Ride the White Thunder

Finding the soul of skiing at Montana’s Maverick Mountain.

- Drew Pogge

For many, the measure of a skier is “soul”—a fluid concept encompassing a drive to make turns as often as possible and to make skiing a way of life. And if commitment is a marker by which soul is understood, then the new owners of Montana’s Maverick Mountain have soul in spades—though it’s not entirely clear whether they are committed, or should be committed. Either way, in true Montana form they cowboyed up, grabbed the bull by the horns, and did what every skier only talks about: They bought a ski area.

Maverick isn’t a resort. It’s an old-fashioned ski hill, with $36 lift tickets and one slow double lift that climbs 2,020 vertical feet overlooking the ragged ridgelines of the Pioneer Mountains outside of Polaris, Mont. (population 76). There’s a lodge, cafeteria, ski school, rental shop, and cozy slope side bar. The ski area is open Thursday to Sunday (which means Thursdays can be deep), and RVs are welcome in the dirt parking lot. There, a hand-painted sign depicts a skier riding a bucking white bull, with the slogan “Ride the White Thunder” emblazoned across the top. Maverick has remained more or less unchanged since the early 1950s, when it first opened as Rainy Mountain—a SKI area name now widely recognized as the worst ever. Now Erik and Kristi Borge, along with a couple of their college friends (and new business partners), wouldn’t have it any other way.