A Montana Community Rallies to Save Its Beloved Ski Hill

When the Sand Creek Fire crested Montana’s Maverick Mountain 16 days ago, Cory Birkenbuel watched as firefighters and aircraft fought to keep the flames from taking a place that had been part of his life since before he was born. 

Birkenbuel likes to tell the story of his mother, Peggy, skiing at Maverick while pregnant with him. With her February due date approaching, her doctor finally told her she needed to stop and have the baby. She stopped early that month. Birkenbuel, born Feb. 16, went on to ski there himself, then around the world before becoming a ski instructor. 

Then, flames came across the mountain, part of a particularly rough wildfire season in the American West.

Maverick’s base-area structures survived, along with snowcats and other equipment, according to co-owner and operator Erik Borge. But the ski area’s only chairlift sustained extensive damage. Borge said after the fire that the lift would most likely be inoperable for the coming ski season. 

For a small ski area built around a single chairlift, the damage created an uncertain future. But it also revealed how deeply Maverick, in the Grasshopper Valley of southwestern Montana, is woven into the communities around it. 

Now residents, businesses, nonprofits, people with a lifelong connection like Birkenbuel and a Montana rock musician are rallying to save it. 

Replacing and installing ski-lift infrastructure can cost millions of dollars, and supporters worried insurance would not cover everything. They launched Friends of Maverick Mountain to raise funds, collected by a nonprofit, the Dillon Jaycees, that’s run a “little skiers” program there for decades. People can donate online or through Stockman Bank locations in Montana. Organizers are also encouraging people to share photographs and memories of Maverick and spread information about the fundraising campaign. 

“We need all of our kids skiing again,” Birkenbuel wrote while calling on people to support the campaign. 

Tim Montana got involved even though he does not ski. 

The Montana-born hard-rock musician and entrepreneur co-owns the Wise River Club, a historic bar and hotel in Wise River, about 25 miles away. When the Sand Creek Fire brought hundreds of firefighters and other personnel into the region, Montana said his business provided them about 260 meals a day. Then Montana heard what had happened at Maverick. 

He contacted the owner and began thinking about the cost of putting the mountain back together. His response was to do what he knows best: put on a show. 

On Saturday, Montana plans to perform a free concert at the Wise River Club as part of the first in-person fundraiser for Friends of Maverick Mountain. Organizers say the event will also feature silent and live auctions, and they have asked community members to volunteer. 

There will be no traditional ticket price. Instead, Montana said, people can give whatever they are able to contribute. 

“I don’t care if they have a dollar, $10 or $20,” he said. “That’s the ticket fee to see the concert.” 

Montana’s children have been to Maverick. And he knows what the mountain means for children growing up in Beaverhead County and the surrounding rural communities. 

In a sparsely populated part of the state, where recreational opportunities for young people can be limited and communities are separated by long distances, those experiences matter. 

“I think this is kind of for the kiddos,” Montana said of the fundraising effort. 

People in the state, he added, are “really good about taking care of each other.” 

Borge, the resort’s co-owner, told the community in an Instagram post that with their support, “we will get through this, we will rebuild.” 

Maverick is bigger than just skiing, he said. And he doesn’t view it as belonging simply to its owners. 

“Maverick isn’t mine, man,” he said in an interview. “It’s no specific person’s mountain. It’s the community mountain, and we owe it to the community to keep it going.”