Randy Jackson

The first time I skied Showdown was 1968. I was eight years old. I'm born and raised in Great Falls, and some of my buddies from the neighborhood took me up. On my second run they took me down Second Thought and left me behind. I had no business being on that side of the mountain, and I wouldn't call what I did skiing, but I made it down.

After that I only went up here and there. I went to college in Great Falls and got my degree in computer science, and for a lot of years skiing just wasn't a big part of my life. Then, around 2007, I started skiing again and really worked at getting better. I was beating myself up out there. Ben Haugan gave me some coaching, and I'm glad I pushed, because when I got older and my body started to slow down, I had the skills I needed to keep going.

You meet people riding the lifts. One was a retired police officer from New York City who'd tell me the best stories on the way up, so I skied the rest of the day with him. Another was a man who didn't start skiing until he was sixty and skied every run on the mountain. I happened to be in the rental office when he came in asking for an afternoon lesson and they didn't have anybody, so I told him I'd go ski with him. We skied a whole bunch after that.

One day Ben told me he was looking for an IT guy. I told him that's what I do, and around 2008 he started me as a contractor. First it was getting the point of sale working and getting the internet to actually work. Our connection was something like four megabits. George's attitude was that people were up there to ski, not surf, and he didn't want to put a lot of money into it. I can't say I blame him, and I agreed with him. To me the internet up there was so you could send a text or a picture, not sit in the lodge and watch a movie. When Ben left, George and Margie asked if I'd stick around, and I said I wasn't going anywhere.

So I built it piece by piece, month by month, year by year. At first only about ten people could be on the Wi-Fi at once. It wasn't until Three Rivers put the fiber in that things really took off, and then we got the internet point of sale going and a lot more security cameras. My wife Sheila helped me put one of those cameras up over the awning by the door out to the Triple. Nobody else was up there, so before I climbed the ladder on top of the awning I showed her how to make a phone call, just in case. In 2018 we broadcast the Throwdown big air live on Facebook, the first time Showdown had ever done that, and I got a signal out into the middle of the mountain at seventeen megabits. We had a few misfires along the way, but it was fun figuring it out and making it reliable. Now people say, hey, they've got Wi-Fi up there, and I tell them I installed it and did all the networking. For a while we were offering things only the high-end places had.

I trained Jared Burton on all of it, how to read the tools and the ins and outs of networking, and I'm proud of what he's done with it. I always liked Jared, especially after I watched him teach the little ones. There's no way in this world I could have done that.

Ben also moved me into the ski school, and that's what got me into Eagle Mount. I think I started both the same year, around 2009. I taught Youth Ski League on Saturdays and did Eagle Mount on Sundays. I started out with the Purple group, and that year Ben pulled some strings so Purple got to go on the trips. Then they needed somebody for the Black group, the top one before Team Extreme, and I did that until the end. I got my PSIA Level 1 and planned to go for Level 2, but I only made six or seven hundred bucks a year teaching, and every bit of it, plus most of my contract money, went right back into ski equipment. I wasn't doing it for the money. I did it because I liked it.

At Eagle Mount, Trevor was the second kid I ever skied with. We got along so well that they left me with him from then on. You're supposed to have two guides with one client, but Trevor listened to me well enough that they let us go with one. He's twenty-two or twenty-three now, and we still go fishing and still talk every week. The kids taught me a lot more than I taught them, and after that I pretty much skied with kids the rest of my years. My daughter Samantha started teaching with me, and she did Eagle Mount with me too. We felt like we were part of the family.

One time Trevor and I were riding the double in a snowball fight with everybody on the lifts. We'd saved up snowballs for the midway, and at the top a guy threw a shovel of snow in our laps. Trevor got tangled up getting off, so I couldn't, and I rode the bull wheel around. Baron saw it, right before employees' day. At the end-of-the-year party they gave me the Bull Wheel Riders award in front of everybody. Then George asked me, I heard you rode the bull wheel. I said, yeah, George, it was really cool, I want to do it again. He said no, no, no.

George always made me feel like part of the team, and when Katie took over it was the same. I'd pick up trash, wipe down tables, whatever needed doing, and at the end of the day I'd be at the door saying high five, see you next week. And then a beer with everybody about 4:30.

Rick Jacobs and I have the same initials, so when somebody yells RJ, we both look. We ended up really good friends. A couple of years ago I took my brother up. We hadn't skied together since we were kids, and Katie set him up with a lift ticket and lunch, and we had such a blast that day.

My back finally made me quit teaching. I'd still be doing it if I could. I like a challenge and I don't like doing the same thing every day, and skiing's never the same, the snow and the weather and the kids are always different. I made a lot of good friends up there, and everybody up there has been a blessing as far as I'm concerned.