A Million Miles From Home

The Seclusion Of “Moose Country” A MILLION MILES FROM HOME Awaits Water Skiers Bold Enough To Travel The Roads Through Nowhere BY ROBERT STEPHENS A few weeks earlier I was told I'd be going to a water skiing school. With our offices in Central Florida, I figured it would be a quick trip down the road to one of the dozen or so instructional sites in the area and then back to the keyboard before the Snapple on my file cabinet turned warm. And then an airline ticket hit my desk. By the time reality reached out and tweaked my cheek, Delta Flight 1777 was descending between mountain peaks into a field laden with hay bales that looked like giant cinnamon rolls. I was officially dropped into the middle of nowhere. From the middle of nowhere there were still 65 miles of narrow two-lane roads to travel. This would take me into the outskirts of nowhere, also called Tobacco Valley - after the crop that was once grown here. Specifically, my destination was the Moose Country Waterski Camp, a six-cabin, two-dock suburb of Rexford, Montana. GOING NOWHERE AND BEYOND Instinct begs for an answer: Why in the names of Lewis and Clark is a person carting a trick ski and jump helmet into the farthest reaches of northwest Montana, where you're more likely to see an eagle arguing with a grizzly bear before you spot the first ski boat? There are two glaringly obvious explanations for why people fly, drive and hike into Moose Country with visions of slalom passes dancing in their heads: the big lake and the little lake. This is where you find the best - and usually the only - skiing in suburban nowhere. The Moose Country lakes are not the only bodies of skiable water in Tobacco Valley. There are at least 10 good ski lakes in the immediate area and even Rain Man would have a hard time counting the lakes that dot Lincoln County, which is roughly the size of West Virginia. The largest of the lot is Lake Koocanusa. Formerly a sidewalk-wide creek, the lake was dammed into a massive 90-mile-long body of water straddling half a mile between mountain ranges in the late '60s. The lake has enough bent elbows and knees to keep multiple calm-water waiting silently for company. Where are the boats? “One of the nice things about it,” Weber admits, “is there aren't many people who ski up here. There aren't many people, period. Most of the lakes have boat launches, but most days you'd be the only ski boat on the water.” HIDDEN TREASURE Neither Rand nor McNally would offer much help finding Tobacco Valley, which hides at the ankles of Mount Ksanka's 8,000-foot peak and in the shadows of the Kootenai and Flathead National Forests. It takes someone like Terry Britton, a fifth-year ski veteran of Moose Country, and his three-event kids, Trevor and Bonny, to locate the area. “I don't really care to try any other place. It's nice and quiet here. The lakes are always perfect for skiing, and we get to ski as much as we want. We'll keep coming back, maybe even later this year.” That seems to be the consensus. According to Weber, 60 to 70 percent of his visitors come back for another dose or two of mountain water skiing, sometimes the following year, sometimes after going home only long enough to feed the dogs. “This scenery is unbelievable,” says Guy Wold, a first- but probably not last-timer from Cass Lake, Minnesota. Wold has been skiing for more than a decade, but he and his 17-year-old daughter, Tonia, are basically relearning proper slalom techniques at Moose Country. FIVE ACTIVITIES FOR EXTREMISTS AND FOR THE LAID-BACK The article's second spread includes a long list of side activities around Moose Country, including Glacier National Park, mountain biking, tubing, rock climbing, hiking, cliff diving, local restaurants, porch viewing, big-screen TV downtime, easy listening in the woods, and painting the town in nearby Eureka. LAST BEST PLACE Keeping the notion's fourth-largest state a secret is becoming about as difficult for Montanans as pouring Gold into the backyard. “Montana” is derived from the Latin word meaning “mountainous.” It has also been called The Treasure State, Land of the Shining Mountains and Big Sky Country. LAST CALL It hasn't always been so skier friendly up this way. Some of the trailblazers to what has officially been Moose Country since 1983 had no interest in water skiing. Legend has it that during Prohibition, the mafia found the forests in the upper regions of Tobacco Valley a perfect stashing ground for massive amounts of whiskey. A SOBERING EXPERIENCE The staggeringly subtle starts when you leave the big lake and little lake. You watch the last moose lumber away and the jump ramp drifts out of sight, behind the huge pines. From nowhere you return to somewhere. For more information about water skiing in Moose Country, call (406) 889-**** or send your fax to (406) 889-****.