28 hours by car and nearly 2,000 miles northwest of his small Georgia hometown is where snow of unavoidable proportions can be found. Montana, 4th in size, 44th in population and recently recognized by its new moniker the Last Best State, is Ringgold native Zack Ford’s new home-his Zion in the snow.
Ford, 26, went chasing fresh powder and backcountry bliss after college and wound up getting blinded by snow science.
Building on a run at Breckenridge and his past as a surfer and skateboarder, Ford moved to Montana in the summer of 2010 where he worked with the Montana Conservation Corps building trails and water systems in remote areas of the state.
“I just fell in love with the state,” Ford says over the phone. This week in early December, before he started teaching again at Bridger Bowl, a community-run ski hill in Bozeman, it’s been the coldest, snowiest time of the year yet. And he’s been hitting the slopes since October. It’s a high of 2 F with a -12 F wind chill factor. It’s been worse and it will get worse. But who cares, Ford says, it’s his passion.
“I say to my girlfriend, ‘You’ll have to share me with the mountains.’ They are my sanctuary,” he says. He talks in love letters. The snow this, the snow that. Waxing poetic about mountains of majesty, Ford goes on about how his love of the outdoors led him to Montana, a scarcely visited state, save for its snow tourists.