then the upper half of the Big Couloir makes the grade. Big Sky’s own website describes it as “the pinnacle of extreme inbounds terrain.”
Back when Kalitowsky and company were doing their thing, descents of the Big Couloir required an arduous hike to the top of Lone Peak. These days the Tram (built in 1995) takes you right there, and according to the ski patrollers in the summit shack, the Big Couloir sees between 150 and 200 descents a week—about as many as the sign-up sheet will accommodate.
But despite the Big Couloir’s popularity among Big Sky regulars, injuries are relatively rare, according to the patrollers, primarily because of the high caliber of skier who decides to tackle it. Tweaked knees and uncontrolled tumbles certainly happen from time to time, but the patrollers agreed that, percentage-wise, far more people get hurt on the beginner run Mr. K than in the Big Couloir, simply because beginners are much more likely to fall than experts, regardless of the terrain.
* * *
When I arrived back at the summit, the patroller who’d volunteered to go down with me was no longer there, but another said he’d go. Fate intervened, though, when a single skier walked in and inquired about conditions in the Big Couloir. “It’s firm,” the patroller said, then nodded at me. “He’s looking for a partner.”
The guy sat down and introduced himself as Eric. He’d been a volunteer ski patroller at Big Sky for six years until this year, when he became a father and had to give up the patrolling. His day job was as a project manager for a tech company in Bozeman.
So there we were, two guys with little kids and regular jobs who’d managed to break away for a day to get our Lone Peak fix. The Big Couloir was open, nobody was in line to ski it, and there was no telling when we would be back in this spot again. Were we going to ski the Big Couloir? Hell yeah we were.
Eric dropped in first, and his skis skidded down the steep chute as he made turns. But he skied without hesitation down to the “dogleg,” the halfway mark where the couloir cuts left and skiers are supposed to go right underneath a protective cliff and wait for their partner. Then it was time for me to go. My edges managed to bite the firm surface just enough to keep in control, and I made consistent if not beautiful turns down the chute. At one point I crossed my tips slightly and wondered if I might go for a ride, but I recovered and pulled in next to Eric.
“Gets your heart rate up, doesn’t it?” he said.
“Yeah.” The exertion combined with the adrenaline was a potent brew.
Off he went down the lower half, where the angle eases and the snow was a tad softer, eventually pulling over again into another safe zone to wait for me. When I arrived, we said thanks to each other, then skied one at a time down the apron at the bottom. And just like that the Big Couloir was a done deal.
I rode the Tram three more times that afternoon and kept my eye on the Big Couloir, but I didn’t see anybody else in there, which leads me to believe that on this day, most people thought the
reward was not worth the risk. I can say without question that of the five times I’ve gone down, this was the most difficult.
Which isn’t to say it was the scariest or most exciting. That honor still goes to the first time, something each skier only gets to experience once. So if you find yourself side-slipping down the icy, windswept ridge off the summit of Lone Peak to the entrance of the Big Couloir, savor that moment when you inch up to the edge and gaze for the first time down the gut of one of the most classic ski lines in North America. You know what you came to do. Now you just have to do it.