My first time on the North Summit Snowfield, the run that epitomizes the Biggest Skiing in America
WITH 5,532 SKIABLE acres, Big Sky Resort and Moonlight Basin make up The Biggest Skiing in America. But a big claim like that is about more than just stats. It’s about expanse and variety. It's about elbow room and attitude. It’s about an entire experience.
Nothing exemplifies this more than the North Summit Snowfield – the expert run off of 11,166-foot Lone Peak that requires a joint Biggest Skiing in America lift ticket, signing out with Ski Patrol, and some sizeable cojones to descend. It’s the kind of big, gnarly skiing you only find in the backcountry or cat skiing – but accessible by the Lone Peak Tram.
Just last week, my friend Katie and I were North Summit virgins. We both have hundreds of Big Sky ski days under our belts, but when you’re exploring as much terrain as Big Sky offers, there’s always something left to discover.
For us that was the North Summit, so we enlisted the help of Moonlight ski patroller Pete Owens and North Summit vets Lyndsey Owens and Chad Jones. Newbies are encouraged to bring a guide for their first trips down to reduce the possibility of taking a wrong turn off the side of a cliff, and we had recruited the best.
It was a bluebird day, the snow was smooth and wind-buffed, and we braced ourselves for a heart-pounding descent. As longtime local Meg O’Leary describes it, the North Summit Snowfield is like an extreme version of a run on Marx, then First Gully, then Lenin, all in succession. Meg famously guided now avy-certified Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake down the snowfield last winter. I yelled to Katie as we made the steep traverse to our entry point - If Jess and Justin could do it, so could we!
And we did – following Pete to make powdery turns down the sheer face before sidestepping and traversing to more of the wide-open steep and deep. And while maybe we didn’t rip it like a hardcore ski pro, or even like Jessica Biel, this terrain was straight out of a Warren Miller movie: for our turns on the North Summit Snowfield, we all felt like ski celebrities.
This, I thought, is the Biggest Skiing in America.
- Greer
Katie Grice and Pete Owens pause during a traverse on the North Summit Snowfield
Chad Jones and Lyndsey Owens make turns down a narrow chute on the North Summit
Greer descends smooth, wind-buffed powder.
North-facing snow stays soft for Lyndsey Owens
