Friday, February 5, 2016

winter time in Montana

The Montana Experience


My alarm goes off. It is still dark out. It must be early. All I know is that it feels too early to be doing this. The next thing that happens is the most important. I listen for the faint beep from the kitchen that tells me coffee is ready. I’m not leaving the comfort and warmth of my bed until the coffee is hot. Most of our tribe prefers French-press or pour over coffee. But between two of us and a heavy caffeine addiction, a 14-cup drip is just right, plus its ready by the time I have dragged myself out of bed.
















El Nino typically unleashes its furry in the Southwest while we in Montana end up with dry warmer conditions for the winter months. That has not been the case so far this winter. We have had pretty spectacular conditions throughout the mountains of Montana. I live in Missoula, and there has been no shortage of powder this season, as long as you willing work a little for it.
 
The mountains here are not for the faint of heart. Lewis and Clark traveled these peaks, it nearly killed them then, and it hasn’t changed much since. The deep ravines filled with thick alder, creek crossings, and traveling up, over or around downed logs, fallen from age or fire, make for challenging travel to say the least. But if you are able to persevere and get past the route finding and up onto the ridgelines, you will be rewarded with beautiful rugged landscapes as far as the eye can see. And if you are lucky and the mountains allow, you might even get to ski your original objective.

Josh and I ski during most of our free time in the winter. We ski everything from resort groomers to steep remote couloir in the mountain of Montana. On one particular morning we set out with our good friend Julie to ski off the summit of Gash point. A prominent peak just west of a tiny town called Victor MT. The summit sits just below 9000’, giving way to an immense open tree-less bowl.

With the valley covered in white, we couldn’t drive all the way to the trailhead. This added a few extra miles of skinning on the roads. In Montana you can count on spending a lot of your time on forest service roads. After what felt like hours of contouring along the road, we reached the entrance to our ridge. We broke trail up the ridge. We got a glimpse of our Peak and it gives you an extra boost of energy to keep going.

We were breaking trail in knee-deep powder though low angle tress, assessing the snow pack. With recent snowfall we hoped to ski the main shoot off the summit, but these perfectly spaced tress with 12-16 inches of fresh cold smoke wouldn’t be a bad contingency plan.
 After 5 hours of climbing and never feeling like we were getting anywhere we made it. The snow was stable, the clouds cleared and we had a rare opportunity to see our line, knowing it was safe and we were able to rip down 2000’ vertical feet of open alpine bowl. The cold smoke blew into our faces and we giggled like schoolgirls as made out way down.

When skiing in the backcountry it is usually lower angle gladded areas that we are skiing due to avalanche danger. But the stars aligned for us today and we had one of the best ski days of the season.