The Burton Family

My dad, Billy Burton, was born and raised in Great Falls. As soon as he turned eighteen he moved up to Monarch, because he wanted out of the city, and he never left. By nineteen he had a job with the state, and he kept it for thirty years, plowing and grooming the highways. He took it personally. It didn't matter what time of night it was. He used to say his friends, his family and the people he loved were on those roads.

Dad and George Willett had a deal. When Dad came through on his runs, he'd pull in and plow Showdown's parking lot, and in return we got season passes. So I was skiing up there as soon as I could walk, three or four years old, before I can even remember. Every weekend we had the chance, Dad dropped us off, and the mountain was our babysitter. There were four of us kids, my three sisters and me. Rikki is the oldest, and Katie is a year older than me.

I skied until I was eleven, and then I jumped over to snowboarding, because it was the cool thing to do at the time.

My first paycheck from Showdown came in high school, around 2004. I worked weekends in the rental shop with Jerry Solberg, mostly on boots.

When I went to work for the ski school, I told them in the interview that I was a snowboarder. They asked if I could ski, and I said yes. I could. Did I want to? Then I spent the next four years on skis, teaching reds. I never did teach snowboarding.

The terrain park came along the same year. I'd known Nick Boucher for a long time and ridden his park all through my snowboarding years. He was the terrain park director then, but I think it was his last year, and he was only part-time. He'd be there a couple of days, AJ Korslien worked the weekends, and that left a couple of weekdays with nobody looking after it. So it was, hey, Jared, can you take care of the terrain park?

For about eight or nine years I split my time between the ski school and the park. Then I stopped teaching and went to the park full-time for about four years, until I took on the IT side as well, around 2020. I've been splitting my time between the park and IT ever since.

The main point of the IT job is to keep the money flowing. As long as we can take any kind of payment and nothing crashes, I'm doing my job. Payments need a strong Wi-Fi network now, and the lodge is only one of a lot of buildings around the mountain where we take them. We've been running on older equipment, so keeping the network going isn't standard. You have to watch it every day, and when something happens you go from zero to a hundred real quick. Sometimes I'm out shoveling in the park and I hear on the radio that the network's down, and I have to jump on a snowmobile and go. We've got thirty-eight security cameras up there now, plus six or seven webcams. It keeps me busy, but the cameras are also a good way to tell when part of the lodge has gone down.

Rickey was born in Idaho in 1995 and grew up in Helena. George Clark-Gold has been her best friend since their freshman year of high school. They went to MSU together, both took five years, and graduated at the same time. She'd only skied Showdown once, with George, before she came to work there in December 2018. That first season she ran the ticket office and the kitchen register with Marilyn Tallman. Marilyn taught her everything. Rickey says she carried the heavy things and Marilyn worked harder than her and everybody else. We met that winter as coworkers and became friends. It took me a long time, but I finally asked her out in June 2021, and we've been inseparable ever since. She's my wife now.

After that first year Rickey was a base area floater for a couple of seasons: the ticket office, the kitchen, the T-bar, the rental shop, and bartending over the bartender's lunch break. When Avery was pregnant, Rickey helped her with marketing, and while Avery was on maternity leave she was the acting marketing director. That was 2020, the year Katie Boedecker and Avery bought the place. When Avery came back, Rickey decided she was really bad at marketing, and everybody agreed. So she became the engagement director instead, looking after the employees and helping Katie set up the employee programs we have now. She still does all of that. She ran the weddings and the mountain events for a few years too, and now she's the assistant general manager.

Rickey got a Sunshine Award the first year they gave one, in 2021, and I got Manager of the Year in 2026.

My sisters live all over the country now, but Showdown is still their base. They've started coming back every Presidents' Day weekend, which is amazing, except it's also one of the busiest weekends of my year.