Noted backcountry skier and Co-op serviceman heads for Cooke City

By RICHARD HANNERS / Whitefish Pilot

A familiar face has departed Whitefish — at least temporarily. Pat Muri will take over lineman duties for Flathead Electric Cooperative's distribution system in Cooke City for the next six months.

At a going-away party at The Lodge At Whitefish Lake last week, a third of the people were fellow workers at the Co-op, a third were family and friends — and another third were hard-core backcountry skiers.

Back in the early 1970s, Muri was one of the first telemark skiers on Big Mountain, along with Bobby Conat, Gene Evans, Don Montgomery and Tom Eisinger.

"Bobby taught me," he told the Pilot before he headed off to Cooke City. "Tony Hinderman was also a telemark skier, but I didn't ski with him."

At that time, out-of bounds skiing at Big Mountain was still being pioneered. Access to Flower Point, Skookoleel and the Canyon — even Hellroaring Basin — took a lot of hard work and some gumption.

"The ski patrol would yank your pass if they caught you," he said. "But it was hard to enforce, and it evolved into more liberal rules." He paused to reflect. "Maybe that wasn't such a good thing."

Muri is familiar with the Cooke City area — a sliver of Montana territory wedged between Yellowstone Park's Lamar River Valley and the towering Absaroka Range. He was one of the first to telemark at 10,947-foot high Beartooth Pass. All the way into summer, skiers can ride up the road in cars and ski to the bottom.

"I was doing my apprenticeship in Billings when I heard about Beartooth Pass," Muri said. "Nobody else was doing that but alpine skiers. It was one of the best summers of my life."

That's not the entire story.

"I was skiing in leather boots on 210 cross-country skis," Muri said. "We didn't have high-tech gear then."

A lot has changed since then. Muri said he switched from telemark gear to randonee gear in 1984. Now when he turns on steep mountain slopes, his heel is locked down.

"I picked up my first randonee skis in St. Anton, Austria," Muri said. "I was one of the first in the U.S."

Muri's exploits in the mountains reads like a Warren Miller script. Locally, he's skied Glacier Park's Floral Park Traverse from Logan Pass to Lake McDonald Lodge three times, and he's skinned up Blackfoot, Stanton and Brown mountains.

He skis regularly in Canada, and he's taken five ski trips to Europe, where he skied the Haute Route from Chamonix, France, to Zermatt, Switzerland, and skinned up 14,317-foot Monte Rosa, the highest point in Switzerland.

Mountaineering skiing has its risks, he admits. His most hair-raising experience, however, happened just a few years ago when he got caught in a slide in the Dickey Creek area off U.S. Highway 2.

"I lost a pole and a ski, and the tendons in my arm got torn up," he said. "It was pretty major, but I didn't get buried. I lay across a tree and the snow flowed around me."

Muri said he has all the appropriate avalanche training and gear, and he blamed the incident on wind-loaded snow and "group dynamics."

"I shouldn't have skied there," he said. "I ignored the important things and made false assumptions."

His brother Tom says Pat's love for adventure explains his bachelor status.

"His mistresses are the mountains," Tom said.

The Muri family — five boys and one girl — moved to Whitefish from Great Falls in 1964. Pat began his lineman career as a "boomer," working long hours building power lines and then taking winters off for skiing. His father was an electrician at the Anaconda Aluminum Co. plant in Columbia Falls.

"Mike Gwiazdon nicknamed him 'One-Eyed Wildcat Gunny-Sack Ben Muri.'"

Up to now, Muri has been the Co-op "serviceman" from Whitefish to Essex.

"It's a pretty good beat," he said.

Lots of folks in Whitefish recognize Muri for his role in hanging the Holiday Village Christmas decorations downtown.

"I'm the local boy with the bucket truck," he said.

In his most hair-raising experience with the Co-op since he started there in 1992, Muri's head got shoved up inside a red Christmas bell after a chip-hauling truck banged into his bucket truck in front of Haines Drug Store.

"In the old days, they didn't have bucket trucks," Muri said. "Ted Lund and others rode up on forklifts or front-end loaders to hang the lights."

In Cooke City, Muri will be replacing a 71-year-old lineman who is retiring from Pacific Power & Light.

"He never had a bucket truck," Muri said. "He'd climb up the pole with spikes and replace a bushing on a transformer, where we'd just hang a new one with a boom truck."

Muri said he's taking four pairs of skis, two bikes and a fly rod with him when he heads south. An avid writer, like his brothers, he's considering writing a column called "The Cooke Book." He said he's also taking along a DVD of "The Shining" and lots of bear spray.

"This is not a holiday," he points out. "I'm on call 24/7, and they gave me a satellite phone."

But it's worth noting that Muri was the only volunteer for the six-month stint in isolated Cooke City.

And as a fellow Co-op lineman noted at Muri's going-away party, "When he calls to say a line is down, it could have something to do with flyfishing."