Just 20 miles from Whitefish Montana in the direction of Eureka lies the Great Northern Powder Guides backcountry cat-skiing operation, which has been guiding in the backcountry just across the highway for 15 years. Only a 30 minute ride from my hotel room, I arrived at the operation’s base lodge on Saturday the 25th to prepare for the day of at eight am.
The energy of the operation was contagious right as I walked in the door; with two private cats and a public steep and deep cat going out that day, roughly 25 people were buckling their boots for a long day of fresh tracks.
After strapping on the company-given beacons and loading our skis into the cats, we headed up into the backcountry — which was literally a one minute drive across the highway — for some avalanche training. The cats split into different groups, where everyone rehearsed the first steps of avalanche rescue. Operating in search mode, we spread out and searched for a pre-buried beacon, then dug it out as a team once we pinpointed it.
Once trained for the day, we hopped into the cat-cabins with our guides and followed the backcountry roads up the mountain to hunt our first fresh lines. Despite minimal new snow over the course of two weeks, as a dry spell lingers across the majority of the country, the zone we started with was entirely untracked — and this continued to be the trend throughout the day.
We followed our guides Cole Maxwell and Grant Hughes through the backcountry, with Cole expertly checking the snow-safety then laying down a “ski boundary” with his track. Our group followed either in pairs, individually, or as a party lap based on the aspect of the face and degree of the slope, with Grant following at the end to ensure team safety. I was both surprised and impressed to hear that over the course of 15 years, there had been zero avalanche instances thanks to the expert guiding and snow precautions of the team.
As part of the steep and deep cat, the terrain we skied had varying features like cliff hits, rollers, tight trees, and pillows. Several of these features were primed for backflips and airs, and everyone in our group from ages fifteen to 50+ was getting some hang time.
We had about seven laps of fresh turns under our belt by the time we went in for lunch, which the team serves hot every day in a Yurt they built nestled in the mountain. For lunch that day was a chicken and corn soup, fresh salad, and an array of fruit, cookies, and energy balls.
Lunch was only about half an hour long, for we still had several zones to knock off the itinerary before we returned to basecamp for the day. This year, Great Northern Powder Guides has over 15,000 acres of skiable terrain open, which they say is in part due to their position in a “banana belt” of snow.
According to Jay, the founder of GNPG, the mountain range they operate on lies within a banana belt, which gets snow storms from British Columbia in addition to the snow that flows Northwest from Whitefish. With a competitive snowfall compared to the surrounding area, their terrain opens shortly after Christmas and is blessed with refills throughout the season the rest of the area can’t rely on.
Around 5:30 pm, our crew had sore legs and big smiles from fresh tracks all day, and it was time to head back to base camp. We packed in the cabin for our final descent out of the mountains, and we enjoyed a few beers as we chatted with the guides and new friends we met throughout the day. While I knew nobody going into the day, I had great conversations with everyone in my group throughout the day, and met some super fun people I’ll be able to stay in contact with for years to come.
As a whole, it was incredible to get some deep turns in a season that has been riddled with dry spells, and it was a treat to experience my first cat ski adventure with Great Northern Powder Guides. Thanks for making it happen, I can’t wait to come back!
Author: Tate Sundberg
