Skiing Red Lodge

Between 1939 and 1960, residents tested and rejected at least five possible ski hills in the nearby Beartooth Mountains, places with names that kindle the imagination - Dead Man's Curve, Shangri-La and Sundance. In addition there were summer ski camps in the mountains, ski-joring - where skiers are pulled by a rider on horseback over a series of jumps - and cross-country skiing.

"Red Lodge is really a skiing community where people went out to make their own fun," said Ray Masters, co-author of a new book recounting the history of skiing in the area.

"Skiing Red Lodge: Dead Man's Curve to Grizzly Peak, A History," is available in bookstores now. Masters co-wrote the book with Mark Edwards. Both men work at Red Lodge Mountain Resort - Masters as a snowboard instructor, Edwards teaching skiers - and are relatively new to their adopted community.

Photo attraction

The book contains numerous historical photos, one of which spurred the book's creation. A large hand-tinted black-and-white print that hangs in the offices at Red Lodge Mountain caught Masters' attention. The photograph is of skiers at Shangri-La Ski Area, just south of Red Lodge in Rock Creek Canyon.

"I just kept looking at that and, it's almost a spooky picture," he said. "I began researching where Shangri-La was."

After making a print of the photo, he drove out to the old site and tried to imagine it as it had once been - with a 2,000-foot rope tow and log lodge. The site, which was adopted in 1946, was abandoned after a summer wildfire swept through in 1948.

"I poked around and found the remains of the cabin," Masters said. "You can't see the runs any more because the trees have grown up around them."

Snow farming

As it does today, snow was often the governing factor in where Red Lodge's ski areas were located. One entrepreneur thought he could make enough of his own snow and launched Sundance Ski Area on the side of Mount Maurice, just southeast of town.

Started in 1965, the ski area was imagined by developer Hy Bishoff as a resort community that would include a golf course, swimming pool, home sites and lodge. The seats on the chairlift reportedly were recycled movie theater seats.

Sundance was short-lived, too, closing after only one season.

In a similar fashion, big dreams led to troubled times for Red Lodge Mountain after the ski area was expanded to include two new lifts - Palisades and Cole Creek - in 1996. The lifts were completed shortly before Montana entered seven years of drought that saw little snow coat the slopes that the lifts served, so they didn't run.

Masters and Edwards didn't shy away from talking about this troubled time in the ski area's history but did leave out what they couldn't verify independently.

"We tried to share as much as we could and still be responsible," Edwards said.

They also didn't avoid the fact that the Silver Run Ski Foundation, which fostered the search for many of the later ski areas, was a hard-drinking, hard-partying bunch. In one stunt, the group clothed a dummy and placed it into an idle chairlift at a Colorado ski resort at night. The next morning the ski patrol panicked at the sight of an apparently frozen skier who had been accidentally left aloft. The practical joke earned the foundation members the nickname of Montana billy goats.

"Several people said, ‘We were a social club and ski club,'" Edwards said.

Nuts and bolts

The book took two years for the men to piece together, with help from several local people who edited, collected information and designed the book. Edwards said he did 30 interviews and could have done more, but had to cut it off at some point. They even uncovered old 8mm and 16mm film that will be pieced together for an upcoming DVD. They showed some of the old film to some of the Silver Run Foundation members.

"It was funny," Masters said. "They recognized people from how they skied or what they were wearing."

The production of the book has been a fun slog for the duo. Masters couldn't believe how many errors he would find no matter how often he read the manuscript. Edwards said he was surprised by how many steps it took to create the publication. But in the end they both found the work rewarding, especially after getting feedback from those who read it. Some commented about all of the memories the book brought back.

"We found so many people who were connected to the mountain," Edwards said.

"It was fun, just a fun project to research."

Contact Brett French, Gazette Outdoors editor, at french@billingsgazette.com or at 657-1387.