The weather has been really screwy this winter, so with a few last minute adjustments, Jen and I temporarily abandoned Colorado for Montana. Big Sky here we come!
Flying opposed to driving is a very different experience because you still you have to bring a ton of stuff! These bags hold just our equipment, not any our clothes or outerwear. That was another large suitcase each. You could find us at the airport lugging two bags each with a pair of boots over our shoulders.
After a brief stop in Salt Lake City, UT we finally arrived in Bozeman. It was a quaint, but extremely nice, airport. Seeing a dog just hanging out with some cowboys in the baggage claim was good foreshadowing for the feel of the trip.
A quick stop for some buffalo chicken mac and cheese, then we got in our front wheel drive Kia Sorrento and took off for the mountains.
The drive through Bozeman looked exactly like what you would expect a Montana town to be.
After a short drive towards Yellowstone, our destination suddenly became apparerent. That gigantic peak is in the distance is where the tram drops you off. Pictures don’t do it justice in the sense that it is hard to portray just how out of place and imposing the peak is.
Since we are on the subject of driving, I’d like to jump ahead a few days and point out there are giant rams roaming the highway. Sadly, we did not see a moose. (Jen has been obsessed with them, because she doesn’t quite believe me about how huge they are)
Our hotel was pretty nice. I’d say it was notably better than our usual Super 8 digs.
It was right down the street from a really fancy resteraunt.
They served deep fried steak chunks with cocktail sauce for dipping… and huckleberry pie and/or cheesecake. We ate there two nights in a row and they were sold out of the rasberry-peach pie both nights!
The skiing was great! We had snow every night (I believe the smallest amount was five inches) and two of the four days. Overall, there was more than two feet of snow while we were there. A little bit of sun and a lot of snow… you can’t ask for more.
It’s a good thing it snowed because that mountain is ROCKY. Sharp jagged rocks were unearthed during many unsuspecting turns. Our skis took a bit of a beating… plenty of base damage and even a blown out edge. Jen has officially entered the club of thrashing perfectly good skis (this trip was the first time she had ever used them, and they are up for major repair already!)
Check out the edge wear… These had a fresh tune at the beginning of the day.
I am going to teach Jen ski repair so she can have normal edges again… Hopefully I remember what I’m doing.
We were lucky enough to catch fresh tracks not all all morning, but also afternoon one day. They just do not have lift lines. It was my best day of skiing in recent history, maybe ever. I made the comment “I’d destroy a pair of skis for a day like today”… and as seen above, we basically did.
You may notice we are wearing backpacks in all the skiing pictures… They are for avalanche gear. A shovel, probe and Avalung in the pack, and a beacon strapped to our torso. This equiptment is required for parts of the mountain, but we used it full time this trip. I think it was a really good idea and will continue to do so in the future. A 13 year old kid died in Vail during our vacation from an in-bounds (but closed area) avalanche. It was on Prima Cornice, which is a front side mogul run easily visable from the Northwoods lift. Between that news and hearing the guns going off all day every day (the ski patrol strategically shoot big artillery shells to help manage avalanche danger).
Snow all day plus a couple faceplants makes your face very cold!
We were having a great run off of the Challenger lift when Jen had a little incident. She hit a buried rock and it knocked her ski off… and it was steep enough the brakes did not work. The ski went an easy 100 yards downhill, in powder. It was highly impressive. You can see how far she had to slide down the mountain on her butt to collect her ski.
I wonder where she hit the rock?
You could see her slide marks from here! I just wish the picture turned out.
A few more pictures and a video, and I’ll close out this trip report. In summary, Big Sky was great, but in many ways opposite of our normal resorts. I believe the terrain is better than Vail, but Vail makes up for it by managing the mountain better (more efficient lift locations, high speed lifts, better cat track layout for transportation). For instance, there are very few places on Vail mountain that you cannot get to within a lift ride or two, or efficient cat track use. Big Sky it feels like every area is at least three lifts from the other. Given that they only have a few high speed quads, this makes it a fairly lengthy endeaver. It took us an hour to get to or from Dakato bowl for instance. The trade off though is that NO ONE is at Big Sky. On a weekend powder day, first chair of the morning was the only line we stood in and we shared four chairs all day. The lack of lines and people on the mountain is mindblowing for people used to skiing the high traffic resorts of Colorado. That fits the feel of Montana perfectly… We saw each of the four people we shared lifts with after skiing that day around town. A woman walked up to us and said “I haven’t seen you before, where are you from?”. It rememinded me of taking a time machine to the ski resorts I skied growing up… with really really good terrain.
This is where the tram runs… to give a size perspective, the picture shows about 1,400 vertical feet.
Those three little dots on the bottom left? Those are people. That should give you some perspective on how big this place is! Click on any of the pictures to zoom in to a rediculous size.
