Why the Amish are Montana's Most Devoted Backcountry Skiers

This story originally appeared in the November 2019 (48.2) issue of POWDER.

Idling on the skin track, his face flushed with gusto and sunburn, Toby Yoder tells me about God. “When we’re up here, I feel we’re with Him,” he says. Behind us, rays of April sunlight pour down Kakache Peak’s northwest-facing couloirs, which harbor powder that hasn’t been touched once this winter. The blocky 8,575-foot mountain sits between Missoula and Whitefish, Montana, within the Confederated Salish and Kootenay Tribes’ Mission Mountains Wilderness, the first wilderness area in the United States to be designated and administered by a tribal government. With few people and no roads, the 45-mile-long Mission Range is quieter than nearby Glacier National Park, and features sprawling wilderness, high alpine lakes, imperiled glaciers, dramatic horned peaks, and knife-sharp ridgelines.

The people who ski Kakache, like 32-year-old Yoder, live in St. Ignatius, on the Flathead Nation Reservation just south of Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater body west of the Mississippi. About 850 people call this small agricultural town home. In the late ’90s, a few Amish families moved to St. Ignatius from the backwoods of northwest Montana in pursuit of more open living in the wide-set valley. Their settlement grew, attracting Amish people from across the country. Now, 23 families pursue a devout Christian lifestyle in the shadow of the Missions.

“Being up in the mountains, seeing God’s creation and the awesomeness of it, really makes God real. The quietness, the peacefulness. Sometimes it’s stormin’ and blowin’, and it reminds us of the power God has,” Yoder explains. “In my everyday life, I feel a connection to God. I feel like I have God on my side. I’m living for God. But when I’m up here, it seems like there’s an extra-special closeness.”

When I came here last spring seeking a glimpse of this closeness, I hoped it would be more profound than the sermons of the blissed-out bros who proclaim skiing is their religion. I learned, for Montana’s Amish, their actual spiritual work happens down in the valley, among their families and within their church. They quickly debunked my assumption that their Mission expeditions were somehow related to their redemption. If their relationship with God weren’t already in order, they wouldn’t be going into the mountains. So when they ski, they ski to fortify community bonds, which are essential for a group choosing to live outside mainstream America. They ski because our fast laps off Kakache’s sun-drenched shoulder, where we floated through steep and secret powder, felt better than almost anything else on this mundane Earth. What I didn’t expect is that, because it was so easy to understand what skiing means to them, I wound up reckoning with what it means to me.

The Milky Way is glittering at 6 a.m. when we depart Lucas Beachy’s home in St. Ignatius. We’re wearing ski boots on bicycles. They don’t drive. The access to Kakache is about a mile due east on this straight dirt road, which is buckled and potholed from a week-long thaw in late March. Since then, the temperatures have trended colder, and there’s been some precipitation. The gentle uphill bike ride turns out to be a lovely warm-up.

It’s me, Toby Yoder, and David Reynolds, 34, who was the first in this Amish community to explore skiing on Kakache Peak a decade ago; plus Steven Yoder and Jake Borntrager, two 19-yearolds representing the first real generation of backcountry skiers from this church, and Beachy, 27, around whom their entire ski community revolves.

Beachy wears a pair of clean, trim, bright blue Marmot bibs; one of the younger boys has a Hollister hoodie on. In everyday life, they wear plain, solid-colored shirts and homemade jeans that fasten with buttons instead of zippers. The women’s everyday outfit is a floor-length dress, usually sewn by the wearer and paired with a white hair covering. The uniform is an intentional showing of unity, but it belies the diversity of practice among different Amish communities. While a literal understanding of the Bible is the foundation of Amish worldview, the doctrine is decentralized. Members of each church collectively strive to enact their own best vision of a Christian way of life. Which means that the guidelines, though all based in scripture, vary from church to church.

Beachy figures that St. Ignatius’s Amish culture ranks eight out of 10 on the liberal side. They don’t drive, use cell phones, vote, or listen to secular music. School ends after eighth grade. People ride to the general store by horse and buggy. They do sometimes use landlines and electricity in their homes. Avalanche beacons are OK because they don’t connect to the Internet. Beachy works as a carpenter on extravagant Flathead Lake mansions. He uses power tools at the job site, but a Mormon crewmember drives the carpool.

Some Amish communities wouldn’t have permitted me, an unmarried woman and an outsider, to ski in the backcountry alone with just men. Meanwhile, some churches, like the one in Ohio where Beachy grew up, sanction trips to public ski areas. The St. Ignatius community doesn’t; a decision they made unanimously years ago to limit “worldly contact.” I think skiers can understand the isolationist tendency to retreat to someplace you consider pure. Beachy says that the prohibition is a blessing in disguise. “It enables us to push backcountry,” he explains, “which I think is way better than any resort.”

Kakache is on the fringe of the Missions, an obscure mountain in an obscure range. While planning this trip, I keep suggesting we ski one of the few well-known mountains and lines in the range, like an impeccable 1,500-foot northwestfacing couloir off Gray Wolf Peak, a 9,001-foot summit. Beachy eventually explains that, for them, “Kakache is the center.”

I visit Don Scharfe, the region’s elder mentor of backcountry skiing, at Rocky Mountain Outfitter, the gear shop he opened in Kalispell in 1976. We spread out a map and I point out Kakache. He hums. “I don’t know anybody that ever skis in there,” he says. “When you said, ‘Kakache,’ I kept going, Kakache, Kakache, huh. But, it is there… very cool.” He figures skiers overlook it, knowing the reward of bigger objectives that the range’s characteristically strenuous approaches access.

After pedalling 10 minutes from Beachy’s house, the road smacks the toe of the mountain. We stash our bikes, shoulder our packs and skis, and walk up a skinnier, deteriorating dirt road. There’s no snow yet. Here, the route cuts through private land owned by non-Amish people the skiers know. Soon we duck off between two nondescript saplings. A faint path leads through a dense alder thicket. We reach an old burn. The trail, beaten into the beargrass carpet, fades in and out of existence and goes straight up. I mimic Beachy’s well-practiced, grapevine-like uphill shuffle.

“Accidentally got a switchback here,” he jokes at one lone crook in the trail.

Songbirds chitter as the day breaks. Around 7 a.m., we reach a band of protruding cliffs sitting about 1,000 vertical feet over the valley. Almost every Amish home down in St. Ignatius has a scope trained on these mountains—originally to observe wildlife and weather, and now to keep tabs on skiers.

Beachy teases Borntrager, who is stabbing his ski pole thoughtlessly on the ground while we catch our breath. He fondly calls the fidget “an outward manifestation of inner turmoil.”

Finally, we encounter patches of snow, hard enough to indicate a bomber overnight freeze. I thwack my boot into the surface, and the cascading crystals tinkle like a rainstick. We continue booting—Beachy calls it “strolling”—until we reach Kakache ridge, around 10 a.m. Our plan is to drop onto the backside, where the snow is more protected from the sun. To our right, the ridge swoops around and rises toward the peak. The wide, bald summit of a mountain known as Sugarloaf, which this crew has also skied, dominates the view.

Before we ski, I awkwardly conduct a beacon test. I’m not uncomfortable traveling with this group, but we don’t share the same avalanche protocol. This range isn’t within any avalanche center’s advisory area. I couldn’t find posted observations on snow conditions, but the Amish wouldn’t use that data, anyway. Beachy tells me there’s a 1-800 weather information line he could call, but he never has.

We select the most conservative descent, a mellow line from the saddle. The younger Yoder goes first and falls on his ass. He shouts, “OK!” and the others lovingly howl at his mortifying misfortune. He finishes the run, and it seems like we’ll be able to avoid a nasty melt-freeze crust by micromanaging our aspect. Beachy drops in. He skis exuberantly, without much technique or apparent self-consciousness. It’s infectious. When I go, I find a few inches of powder sitting on a base that feels supportive, unspoiled by the recent warming. I lay down an even set of turns next to Beachy’s emphatic squiggle, then bob and weave through hulking boulders strewn playfully about the runout. Down in the cradle of the basin, we all bump fists, giggling together.

Our next few lines edge up the ridge, closer to Kakache proper. They’re 500 feet long, but twice as steep as the saddle run, and more northerly. With the skin track set, we make quick work of three runs, and break for lunch on the ridge. The resplendent afternoon sun blesses the couloirs off Kakache.

After arranging my tableau of energy snacks and dried fruit, I notice that everyone else is lighting a Jetboil. Beachy boils snow, singing to himself, “Who wants a hot dog? Me! Who wants two hot dogs? Me!” He favors Johnsonville’s jalapeño and cheddar brats. Reynolds flings cheese slices at the elder Yoder, sharing. One slice flies over the ridge, and everyone wheezes with laughter. They tease each other mercilessly. The ripening spring sun, which feels sudden at the end of a harsh winter, supplies a carefree intoxication.

Even though the snow surpassed our expectations, we pack it in after the picnic, because we’ve committed to returning early enough to clean up for 6 p.m. supper. Next time, we agree, they’ll show me Kakache’s couloirs. By the time we get back to our bikes, I’m lightheaded and clomping sloppily. Freewheeling home through the golden hour, we pass a woman gardening on the edge of her property, wearing a pearl-white hair covering and a robin’s egg-blue dress. When she sees us, she waves, beaming.

In May 2009, David Reynolds moved from Ohio, where he was born, to Montana, where he loved the mountains. He grew up near Snow Trails, the Buckeye State’s premier ski resort with a vertical drop of 301 feet. Once he saw that the Missions still carried snow, he explains, “It’s only natural what follows.” He set out on a trip to 9,820-foot McDonald Peak—a glacial massif, the tallest in the range—an ambitious choice for experienced skiers. “I didn’t research it at all. We just went,” he recalls. His gear was from the pawnshop, and his partner, Sylvan Yoder, had only snowshoes. When a rainstorm hit on the first day, they took refuge under a tarp they found, auspiciously, wedged beneath a log. The storm raged for 14 hours, Reynolds says, and then they continued to the summit. He rode sun-cupped summer crap. But it scratched a certain itch—you know the one. McDonald became an annual tradition.

Years later, “all of a sudden, we got this great idea: Let’s go to Kakache,” he says. “There was no turning back… That became our playground.” It’s an easy bike ride to the trailhead, and the avalanche hazards felt more manageable. They went more often. The “community” was just Reynolds and whomever he could convince to come along. (Reynolds is Mennonite, which he describes as being “Amish, but with a cell phone and a truck.”) Six years ago, family drew him to Kansas, which is where he lives now, though he often visits Montana to ski, hunt, and see friends. While he was away, skiing in St. Ignatius stalled. And then Beachy arrived, kick-starting a new chapter.

“You can have a great idea, but until you get the right person to push it, it doesn’t go anywhere. Lucas is an influential person. He has charisma that gets people enthused,” says Reynolds.

With a tidy chinstrap beard and strong jawline, Beachy speaks in a kind but formal manner, showing no trace of the Pennsylvania-Dutch dialect that Amish use among themselves. He grew up in Ohio’s Holmes County, the heart of the state’s Amish community, and became a skier at Holiday Valley Ski Resort, in New York. In his early 20s, he began visiting friends in Montana, and in July 2016, he bought a house in St. Ignatius, because it had started to feel more like home.

The state of skiing a few years back, says Beachy, “was pretty crude, but a total blast.” He wanted to progress. So he used the Internet at the local library to research newer techniques, and pored over issues of POWDER, as well as in-depth avalanche resource books. He amassed ski partners— mostly other unmarried men and boys as young as 15. The crew traded their snowshoes for skins, buying flashier gear from shops in Missoula and Kalispell. Beachy now skis on Nordica Patron 185s. The still-works-perfectly-fine pawnshop gear is shared freely, so that anyone who wants to go, can.

When I ask him why we’re not skiing with any women, he punts. “It’d be different if it was gentle, little mountains…” Beachy trails off. There are Amish women on the slopes in Ohio, after all. He guesses that it’s because learning to ski in the Missions backcountry requires a lot of commitment, maybe too much commitment. Which is absolutely true, but why should that be a gendered truth? Life is not supposed to be the same for Amish men and women. The very first brick in the foundation of their worldview is Creation: God created man, then God created woman, and they were perfect. But because God created man first, men have a relationship with God, while women have a relationship with men, their heavenly proxies. This means that patriarchal values are deeply embedded in Amish households, as well as their greater church community, but everyone I spoke to said that this social order reflects a harmonious, natural balance.

Each night, we feast on a big supper, cooked by wives and mothers while we were out skiing. It’s usually a variation on meat and potatoes. The hospitality is warm. It is also awkward. Think spacious, quiet rooms and stilted getting-to-know-you conversations across a long table. One night after dinner, they perform a few hymns. The third tune commences with the verse, “Faithful love flowing down from the thorn-covered crown makes me whole, saves my soul, washes whiter than snow.” While the women clean dishes, our discussion turns back toward skiing. I’m thankful for this common ground, where the atmosphere breathes easier. But I fiercely wish there were another woman among us skiers.

Maybe, Beachy says, women skiers will be part of the next generation here. In five years, their whole scene will look different—one mom told me she thinks every kid in their two-room schoolhouse is aching to get out there. By 2025, there could be a conga line up Kakache. The teenaged Beachy disciples will become de facto mentors. And, Beachy admits, he’ll soon be skiing a lot less.

Last winter, he began dating Emily Miller, a 20-year-old schoolteacher. She has a blushing smile around outsiders like me and engages any nearby kids with effortless authority. She and Beachy married in October. Now a husband, he’ll scale back on his skiing as a way to demonstrate his resolute commitment.

“Everyone sacrifices for each other, and it really builds a lot of strength,” Beachy says. He talks about young people whose lives crumble because they stray from the social stability of the church and its guidelines: “A huge principle in our lives is that it’s not just ‘me, me, me—what feels good for me?’”

Reynolds—who has bushwhacked and toiled and shivered underneath a tarp for 14 hours in order to slide on snow—says, firmly “Skiing is not important. It’s fun, but not important.”

Beachy explains, “We’re not looking to the mountains to fill this huge, empty hole inside of us… I could happily live my life without going to the mountains ever again. I would hate to, because it wouldn’t be as fun. But I could live a very fulfilled life. A very contented, happy, peaceful life. Someone who has true inner peace can just sit back and relax, and know, confidently, without, a doubt, their salvation is assured.” Kakache is “not where our ultimate fulfillment lies, anyway.”

He doesn’t want to seem judgmental, so he adds, “Our way is not the only way, and not even necessarily the best way. But it’s our way, and we love it.”

I’ve never been religious, and now, being momentarily cut off from my own clan and immersed in this church, I’m romanced by the way everyone here describes sacrifice, purpose, and unity. It’s admirable how Beachy understands his life, as something to devote to God and his community before himself. Without warning, I feel destabilized and doubting. Beachy is close in age to me, and I envy the confidence he has about how his life will turn out. I wouldn’t die if I couldn’t ski, but I’ve made plenty of decisions as if I would. What assurance do I have that this is where my ultimate fulfillment lies?

As I sit with this discomfort, I remember that doubt is a familiar friend. If there’s an empty hole in me, I don’t see it as an absence of anything. It’s a promising unknown. The patient process of becoming is a thrill and a mystery that I want to pursue for an entire lifetime. I wouldn’t trade my undirected self-discovery for a sure path. I don’t know yet how mountains relate to my ultimate fulfillment, but for now and maybe forever, I believe that skiing has the power to soothe, subsume, and sublime. When I travel in snowy landscapes that awe, I try to have the presence of mind to rake around in the gritty, indeterminate parts of myself, the magma. If I do this enough, maybe the person I’m becoming will reflect the landscapes I love. As the outdoors essayist Jana Richman writes, you must conform to the place; the place will never conform to you. “We knew that,” she says. “That’s why we went.”

We meet again in the early dark hours to beat through alders in ski boots. Beachy jokes, “I’m surprised we haven’t met any other skiers.” A hint of blue softens the sky, and he sings a hushed hymn. It’d be peaceful if we weren’t panting so hard. At the ridge, I ask 19-year-old Jake Borntrager, “Do you ever pray for powder, or is that stupid?”

“Yeah,” he says, “I pray for powder.”

We bootpack up Kakache, toward the sedimentary cliffs that form the couloirs we had our eye on. The walls are splotched with the alien-colored lichen that indicates superior air quality. Beachy aims us toward the closer option, a doglegged line, and then makes Justin Yoder, a peanut-sized 16-year-old, set the bootpack up the 200-foot gut. Within minutes, Beachy shouts back, “Bad news, we’re already halfway up.” Everyone piles onto the skinny notch. As we break for snacks, holes in the cloud cover float by.

Beachy skis first, and I go next. The entrance to the line is broad, and it unfolds gently downslope. It’s like running slow-motion into somebody’s arms. I’m arcing through the shade, and then I burst into a patch of early afternoon sun. Plunging into the apron, I feel no lingering doubt about this, here, now. I skip through the boulder garden at the end of the run, tired and fully open to Kakache’s formative influences. When I stop, Beachy is still laughing breathlessly. I think he feels it too.

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