Wounded Knee

Steep expert terrain in the Back Bowls, opened in 1976 with the Summit Platter (now Summit Chair). Positioned below Rodney’s Ridge and to skier’s right of the central bowls; serves as a primary expert route and a critical patrol “skiway” for avalanche control and end-of-day sweep; patrol sleds use it to reach remote gullies and transport injured skiers toward the base. Accessed via the Summit Chair or Paradise Chair.

Naming. The name is a double entendre: the steep, mogul-filled terrain was notorious for knee injuries among 1970s skiers (stiff boots, long skis), and it referenced the 1973 Wounded Knee Occupation; the Oglala Lakota and AIM standoff at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, which was a landmark Indigenous rights event. Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970) had brought the 1890 massacre to a wide audience. For the mountain staff who pioneered the Back Bowls, the name combined physical grit with 1970s political awareness. Charlie Locke reverted a late-2000s marketing rebrand to preserve the original name. Some veterans consider it the “easiest double black” at a major western resort; steep but without mandatory cliff-drops; though its length and consistent pitch keep its “knee-wounder” reputation. Connects to Split Rock on the sweep route.