Cabin Fever Days

Each February the Bad Rock Council closes Central Avenue in Martin City to traffic and covers it with snow. The course is called Sugar Hill. A 2019 account gave it as 750 feet long and said it takes upwards of 40 dump truck loads of snow to build. Hay bales line the raceway to keep the crowd back. At the top, racers wait with barstools fixed to skis. The 48th Cabin Fever Days is set for February 12–14, 2027, with the barstool ski races on Saturday, February 13.

The races are the centerpiece of a weekend that spreads through Bad Rock Canyon. Locally that stretch is called the Canyon: the communities along U.S. Highway 2 between Columbia Falls and West Glacier. Events run in Hungry Horse, Martin City, and Coram. Admission is a $5 All Access Souvenir Button, sold at the entrance in Martin City and required at every event. Dogs are not allowed.

Sugar Hill on Central Avenue

The 2026 rules list four classes:

• Traditional: a solid stool on two skis that neither move nor flex. Older accounts call this the non-steerable class.
• Steerable: the skis may flex left to right.
• Open: takes, in the rules’ words, “anything mountains on a ski or skis.”
• Show: for the wildest sled a builder can make. Show sleds over 200 pounds must have brakes, and they cannot qualify for the finals. The 2026 rules say the racers at the top of the hill judge them. A 2019 Flathead Beacon account had the audience voting.

In the traditional and steerable classes, the stool must stand at least 27 inches tall with skis attached. The skis may span no more than 18 inches at their widest, and outriggers are not allowed.

Racers go down in pairs, double elimination. Past the start line lies a 23-foot push zone, about seven paces. A racer can push off alone or take one pusher, who must be clear of rider and stool by the foul line. The rider stays seated in what the rules call the “drinking position, butt on top of the stool.” Racers must be 16 and sign a waiver, and helmets are strongly recommended.

Steve Paugh, an organizer, called the sport “edgy and competitive” in 2024. He told the Hungry Horse News: “It’s a two-person race. The winner of the race is sometimes the winner who didn’t fall off. If you fall down when you’re going down the hill, then you get up and you push yourself. You’re never out of it until somebody crosses the finish line.”

Racers have come from as far as Canada, and many ride in costume. The band Playing in Traffic has performed while racing down the hill. The pushers go down too. A Beacon photograph from the 2012 races shows Cody Hurley and David Maxwell falling to the snow after giving racer Bob Donk a massive push over the starting line. Another shows Melissa Hulvat hitting the ground as she pushes off Pierre Kaptanian.

Seven taverns and a shuttle

Most of the rest of the weekend happens in bars. The council’s schedule names seven in the canyon: the Stonefly Lounge, Packers Roost, Southfork Saloon, Deerlick Saloon, Paul Bunyan Bar, Dew Drop Inn, and Dam Town Tavern. A free shuttle makes continuous loops through Hungry Horse, Martin City, and Coram on Saturday. In 2026 it ran from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., and the festival’s advertising money goes mainly to keep it running. The council describes the weekend as “riding shuttles around rural Montana to local dive bars and other fine establishments.”

The 2026 schedule shows the shape of a Saturday:

• Packers Roost: biscuits and gravy at 8 a.m. and a hog roast at noon. The Mountain Man Competition ran there in the afternoon.
• Paul Bunyan: arm wrestling weigh-in at noon and the tournament at 4.
• The ball field: snowshoe softball at 2.
• Stonefly: the roshambo tournament (rock, paper, scissors) at 4:30.
• The fire hall: the children’s program, with a sack race, a tug-of-war, an egg-and-spoon race, a three-legged race, and a raffle drawing.

Music filled the evening. Way Down North played the Stonefly in the afternoon, then Dan Dubuque and Sabbath Worship. The barstool awards were handed out at Packers at 7, followed by DOJA & MT Souls.

Sunday opened with a prime rib and eggs breakfast at Packers, with free mimosas until they ran out. Park Provisions in Coram served a $20 special dinner menu on Friday and Saturday. A poker run starts at the Deerlick, picks up a card at every canyon bar, and ends at the Dew Drop; players must be 21.

Two drunks in West Glacier

Monty Pruett, a former owner of the Southfork Saloon, told the Flathead Beacon in 2019 that barstool racing in the Canyon began in the 1970s. The Beacon called the saloon the sport’s unofficial headquarters. “It all started in West Glacier when two drunks were sitting at the bar and challenged each other to a barstool race,” Pruett said. After that first race the sport moved to Martin City, and it has stayed there since.

The name of the hill has two explanations. Organizer Ben Shafer said it comes from the “sweet” snow used to build it. A few locals give a more scandalous origin. According to legend, Sugar Hill was Martin City’s red-light district back when Hungry Horse Dam was being built.

By 1989 the weekend featured snowmobile drag races, snowshoe softball, and the barstool races. That year Ginny Santisteva became the first woman to win the non-steerable event, as a Hungry Horse News retrospective recorded.

For decades the Trapline Association put on the festival. In 2013, its 35th year, the association’s Stacy Schnebel, an owner of the Stonefly Lounge, explained a new prize: the show-class winner’s entry would go on the next year’s commemorative shirts. The weekend button then cost $3. Proceeds that year went to the Martin City Fire Department, the Canyon Quick Response Unit, Head Start, and the Canyon Kids Christmas Fund, which brings Santa in by helicopter each year. On the shuttle’s stops at open businesses, Schnebel said: “It certainly is good for all of the businesses out here to get a little bump. We, in turn, support Cabin Fever Days.”

By 2017, the 39th year, Schnebel was the association’s outgoing president and was pressing the festival’s purpose. “People are continuously shocked that this is a fundraiser,” she said. The 2016 weekend had raised about $13,000, against $4,900 five years earlier. The Martin City Fire Department had once used its share to enlarge its garage door so it could house a new truck bought with grants. Schnebel credited a free sober taxi, sponsored over the previous five years, with largely eliminating DUIs from the festival. That year a groomer was brought in to smooth the hill. Part of the money was also set aside toward signs for Hungry Horse, Coram, and Martin City. “The idea is to give people a sense of place, that they’re passing through communities, not just driving the road to Glacier Park,” Schnebel said.

The Bad Rock Council now runs the festival with an executive board, committee chairs, and volunteers. Among the chairs is one who works with the local bars, called on the council’s site “the Bar Chair (or Bastool if you will).”

Big Red

The Beacon’s 2019 profile of Mike Murray, a 63-year-old retired contractor from Whitefish, shows the sport from the stool. Murray had run marathons and Ironman competitions and once crossed the Bob Marshall Wilderness on foot, 50 miles in 17 hours. He called those mere training for barstool racing. Paugh called him “the Michael Jordan of barstool racing” and was making a short film inspired by him.

Murray’s first stool was a “cheapo $18 barstool” from Home Depot with old skis screwed to the legs. It disintegrated on one of its first runs. He rebuilt it with more wood and red spray paint, which he counts among the keys to a fast stool, and he and “Big Red” have raced together since. He won the non-steering class in 2013 and 2018.

His other keys were a good ski waxer, a powerful pusher, and moral support, which his wife Cheryl supplied. He also held to two Bloody Marys before a race, never a double. Not every run went his way. One year a former Ohio State football captain pushed him straight into the ditch. Another year he tried Rain-X on the skis, and it slowed him down. “I ended up having to push the stool down the hill myself,” he said. “But I didn’t let that get me down. We just went to the bar.”

Murray rode lying nearly flat and sat up near the finish to brake with his feet. Some racers said that broke the drinking-position rule. His supporters then showed that a man can drink a beer lying down on a barstool, and officials let him keep riding that way. “I think they’re jealous,” Murray said. Asked for advice to newcomers, he said: “Don’t overthink it.”

A winter without snow

The festival had already lost one whole year, cancelled entirely at the start of the Covid pandemic. In February 2026 the weather threatened the 47th edition. January had been warm and dry, and on February 5 Kalispell reached 51 degrees, breaking a 1995 record.

In low-snow years the county plows Hungry Horse and Martin City and hauls the snow to a field below the hill. Volunteer truckers and equipment operators then build Sugar Hill from it. That year there was none to find. The council considered astroturf and a go-kart-style race. “If we get a foot of snow, we might be game, so who knows,” said Sam Haverstock, the council’s vice president. “Pray for snow. There’s always a chance. I always say Montana provides one way or another.” He also said: “The races are the heart and soul of Cabin Fever Days, but at the end of the day, it’s all about supporting our local businesses and our volunteer fire departments.”

No snow came. On Thursday the council announced the first No Snow Barstool Ski Show in place of the races. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, barstool skis stood on display along Central Avenue for spectators to vote on. Cash prizes went to the top three in each category, with awards that evening at Packers Roost in Coram. “We need your support,” organizers wrote. “We need you to come out and help these vendors and canyon businesses make it through another winter.” The kids’ sled race was cancelled. The weekend also held its first silent auction.

The 2025 festival had donated $10,500. After the snowless 2026 weekend, the council wrote that it had been “shaking in our boots hoping to just break even.” Then a donation arrived from Mary Robertson of Hungry Horse, who had died on February 19, 2023, and who, the council wrote, “absolutely LOVED Cabin Fever Days.” The 2026 donation came to $25,000. The Martin City, Hungry Horse, and Coram–West Glacier fire departments received $7,000 each, and a new name joined the list: the Blankenship Volunteer Fire Department, with $1,500.