The Evolution of a Big Mountain Icon

WHITEFISH – In the dank and dusty rafters of the Bierstube, lingering high above the tart vapor of beer, snowmelt and skier-sweat, lives the enduring legacy of an iconic ski bar whose heritage and singular cachet has come to define the Big Mountain.

As Big Mountain’s inaugural watering hole, the Bierstube, or simply the ‘Stube as it’s affectionately known, has survived fire and financial straits, schussing skiers and keg-sucking contests, marathon drinking bouts, upside-down beer-chugging races, and the raucous quake of thousands of dancing ski boots.

Its beer-begrimed, boot-battered floors have hosted untold leg-wrestling matches, and the rough-hewn timber beams and walls remain festooned with a hodgepodge of historic ski posters, antique signs, sepia-toned photographs, crudely carved names and initials, and scores of other assorted artifacts and curios, the timeless refuse of the bar’s rich and colorful history.

On a recent Wednesday night, the weekly Frabert awards were in full swing, carrying on a ski patrol tradition older than the ‘Stube building itself and honoring the “clod of the week” by bestowing one lucky recipient with a three-foot tall stuffed monkey and a stein of beer for the chugging. Outside the bar, a thin waxing crescent moon hung above the pitched, snow-blanketed roof, its lit sign offering a lambent supplication to the snow deities – “More Powder Please,” read its glowing appeal.

But new developments and plans for expanding Whitefish Mountain Resort’s holdings have cast a shadow of uncertainty on the future of the ‘Stube, and as nascent plans to build a hotel at the bar’s current location in the ski area’s Village emerge, neither the Bierstube’s owner nor the managers of Whitefish Mountain Resort can predict its providence, even as they pledge to preserve the Bierstube in some capacity.

According to Riley Polumbus, spokesperson for Whitefish Mountain Resort, which owns the Bierstube building, the land beneath it and even the name on the sign, the company recently pursued a bid on what it would cost to build a hotel where the Bierstube stands.

“We have started the process, but a big part of our decision to move forward with building a hotel would depend on the future of the Bierstube,” she said. “The Bierstube is an important piece of our history and our culture. We don’t know if we will even go forward with the hotel but we’re not sure if the Bierstube is the best use of that location. We don’t know if this is what we want to do. But part of the decision to move forward totally depends on what happens with the Bierstube.”

Some locals who have frequented the watering hole since its early days are confident that the spirit of the ‘Stube will prevail; after all, they say, it has been a wandering establishment from the beginning, and has always survived with its spirit intact, even as it has moved to new digs.

“People come here for the Bierstube, and they remember the Bierstube. It’s really a link to the old Big Mountain. It’s a fixture. It’s a tradition. And there isn’t a lot of that left anymore,” said Buck Love, a regular at the ‘Stube in the 1970s, when he worked as a ski instructor on Big Mountain. “The atmosphere of the Bierstube back then wasn’t much different than it is today. It’s really reminiscent to what it used to be, and that’s not an accident.”

Bierstube owner Scott McCintosh said rumors began running rampant last month, when the bar’s outdoor deck was demolished due to unstable footings.

“That was kind of the first dagger,” he said.

And while McCintosh can’t speak about the negotiations with Whitefish Mountain Resort and doesn’t yet know the fate of the ‘Stube, he said his relationship with the company and his commitment to the bar remain in top standing.

“The Bierstube is my livelihood. I have a lot at stake,” said McCintosh, who’s owned the Bierstube liquor license for 12 years. “Eventually, I really think that all roads lead to the Bierstube. It’s kind of the pulse of the mountain. And it’s an everyman’s bar. The part-time lift operator is just as important to us as the billionaire that is 100 yards away. And it contributes to the ski culture as well. We try to make it accessible, and I’m committed to the Bierstube.”

‘Stube history dates back half a century to loud and raucous parties in the original Ski Lodge, which burned down Halloween night 1963.

Mike Muldown, whose father, Lloyd “Mully” Muldown, was a ski pioneer who helped start Big Mountain, remembers wondering about the shrieks of revelry emanating from the bar as a child.

“That was an iconic room in my case because we couldn’t go up there,” Muldown said. “It was for the adults and the kids would be down in the main Lodge area. We’d never be able to go in. There always seemed to be all kinds of chaos that we could hear but we could never see.”

Each Spring, Ed Schenck, Big Mountain’s co-founder and the first general manager, and Norm Kurtz, his successor, tended bar and cleaned the empty cans out of the rafters, where skiers pitched them all winter long.

“The odor from the supply of months of old beer cans was so foul that the operation could only be carried out long after the ski season ended,” recalled Kurtz in the 1996 book “Hellroaring: Fifty Years on the Big Mountain,” by Jean Arthur. “Ed Schenck assigned the cleaning job to me early one spring. I parked a dump truck under the eaves of the Bierstube, where I pulled off the underside boards of the overhanging roof to allow the beer cans to drop into the truck. I’ve never been capable of drinking more than an occasional beer since.”

The original Bierstube was located in The Lodge, which now houses Ed and Mully’s, and the bar was in the building’s upstairs area, beside Schenck’s office.

On Oct. 31, 1963, The Lodge caught fire when a spark from a hammer ignited some mastic, a resin that workers were using to lay tile, recalled Karl Schenck, Ed Schenck’s son. A few beer steins belonging to members of the Big Mountain Stein Club survived, as did a 50-cent piece in the jukebox, but the cafeteria and the Bierstube were destroyed.

The building was razed and its remains were buried in the parking lot, which was littered with thousands of nails from the timber. Karl Schenck was assigned the job of collecting the nails, which he sold to the mountain for 35 cents a gallon.

By the time ski season rolled around, a new Lodge had been built, and the Bierstube was back in business.

“When the Lodge burned down they turned the old Toni Matt ski shop into the Bierstube and then built a new ski shop,” Schenck said.

Although he was too young to drink in the Bierstube, Schenck said its presence was palpable and lent the mountain a unique character that is still present today.

“There was always a party at the Bierstube, but the kids were more interested in the skiing,” Schenck said. “Growing up in Whitefish I lived by the lake and went to the mountain every day I could. I learned how to ski the same time I learned how to walk, so don’t ask me how to ski. I would go up every morning with my dad and he would tell someone on the ski patrol to keep an eye on me. And then I’d go skiing. Around noon they had a PA system to broadcast the ski patrol report and they would say, ‘Would Karl Schenck please report to the Chalet for his nap.’”

In 1966, ski instructor Jim Black and his wife, Joyce, hired Gary Tallman to build a new Bierstube at its current location, which they managed for five years before selling it to Big Mountain. For all the revelry, the ‘Stube was failing financially, and in 1972 a bar owner named Gary Elliott bragged that if he owned the ‘Stube it would be a successful operation. When the mountain’s general manager, Kurtz, heard about the boast, he approached Elliott about making good on his claim, and Elliott leased the bar from the mountain.

“They called him up at the end of the season and said, ‘If you think you can do a better job, then why don’t you run it?’” recalls Bev Elliott, Gary’s wife. “So we did. It was good fun.”

Gary Elliott passed away last year, but Bev said the 25 years that the couple ran the bar helped shape its enduring spirit, which has been pickled and preserved through years of rowdy nights.

“It was like organized chaos. One night we had someone ride a motorcycle through the bar,” she said. “But Gary ran a good bar. It always looked like it was out of control but it was just good, clean beer-drinking fun.”

Two of the bar’s strongest traditions emerged during the Elliotts’ tenure at the Bierstube – the annual Pray for Snow party and the bar’s souvenir ring.

“We used to sacrifice a virgin,” Bev Elliott said. “I would buy a mannequin from Penney’s and dress her up and all of the bartenders would wear black robes and carry her above their heads and dance around a big bonfire and toss her in. The crowd would go wild and every year we would have snow within 24 hours.”

It was also Elliott who installed the colossal bell hanging behind the bar to dispense souvenir rings, free for the asking. The Great Northern Railroad previously owned the bell, but gave it to Ed Schenck, who installed it at the top of the T-bar.

According to Bev Elliott, a group of ski patrollers stole the bell one night after too many drinks and ferried it down the mountain. When they sheepishly returned it to Schenck the following day, he hung it in the Bierstube.

“They were very drunk,” Elliott said.

The Elliotts also started the Bierstube Olympics, which involved upside-down beer chugging contests at the bar, above which skiers would hand by their legs from a rope suspended between the rafters.

Skiers perched on the open rafters where they learned the fine art of drinking while hanging upside down, “defying both gravity and digestive sensibility,” Norm Kurtz said in the book “Hellroaring.”

One night, a skier donned an old pair of Kazama skis, opened the doors on both sides of the Bierstube, climbed to the top of the parking lot, crouched in a tuck and shot through the bar, grabbing a rope hanging from the ceiling to swing through the backdoor and off the end of the deck.

The Blacks, who owned the Bierstube prior to the Elliotts, raised the ire of the locals by raising the price of beer to 35 cents for a mug and 40 cents for a red beer, when the price had previously been a quarter for a mug. But skiers came down in droves from Canada, and Bev Elliott recalls one hectic night when 125 school buses were crammed into the parking lot.

The Bierstube was named the Best Bar in Canada following a contest held by a Canadian radio station, an honor the bar displayed proudly. The bar also provided the tubing for keg-sucking contests, in which two groups of Canadians – generally opposing race teams – would line up on either side of a long table and pass the tubing attached to a tap.

“It sounds terrible now but in those days it was all fun,” Elliott said. “It was fun. Granted some of those kids got sick but that is what happens when you drink from a tube.”

Their Backdoor Burgers also received national acclaim when they were voted “Best Burger” and “Best Ski Bar in the West” by U.S. News and World Report. Later on, when the après-ski bar installed a mechanical bull under new ownership, the short-lived machine garnered most of the out-of-town press until it was removed in favor of ski movies.

Big-ticket musical acts played the ‘Stube every night of the week, including bands like The Drifters, Asleep at the Wheel, Bo Didley, Elvin Bishop, The Boxtops, Vassar Clements, the Mission Mountain Wood Band, and The Beat Farmers.

“There was always music there. Every night was a party,” Buck Love said. “And there were people everywhere. We all hope the Bierstube survives in some shape or form. It is certainly a tradition at Big Mountain and you can ask any Canadian visitor what they remember about Big Mountain and the answer is inevitably the Bierstube. They were here for the Bierstube. I still go in there now and then and it’s still great to have a beer and catch up with the old timers.”

Polumbus, WMR’s spokesperson, said the mountain’s management team is sensitive to the historic significance of the Bierstube to Big Mountain, and will work with McCintosh to preserve its legacy and provide a future for the bar.

“There has always been a Bierstube from its original carnation in the Lodge outside of Ed’s office to its new location after the fire, to its current location built in 1967. We invested $120,000 to restore the foundation in 2011. So the management and owners and employees are committed to the future of the Bierstube,” she said.

The resort invested the money to restore and enhance the structural integrity of the Bierstube, with Whitefish Mountain Resort President Dan Graves saying at the time: “The Bierstube has played a significant role in shaping the mountain culture of this resort. We feel strongly, as part of our commitment to preserve the ski area’s heritage, we want to extend its life for years to come.”

McCintosh said that while there’s a potential for the Bierstube to move locations at the behest of Whitefish Mountain Resort, its essence will remain the same.

“I don’t want it written on my tombstone that I killed the Stube,” he said. “I’m not going to let that happen. The Bierstube is more than just the bar. It is kind of a moment or a place in time. It can be recreated. I do believe that there will always be a Bierstube up here and hopefully those values will be preserved.”