Mountains, Music and Cowboys

Looking pretty for the Roundup.

The Fourth of July in Montana proved to be the most patriotic event of my life. Eighty guests and staff from Mountain Sky headed down to the Livingston Roundup, one of the largest rodeos in Montana, to watch some cowboys wrestle some calves and be thrown from bulls. It was great to be in Livingston surrounded by a huge group of people I knew, it felt like home to walk around and say hi to everyone. The patriotism was intense and awesome. First of all, merely being in Montana, a very land-devoted, ranch-heavy state, makes a person appreciate the US in a new way, but the fourth of July was a completely new level. The cowgirls running around the arena on their horses with American flags and practically every American themed country song playing in the background, followed by the announcer going on about America being the shinning light of freedom for the rest of the world, and the semi-constant shouts from spectators saying “Aaamerricaa,” made it abundantly clear I was not in the Pacific Northwest. And it was FUN. It was really fun to be surrounded by 5,000 people all stoked for the rodeo and the Fourth.


Emigrant Peak from the ranch.

In addition, we sat four people over from Dennis Quaid, one of many celebrities who own property in the valley. We then saw Rebecca Romijn Stamos at the after-rodeo-dance, which also proved to be a blast. Every person between the ages 18 and 35 from the valley seemed to be at this barn dance. A band played, drinks were served, and the Mountain Sky staff went crazy on the dance floor. I’m becoming pro at the Two Step and am slowly starting to blend with the other Montana ladies. Katie Rouse came up for the holiday and got to see the shenanigans for herself, which of course was amazing. It was quite possibly the best Fourth of July ever.


Standing on the peak!

For my days off this weekend I set my alarm 15 minutes earlier than my usual 5:15am to head off the ranch with three of my fellow staff members to tame the mountain we look at every day, Emigrant Peak. At 11,000 feet we gained 6,000 in three hours – straight up hill. Apparently when the trail was formed switchbacks were not in fashion. After two miles of this we entered a meadow so steep we had to either go onto all fours or create our own switchbacks. At this point we thought we were getting pretty close to the summit, but alas, we still had another hour and a half hike over loose rock and deceiving peaks. Thankfully the sun wasn’t on our backs until we reached the summit, where we took an amazing nap in the sun. It was a tough hike, but its pretty cool to be able to look over at Emigrant everyday and know that we stood at the top.


Emigrant is the highest mountain in the Beartooth range.

On Saturday I headed with my pal Alyssa up to Butte, Montana for the National Folk Festival. While Butte is quite possibly the ugliest and most dangerous town in Montana (they have an acidic lake where a man’s sole job is to scare off birds with a shotgun). The festival was awesome! There were over 50,000 people there, four stages and music from all over the place. We saw a straight bluegrass band, an Irish band, and a Cuban band. When we got back from the festival we walked into the lodge to find our little gang of rowdy friends dancing to Bruce Springsteen and drinking some mystery concoction called “Bruce Juice” provided by the Al-Sharifs. The Al-Sharifs are composed of an older English woman and her daughter who come for 11 weeks to the ranch from Bahrain, where her husband owns the largest oil transport company in the world. They are completely prim and proper on the exterior, but they love to hang out with the crazy staff and buy us drinks. Leslie, the mother, even got up to do a lap around the bar dancing. It proved to be a super fun night.


Hiking back down in 85 degree weather - it was too steep to not run.

As of late the ranch has had some exciting guests. Last week was very much government week; we had the U.S. Secretary under the Clinton here and a few bigwigs from the Pentagon. And this week is Hollywood week; with the President of HBO and her husband a writer for The Simpsons, Comedy Central, and SNL, along with a half dozen other producers and writers. Its fun because we are so isolated out here they can have a really relaxing vacation without anyone bothering them... except for staff obviously. Dana Gould, the writer/actor/producer man, said, “showbiz is all just a carnival. My job is no different than. what the guy running the tilt-a-whirl does.”

Mountain Sky: continuing to provide endless entertainment.

July... already?

Guest: “Boy, it’s really nice to get up here and away from reality for a bit.”
Chef Brian: “It’s only bad when you start to think this is reality.”
Guest: “Oh, I’m not that far gone yet.”
Chef Brian: “Have you met my staff.”

Too true Bri Bri. Too true. For example, a Police report for Livingston, Montana:
“A moose was sited on E Finch St around 7:30 am yesterday, apparently trapped in a man’s backyard. The police were unable to find the moose.”

The last couple of weeks have been awesome. There have definitely been highs and lows, but on the whole Mountain Sky has been really good to me. Family season is in full swing and next week we are at capacity with over 80 guests! That’s a lot of tarts! It’s amazing how much more satisfying it is to hear 25 six to ten year olds tell me that the Dirt (chocolate pudding, oreo crumbs and gummy worms) I made them for dessert is the best dessert they have ever had than having the coach of the Chicago Bears tell me my Basque cake, which took me two hours to make, was pretty good. If I’m ever having a bad day, I know to go look in on the kid’s program eating my cookies. I now only work AM shifts, so I now have every afternoon off to do as I please. Which usually involves hiking, running, sitting by the pool, and long naps. We only go into town about once a week, either to get dinner at the Rib & Chop House (local steak restaurant where they serve fish bowl margaritas) or peruse Padmina, a store worse than K-mart that sells awesome American themed clothing and carhartts.
Dance night shenanigans.

My days off for the past two weeks have been fantastic. I headed up to Helena, which really felt like going home, to see my cousin and all of her crazy friends. We stayed up late, hung out with some good people, drank a lot of beer, and went to an extremely sketchy bar where a bunch of hicks were rapping, woke up and went to the farmer’s market and had an amazing breakfast. Helena is about two and a half hours northwest of Emigrant, which in Montana is next door. My cousin is crazy and fun and Helena was a blast. I’m so happy to have family so close!

This last weekend I headed down to Pinedale, Wyoming to see Miss Katie Rouse in her little trailer. We went to some music, went on a hike, tried harassing some East Coasters on the phone and just got to hang out. Living out at the ranch is awesome and I love all of the staff and my friends up here, but it was definitely a relief to see someone who knows and loves you completely. And now this weekend Miss Rouse is heading up to me for the Livingston Roundup and some good ole’ Montana fun.
Katie in her wee trailer.

Back at the ranch this week Sous Chef Jeff, the fishing guide Bistis and I headed down to the Yellowstone River to do some fishing. Well, I sat in the back of the drift boat, while they fished, but it turned into quite the evening. Jeff got off work around 7, so we headed down to the river to do an 8-mile float, totally doable in the remaining three hours of light. We’re about a mile into the float and Bear, Jeff’s dog, jumps from the boat and swims to the shore. We were just coming around a bend so we had no idea what he was after, but we get around the corner and boom, two skunks are just hanging out. The three of us look at each other with just looks of total dread. So we’re yelling at Bear to get away from them, but of course he’s ready to eat them and could care less about our yelling. So of course he’s sprayed… three times! And then we were next to the bank trying to get Bear back into the boat, but the skunk is chasing Bear down toward the river, so I start screaming for Jeff to move his boat. Fortunately Bear outruns the skunk and is back in the boat. Back in the boat with us for another 7 miles. Now, this smell is unbelievable. When you smell a skunk on the side of the road, it is NOTHING in comparison to how horrible freshly sprayed skunk smells. All three of us were on the verge of vomiting and of course Bear is totally freaked out and trying to get away from the smell, so he’s running around the boat, rubbing up next to us and getting it everywhere! The wind was blowing the smell right into our faces the entire tim so that Jeff would turn the boat backwards for a stretch just so we could breathe. But at that point all we wanted to do was get to the take out. Bistis tried to fish for a bit, but the smell was so incredibly horrible Jeff just pushed the boat for the next hour and half. Thankfully Bistis and I didn’t have to ride with Jeff and Bear back to the ranch, but I still get whiffs of the skunk every once and awhile. A hilarious story, but not a good night fishing.
The dog who ruined it all.
At least it was pretty.

An Old One...

Yesterday afternoon 56 of the most interesting people showed up at the ranch. The rumors were flying before their arrival – Russian or Danish royalty, European aristocracy, etc. After their staff of 15 arrived, including lighting directors, party planners, florists, personal assistants and all of the necessary entourage members arrived, the truth was out. Andrew Ipkendanz, a very very wealthy Australian businessman, who can literally say, “money is no object,” has rented out the entire ranch for his 50th birthday. After three days in the MGM sky suites in Las Vegas, where one night the men (all 25 of them) were given full Elvis impersonator suits and the women (another 31 of them) were given Marlin Monroe dresses and wigs, the “Ippy” party flew on a private jet to Mountain Sky. Andrew or Ippy, has footed the bill for everything. The base expenses come to around 2.2 million dollars, but he has also opened the gift store here at the ranch and they made a stop at Murdoch’s, a high-end western wear store in Bozeman, where every guest bought wranglers, cowboy boots, some pearl snaps and cowboy hats. The guests are from all over the world – Brazil, Hong Kong, Sydney, London, as well as a smattering of European countries. There is a Russian prince in the mix and plenty of old aristocracy.

The ranch was transformed yesterday into a party planner’s dream. We moved all of the dinning room tables so they could put in their own, custom made tables in for the welcome dinner. Gas lanterns were put up everywhere; fresh fruit was strewn across the tables, which had burlap runners and slate placemats. I spent an hour tying new linen napkins with leather cord and a sprig of wheat. A canvas tent was put up on the front lawn for an outdoor bar where $150 bottle champagne was being served alongside vats of mojitos and, hilariously, Coors Light. Every night there was a new party, each more crazy and ridiculous than the last.

The ranch’s biggest event was the Bachelor and Spinster Ball they held out at one of our satellite cabins. It was a “white trash” party, we had a mechanical bull, candle holders were largely 40 oz bottles of beer (which we had to dump out… err… or into water bottles) and the guests wore boas and sequences and blue tuxes and tuxedo shirts, etc. I started work that day at 1 pm and ended around 2 am, only to wake up three hours later for another 9-hour shift. I think I died a little. While an awesome idea, it was raining so hard that the entire cabin area turned into a giant mud pit. We couldn’t get the van out with all of the kitchen equipment, not to mention the kitchen staff. Another Cook and I were left by the sous and executive chefs around 10 because they thought we would be done by 11… which we weren’t obviously. I had to make Pavlova (a meringue cake with fruit that’s very popular in Australia), which of course couldn’t be assembled until right before it was served. So I was in this little tiny kitchen assembling a three-tiered showpiece Pavlova along with 70 individual plated servings. There were plates of meringue everywhere! All over the couch and the bunk beds and the stove. Josh and I just shuffled around the room with raspberry sauce and fruit, literally throwing blueberries onto the cakes. I started doing this around 9, because everything was supposed to be served by 10:30… but they ended up not wanting the cake until 12. By that time almost all of the staff had left the party, leaving about 5 of us to break everything down in the rain and mud at 1 in the morning. It was ridiculous! Looking back it was pretty hilarious in a lot of ways… but I am very glad the crazies have left. As are the rest of the staff. Almost everyone worked 13-hour days, every day, for the entire week they were here. I’m still recovering and they left two days ago!
Making good use of the 40s.

It was pretty awesome to see the ranch transform so much and for all of the staff to rally around this party, but family season is a relief! And family season it now is! We are on to our bread and butter, the heart of the ranch’s season and supposedly the most hectic. Although it was nice for two wonderful days (I even laid out next to the pool), I’m currently listening to a hailstorm destroy the tin roof of my cabin. These are literally golf ball sized. I fear for my car.

Also exciting! I moved into a cabin! No more upstairs in the staff lodge next to crazy old lady (one of the AM cooks who is slightly scary)! So now I have my very own, very cozy cabin, which I love dearly. Yeah Montana!

Another trip into Yellowstone!