It is one of those brilliant early April days that define spring. With a warm late morning sun turning the south and west faces to corn, I have been trying to catch Robert and Andrew, my twelve and fourteen year old sons. I need them to stop long enough to take a picture but they’re having way too much fun to hurry up and wait while I fiddle with shutter speed, f-stops and angles. I can see the boys far below following Brundage Mountain Snow Cat guide, Harry Clark through a stand of dormant aspen. Andrew is arcing his snowboard around the white trees. Robert is worse. Less than three months out of shoulder surgery, he’s never met a jump he doesn’t like. Off wind lips, buried stumps and fall away faces. So far he’s hit all the landings, but I can see it’s only a matter of time before he blows one. When I suggested Cat Skiing in Brundage Idaho, I had no idea it would be such a roaring success.
When you live in Sun Valley Idaho, agreeing on a winter vacation can be as tough as picking a newborn’s name. Friends, neighbors, parents, Andrew and Robert all demanded a vote.
Robert has a thing about beaches. if he has never been to a tropic beach, my youngest son is drawn to Cancun, Hawaii, Tahiti--the where doesn’t matter as long as it includes an equatorial sun, a perfect surf break, white beaches and clear warm water. Andrew could go either way. Hawaii would work, but having skied in Jackson Hole, Big Sky and Copper Mountain, he has a world view that belies his fourteen years.
For myself, I hate lying on beaches. Forget all those ads that show a George Hamilton look alike with twenty-year-old pecs checking out the string bikinis. I know, at my age, excessive bronzing, eating and drinking will turn you into a wrinkled, fat and cancerous outpatient. Give me a foot of fresh powder, brilliant views and a thousand vertical and I’ll ski until the lifts quit running, the sun sets or the heli-guides give the signal to head’em up and move’em out signal.
Having been born and raised in Sun Valley, my sons tend to judge all resorts by a harsh standard. “Why,” Robert wonders aloud. “Would we want to ski someplace that isn’t as good?”
“It’s not a matter of good and bad,” I objected “It’s the chance to ski new terrain, lifts and snow and other differences....”
“Well, if you want different,” Robert pointed out. “Then why not go reef diving in Hawaii....” And my son’s sudden and powerful allusion to a tropical reef covered with schools of colorful fish, made me forget my next thought. Mentioning the reef hurt and as much as he hates to agree with his brother, Andrew is within seconds of voting for the beach.
If I wanted to avoid baking on a Mexican beach, I needed a close to home, affordable, outfitted adventure to wear the boys out. A rondinee into the local Pioneer Mountains had a certain seductive appeal, but for the cost of equipping my sons with free heel bindings, climbing skins, avalanche beacons, shovels, probes tents, winter weight sleeping bags, cooking utensils and food, we could fly to La Paz. And that doesn’t factor in the blisters and possible frost bite from humping all that gear into the back country.
Helicopter skiing would provide the high part of adventure, but it also comes at an equally high cost. Figure $5000 per person, give or take a few hundred, and that doesn’t include the extra cost per foot of anything over the guaranteed one hundred thousand vertical. And while heliskiing is great fun, when you mix teenage boys with turning blades, blowing snow and shouted instructions, the stress factor--at least for dad-- goes off the scale.
Bringing the full force of my age to bear, I asked. “How about cat skiing in Brundage?” Brundage Mountain the ski resort had been granted a permit to Cat Ski the 19,000 acres surrounding Granite Mountain. Located eight miles north of McCall, Idaho off Highway 95,Brundage towers above Central Idaho’s beautiful forests, mountains and lakes. It is also blessed with a predictable jet stream. Between Oregon’s Cascades and Idaho’s Salmon River Range, there is little besides open desert to impede the ebb and flow of low pressure. From early November to late April, roughly 350 inches of snow falls upon the ski area’s 1300 acres, 38 runs and four chairs. With a vertical drop of 1800 feet, Brundage offers world class tree, glade and cat skiing. And yet, except for McCall locals and a few Boise natives who make the two hour drive north, few know that along with two days of cat skiing, Brundage offers an optional overnight stay in a yurt on Granite Peak.
The mere mention of a back country adventure can make my sons work harder than bribes, heart to heart talks or any other positive (or negative) reinforcements.
“Cat Skiing?” Andrew was the first to break the silence,.
“What exactly is cat skiing?” Robert echoed his brother, the images of tropical fish giving way to bobcats, cougars and lynxes.
“It’s where a snow cat takes you to the top of a mountain and then you ski down.” I could see questions forming about whether we would have to sit on the tiller or blade. “It’s like riding in a school bus with tracks,” I assured them.
It takes an hour for the snow cat to travel from Brundage Ski Resort to Granite Peak. We met guides Harry Clark, Niki LeClair and J.T More at 7:30 at the Brundage day lodge. On this brilliant early spring morning, the air smelled of ripening pine and the promise of new snow spinning across the western ridges on white horsetails. For that day at least the weather would hold and J.T. More offered to fit us in Volant Chubbs. Since Andrew wanted to snowboard and Robert refused to be separated from his K2 bump skis Then, though the snowpack was extremely stable, the guides handed everyone an Ortovox receiver and ran an avalanche drill.
It was 8:15 a.m. when we followed a machine road away from the resort. During the ride out to Granite Mountain, Harry Clark cautioned the boys to stick with the group and to avoid tree wells, frozen ski tracks and areas where the slope suddenly rolled off. In time, the machine road skirted a frozen lake bottom then started to climb through shadowed glades and sunlit meadows before breaking out on a high, isolated ridge called “76 Prominade” that climbed to Granite Mountain’s 8,478-foot summit. Climbing out of the cat, we could see the nearby Salmon River Mountains, Oregon's Eagle Cap Wilderness and the famed Seven Devils that stand above over Hells Canyon, the U.S.’s deepest canyon.
The boys quickly unloaded their skis and boards and attached themselves to Harry Clark. From a parent’s perspective you couldn’t find a better role model. A certified alpine and Nordic instructor, Harry has taught rocking climbing, avalanche safety and survival skills. His love of high mountains, started in the Army at Camp Hale, Colorado in the early fifties, where he taught skiing and mountain climbing. In the time since, he has trekked from Mammoth to Yosemite in midwinter, worked as a smoke jumper and guided ski and hiking trips to to Europe.
Turning his back on the cat, Harry leads the boys toward the distant frozen plane of lake????? A passing storm has dusted the south faces with two inches of cold snow and I watch the boys arc around trees, launch off bumps and throw waves of snow crystals that sparkle in the cold morning air. Called “ Bread and Butter” the south face is an excellent warm up run. Even my wife Barbara, who normally skis four days a year, quickly links a dozen turns through a towering stand of evergreens. It takes ten minutes to ski to the lake where the cat is already waiting.
The system of snow roads surrounding Granite Peak was surveyed to minimize waits. “As soon as we reach the bottom, hopefully the cat is pulling up.” Harry says, adding that the operation couldn’t survive without the resort’s mechanics and infrastructure to maintain the cats. “It’s basically a load up and go operation,” he says.
Brundage’s Cat’s nineteen thousand permitted acres stretches from horizon to horizon. The movement of water wind and ice have softened the rolling mountains around McCall. What nature started, man refined. This is no virgin old growth. During the past century these rolling face have been alternately logged and burned, leaving a patchwork of open meadows, glades and clear bowls. All this translates into miles of untracked intermediate terrain where the runs descend in long gentle pitches to the waiting cat..
I keep trying to take photos but with the south faces beginning to corn up, no one wants to stand around and pose. Continuing down the “76 Prominade” ridge, we ski the south facing “Rolly Polly” and “Peanut Butter and Jelly” which provides a fine place to stop for lunch. Andrew and Robert quickly devour the hot soup, sandwiches, and deserts then load their skis and snowboards onto the cat and try to hurry the guides along.
The beauty of Granite Mountain is you never run out of terrain. That afternoon, we explored a dozen steeper runs that wound through stands of scrub pine, aspen and down lower huge Douglas fir. With puffy cumulous alternately shading the afternoon sun, the snow hovered just above corn. At times the snow was a little harder, at times softer, but we could not have asked for more perfect conditions. Run followed run, until we finally lost count of the names and vertical feet. The sun was casting long shadows beyond the trees when we reluctantly reboarded the cat and turn toward the yurt.
Set on a high point above the New Meadows valley, Brundage Cat’s wood stove heated sleeping and cooking yurts offered spectacular views of Granite Mountain and the distant Seven Devils. After unloading their gear from the snowcat Andrew and Robert dug a snow cave and playing hide and seek with an Ortovox. Not realizing that twenty feet of snow covered the ground, Robert unfortunately dropped his Ortovox down a tree well.
“Dad, what are we going to do?” he wondered peering down into the labyrinth of branches.
“Looks like you’d better start digging,” I told him. Fortunately, the Ortovox had hung up on a branch a few feet from the surface and half an hour later, Robert triumphantly entered the cooking yurt.
That night we feasted on salmon steaks, home baked bread, salad and pineapple upside down cake then gathered outside to watch the Hale Bobb comet. Standing in brilliant relief above the yurts, the Hale bob mirrored the day’s magic.
A harsh wind shook the yurt that night and the following morning we stepped into six inches of fresh powder. We quickly packed our bags and following a delicious breakfast of blueberry pancakes, climbed into the cat. Heading south along a main north south ridge, our first run was off Zims Plunge that wound through aspen groves and open meadows. The fresh snow lay on yesterday’s hard surface and moving gradually uphill toward Granite’s summit and we cut successive runs in the untracked surface.
I suspect between the skiing and riding up front with the cat driver, the boys were having too much fun to argue. Without being asked, they helped unload gear and made sure everyone stayed in a group. It was a peaceful interlude from the stress of sibling rivalry. If there was a downside, it was the squalls of fresh snow, gusts of wind and brilliant burst of sunshine on the steep hillsides chronicled the passing hours.
It was early afternoon when we followed Harry Clark through the stunted trees below Granite’s summit . It was the steepest terrain and at 2800 feet, the longest vertical we had skied in two days. A rising wind that preceded a new storm had pushed the fresh snow into waves, curls and rolls. The boys could not resist jumping, carving and arcing around the low trees. We explored pockets of powder and deep shadowed glades, steep faces and gentle flats. We rested in the cat, refueled on hot chocolate and home baked cookies, then stepped out and dived downhill again.
It was late afternoon when the clouds lowered, the visibility fled and we reluctantly settled into the cat for the hour ride back to Brundage ski area. While Andrew quickly fell asleep, Robert stared out the window at the falling flakes and passing trees. My youngest son was obviously fighting the postpartum blues that haunt great vacations. Turning to me he had an idea for next year’s winter vacation. He wanted trade Cancun’s beaches for Brundage’s cats.
“Maybe we could come after Christmas,” he suggested. “New Years even, when the snow will be deep and at night maybe we could set off fireworks and stay up until midnight.”