Backside junkies

By Erin Nicholes of The Montana Standard - 03/13/2006

Steve Gerdes, known to some as “Backside Steve,” stands at the bottom of the Anaconda Lift at Discovery Ski Area recently. Lisa Kunkel / The Montana Standard

The only sound on the mountain was the gentle whoosh that followed Ray Loftin and Sam Fay as they carved up the powder.

Each skier stopped, spraying snow, and turned uphill to study the lines that snaked through powder and disappeared into trees.

“It’s always good when you’re making first tracks,” said Loftin, 69, pausing on a run on Discovery Ski Area’s backside, the Flint Creek Valley sprawling in the backdrop.

Fresh powder, tree skiing and 1,000 vertical feet of lift-served terrain lure experienced skiers to the backside.

Among them are a group of about 30 intense skiers who spend every possible waking moment carving up the mountain. They’re the junkies.

“You see them whenever we get fresh snow,” said Peter Pitcher, Discovery’s owner. “They always have season passes and that’s the only place they ever want to ski.” To the backside junkies, skiing is central. They have Discovery on speed dial.

“The first thing I do (in the morning) is call up here to get a snow report,” said Fay, 29. “I try to get in as much skiing as I can.” Loftin hits the backside every other day, winding through trees and powder parks. His favorite run is Mother Lode, which he calls “the good mother gully,” exposing his Georgia roots.

Mother Lode is nearly perfectly vertical at the top; skiers have to stand on the very edge to get a dizzying look at the ground below.

“When you make a pretty good run and get to the bottom, it just feels kind of good,” Loftin said.

He’s a serious skier, but not as intense as one man who has mastered the terrain. They call him Backside Steve, and word has it he’s so intense he makes 30 runs a day and eats lunch on the lift.

His real name is Steve Gerdes. But the rest is true.

“I make 30 runs a day at a minimum,” said Gerdes, who prefers not to be called by his nickname. “A couple of the people that I ski with joke that if you don’t do 30, it doesn’t count as a day you ski.” Gerdes, a fisheries biologist, skied the backside even before runs were cut and lifts were built. He never strays from the Limelight lift, which serves the steepest terrain. When he’s not working, he’s there.

“I work 10 hours a day, four days a week so I can ski three days a week,” he said.

And he’s not a fairweather fan; he prefers to hit the mountain with the storm, not afterwards.

“My favorite thing to do is a January blizzard, when it’s cold and snowing like hell and nobody else is out,” he said.

And yes, he really eats lunch on the lift; usually an elk steak sandwich.

Going to the lodge for lunch would mean “I would have to ski down the front side, wait through the lunch line, ride the chair back up and miss 45 minutes of my ski day,” he said.

Gerdes, and other backside junkies, spend more time on the mountain than the guy who made it possible for them to get their fixes.

“I can only do a couple of runs back there, then I get tired,” Pitcher said.

But it’s not about tallying runs, the junkies say.

It’s about escaping.

“From the moment I start in the morning until I leave, everything else just disappears,” Fay said.

And, purely and simply, it’s about play.

“It’s exciting, it’s exhilarating,” Gerdes said. “We’re men and women at work. We go outside and play, we’re just a bunch of kids, boys and girls.” Erin Nicholes may be reached at erin.nicholes@mtstandard.com.