THE NEW BOHEMIANS

IT'S EARLY Saturday morning in Bozeman, Montana, and a dusty white Suburban full of hungover girls rolls up to a small white house with Christmas lights hung haphazardly around the front door. A biker wends his unstable way up the street, looking lost and underdressed for the cold in a T-shirt and jeans.

It's the morning of Bridger Bowl's local big mountain competition, Bridger Gully Freeride, and the girls are up far earlier than usual to make the pre-competition meeting. Mackenzie Lisac is the last pickup of the morning, and the only hint she's even home came in the form of a text to Andie Creel, our responsible driver, five minutes before we parked out front: "Oh God. I'm awake."

The night before, the house was pulsing with hundreds of kids—mostly flannel and trucker hat-clad Montana State students or dropouts—with backpacks full of Montucky Cold Snacks. Lisac's pitch for the party was simple: "A few of us are chilling pretty hard." Lisac sprints out of the house in a tie-dye T-shirt and sneakers—not a single piece of ski gear on her person—and runs to her car, wheeling back toward the house with an armful of gear. She finally opens the trunk, held shut by a bungee cord and a jerry-rigged bike rack, and grins.

"What's up, ladies?"

WHETHER THEY'RE WESTWARD migrants eager to check a season at Alta off the bucket list or born-and-raised mountain kids who decline to leave their small towns for big cities, many skiers first drop fully into the culture as young adults. "Just for a year or two," they'll say, and 30 years later they're seasoned locals.

It's a familiar storyline, but in 2016 the dream looks a lot different than it used to—and it's never been so jeopardized.

"Has anyone seen my skis?" Someone get Andie Creel a Bloody.

Mackenzie Lisac, like the rest of her friends, holds her own in the classroom as well as on the hill.

Ski towns from Telluride to Jackson Hole boast massive income gaps, and housing crises price mountain