“This is the granddaddy of off-trail riding,” Wulf says, spreading his arms wide to take in the surrounding mountains and large basin just over the hill from Daisy Pass.
Warren Wulf, 30, says one of his friends lured him to the location, far from his home in Sumner, Iowa.
The Wulf clan isn’t unusual. One estimate by a Cooke City local said the town’s population swells in the wintertime mostly thanks to male snowmobilers, although backcountry skiers and snowboarders are a growing contingent.
Walk down the snow-covered streets of Cooke City, dodging to the side when the occasional snowmobiler rides down Main Street, and you’ll see license plates from Washington, Minnesota and Saskatchewan. One trio of riders gets together each winter, one of them flying into the state from Boston just to enjoy the riding.
Many business owners agree that visits have dropped this year, partly because there’s been more snow in the Midwest so riders haven’t had to travel.
“We’re at the other end of the world,” says Richard “Frenchy” Ducrot, who owns The Bistro restaurant. He worries that because the town is so remote, rising gas prices could cut into the number of folks willing to drive to the area to recreate.
Still, it’s hard to beat the snowfall that the Beartooth Mountains get, especially this winter with snowpack pushing 120 percent of normal in some areas.
“This year we’ve had a pretty dominant westerly flow bringing in Pacific moisture,” says Albert Richmond of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Billings. “That upslope flow combines to bring pretty heavy snow to the west- and northwest-facing slopes in that area.”
Translation: “They’re doing pretty good for snowfall,” Richmond said, thanks to a La Nina over the Pacific Ocean that brings a more westerly flow to Montana - particularly to western Montana. On the flip side, the event means less snow for the eastern plains and Billings area.
Year in and year out, though, snow conditions in Cooke City are so dependable, and the snow sticks around for so long, that snowmobile manufacturers Arctic Cat and Yamaha visit the area to test their newly developed machines.
“Sometimes you get a chance to look at the new sleds if it’s next year’s model,” says Brandon Strom, owner of Cooke City Motorsports, which rents snowmobiles and four-wheelers. “If it’s a prototype, though, they keep it pretty hush-hush. But every now and then you’ll get a glimpse of them.”
The main downside of all the snow is that it can translate into high avalanche danger. On Sunday, a snowmobiler was caught in an avalanche on Lulu Pass but wasn’t harmed, while a skier triggered an avalanche the same day on Daisy Pass. Three avalanche deaths have been recorded in Montana this winter, all skiers, while Wyoming has had four snowmobiler deaths due to avalanches. No one has been killed in the Cooke City area this winter.
“I’ve had a few minor slides under me,” says Todd Chatelain, 49, who runs Big Moose Resort outside Cooke City with his wife Bev. “But you play it safe and stay out of avalanche run-out areas. You get your beacons and shovels and if something happens, you get there immediately.”
Chatelain says he’s pulled a few friends out of avalanches who were partially buried and he’s assisted on other rescues, but the risk doesn’t deter him from riding.
“There have always been avalanches,” he says. “But the more technologically advanced the sleds get, the higher they go - it’s a real and apparent danger up here.”
The invention of lighter, more powerful snowmobiles prompted the surge in snowmobiling in towns like Cooke City, as well as the surge in snowmobile-caused avalanches. It wasn’t always that way.
“It used to take us days just to get over Lulu Pass,” Chatelain recalls. “The sleds wouldn’t go where they go today. One guy would go up as far as he could and make a turn. It was a concerted effort by everyone to make a track to where you could get out.”
“If you dropped off, going around Fisher Mountain, a lot of them couldn’t make it back over the top of Daisy Pass,” he adds. “Now you can get a lot more places a lot easier, but the snowmobiles are still less than 100 percent reliable.”
Chatelain says even the modern snowmobiles can get stuck in the light, deep snow or break down when a part or belt fails. Although he runs the groomer that packs 40 to 50 miles of trails in the area for less-daring riders, that’s not where Chatelain rides. He’s strictly an off-trail man.
“I groom the trails, I don’t ride them,” he says and smiles.
Brett French can be contacted at french@billingsgazette.com or at 657-1387.
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