The plan for this year's big ski trip was once again to base things out of our place here in Hamilton, Montana. In addition to some days at Lost Trail Powder Mountain, our local ski area that was a big hit with everyone last year, we would be heading a few hours north for a day at Big Mountain in Montana and a few days at Fernie Alpine Resort in British Columbia. Fortunately, Fernie is only 5 hours from our place, and Big Mountain is right on the way. Since travel times would be minimal, there was the potential for nine days of continuous skiing.

I don't think I'd ever done nine straight days of hard skiing before, but the quality of the snow and terrain on this trip made me not want to take a break. All told I think we received over 80 inches of snow during the period, and with four digital video cameras, a head cam, and four digital still cameras, some of the best images we've ever captured. I should warn everyone that some of the Lost Trail pictures are so chock full of powder, you may need to dust off your hands after looking at them.


Friday - February 14th

The first person to arrive was my friend Weston, a colleague from UVM who is now out in Michigan. I rushed to get everything finished up in the lab, and couldn't wait to get started on my vacation. It's hard not to get excited when the forecast calls for plenty of snow, and all you've got to do for the next nine days is ski, eat, and sleep (oh, and maybe capture it all on digital media for posterity ;). After settling in, we went out for some dinner at the Exchange, a local pub. It was surprisingly crowded, and we finally realized that it was Valentine's Day. Still, we managed to get a table anyway and have a good meal. I think it was Tyler's first time out at a restaurant, and he behaved well despite a lot of attention. Later that evening, Dave called and realized that he had sort of screwed up with his plans for getting a plane ticket. He'd been sick for about a month, and tried putting off his travel plans until he was feeling better, but things just kept dragging along. Now it was down to the wire and he wasn't sure if he could make it. It would be strange not to have Dave on the trip, but there was still some hope.

Saturday - February 15th - Lost Trail Powder Mountain, MT - 5 inches new snow

Saturday, it was just Weston and I for skiers and we headed out to Lost Trail in search of powder. We'd been sitting under a ridge of high pressure for the past week, and I was worried about not getting new snow. Fortunately, the flow was getting wetter all the time, and we'd already received 5 new inches since Thursday. Although only 3 inches were new overnight, all of it would be available on Chair 4 as they opened it for the first time since the previous Sunday. Since E wasn't skiing, she would be able to pick up our next arrival, James. He was flying into Missoula at 1:30 P.M., which would have made it tough for me to get him during the middle of Weston's first ski day.

If you'd like to look at a map of Lost Trail Powder Mountain and follow along while you read the report, click the icon below to open a high resolution image in a new window.

Weston and I used his rental Ford Explorer, and headed off to Lost Trail bright and early. While boarding lift 1, we checked on the status of lift 4 and the lift operator suggested we'd be in good shape if we headed right over, so we did. Although I haven't timed it, folks say that the ride on chair 4 takes 17 minutes. It's a regular speed double chair that Lost Trail obtained from Grand Targhee over in Wyoming, and the great thing is that it keeps the traffic down on the trails. Although there will sometimes be a line at the beginning of the day when it starts up, it usually disappears by lunch time as people get their fresh tracks on Saddle Mountain and then disperse. It was surprisingly windy on the mountain, I think the windiest I'd experienced for the year. Although Lost Trail is on the Continental Divide, it doesn't really jut up above the other mountains in the area, and the winds seem tame compared to what one might expect in the higher peaks. Early on, we went down the open face of The Ripper, and although the snow was untracked, it had been blown into small ridges that stood diagonally across the trail. The ridges made the snowpack alternate between windpack and powder, and you had to be ready to accommodate the changes in the surface. As long as you stayed on your game, it was great, but if you dared to slack you might be thrown around.

After The Ripper, we headed down into the trails and trees below. Weston had only brought one pair of skis, his 160 cm slalom racing skis. They may seem like a highly specialized pair of skis to bring on a non-racing ski trip, but now that he was phasing out of racing, these were his "tree skiing" skis, and boy did they rip. He'd had his tree skiing epiphany a couple of years ago at Stowe (the big winter of 2000-2001) and he was psyched to get in on some quality tree skiing on this trip. The trees of Saddle Mountain delivered, and as soon as Weston had jumped into the nicely spaced Ponderosa Pines, he was hooked. More than once during the day our travels brought us back into the trees on each side of the lift line. We tested out a different lens for the head cam; instead of the usual 3.6 mm lens that gives a 72 degree field of view, I attached an 8 mm lens that gives a 36 degree field of view. The usual lens is great, but since it is a bit fish eye in nature, if you're not right on the skier in front of you they start to get small in the picture. I chased Weston around through the trees, trying my best to keep the lens on him; there's a lot smaller margin of error when your field of view is only 36 degrees.

We did venture into Hollywood Bowl at one point, but it was still a bit crusty from a week of sun so one trip was enough. I decided that a trip out to the Bear Claw Ridge would give us plenty of untracked that would be fairly free from the wind and sun, so we headed across Oreo and down to the ridge. There was a rope across the main entrance to the ridge, and it turns out that the very top was closed due to the presence of some cornices. They are generally very small, only about 5 or so feet high, but now that the terrain was in-bounds, I guess patrol was being extra safe. Since my plan was to hit a couple of trails that extend off the end (east side) of the ridge, we could avoid the closed area by taking the traverse along the southern side. This is the traverse that we used extensively during last year's trip, and it's a nice route. All the trails off the ridge were essentially untracked, since most folks either aren't aware of how to get to them, or don't care since there is generally plenty of powder elsewhere (also I guess the rope across the top of the ridge would deter most people who aren't sure of what they're doing). We hit Bobcat first, and got good turns although not stellar. The powder was nice, but it had still seen some settling and maybe a bit of wind. We repeated a jaunt to the same area on another trip up Chair 4, and this time we did some exploring on the ridge. The trails here are visible as one traverses across Candy Stick below (this is a common route to chair 4), and I had often looked up and seen this nice line cut through the trees connecting onto Bobcat. It's maybe 15 or so feet wide, and just says "ski me!" With a bit of exploring along the end of the ridge, I finally discovered that it starts on the actual Bear Claw Ridge Trail itself. Weston and I took turns on the little slot, and shot some video. I've now got a much better sense of that part of the ridge after the exploring; there are a lot of fun options. The north side definitely has the steepest terrain, but the trails off the end are a fun alternative.

During our travels down Oreo, we also got the feel for short-cutting the big left hand turn by skiing the trees. At a certain point prior to the turn, the trees are marked as out of bounds, presumably due to all the cliffs and avalanche hazard below. Eventually however, one is allowed to drop off into the trees and they provide a nice steep shot down to the next section of Oreo. You do have to watch out for the large drop before you get back onto the trail. The grooming machines have cut a large swath out of the snow on the upper side of the trail, and if you don't watch it as you come barreling down through the steep trees, you'll end up dropping 10 feet onto a flat surface. Our explorations here also set us up for a run that we would hit the following day, see Sunday's report for details.

I think by the end of the day, I finally got to take Weston for another run on the main mountain. We'd spent so much time on chair 4, that he was missing out on some of the fun stuff of Chair 1. We hit Slides, a nice shot above Femur Ridge of about 40 degrees. It was skied out and firm, but we had some fun steep turns. Once we dropped into the bowl below Femur Ridge though, we found softer snow. All in all, I'm pretty sure Weston had a fun day at Lost Trail; he didn't seem to have any problems heading back for another go of it the next day.

Once we got home, we found James hanging out with Erica and Tyler, his flights seemed to have gone smoothly. He immediately filled us in on the goings on back home in Vermont, especially the cold temperatures. It was -18 F when he'd left Burlington that morning, and 38 when he arrived at Missoula. He said it felt downright balmy as he walked around in just a sweater. Of course James hadn't been just living in the sub-zero temperatures like most folks, he was outside working in them most days. That's got to get one acclimated to the cold. He told us of a great day he'd had at Jay Peak the previous weekend. It didn't start out as a powder day, but in the span of 3 hours, they picked up 8 inches of incredibly light snow. It was so light that when you skied through it, it was like it wasn't even there. He said that if you dragged your pole through this snow, there wasn't even any resistance, pretty amazing fluff. I think I heard someone on the SkiVT-L list mention that sometimes Jay Peak will get western-style snow. I think I'd adjust that to say that sometimes parts of the west get Jay Peak-style snow ;).

Our analysis of the video shot with the 8 mm head cam lens indicated that we still had things to figure out. The vertical angle that I'd used for the normal 3.6 mm lens was too low, and 90% of the time all I got in the picture was the snow on the ground. Also, objects beyond 5-10 feet were out of focus, so even when I did get Weston in the frame, he wasn't always clear. I'm not sure if this issue is due to not being able to tighten the lens as much as I would like. I used a paper clip as a makeshift tool, but I think I may need to get some sort of a spanner to insert it really snugly. We decided that we'd go back to the regular 3.6 mm lens for the time being, since it was generally producing excellent pictures, even if distant objects were quite small.

Our next arrival was Chris, and his flight was coming in around 10:00 P.M. Since E had been gracious enough to pick up James during the day, it was my turn to be the local taxi service. Unfortunately, James and Weston were just too tired to go with me (maybe they were still on Eastern Time) so I headed out solo. It was a nice drive, and Chris' flight arrived right on time. Unfortunately, it looks like his luggage decided to stay in Denver. This meant that he was without much of his clothing and ski equipment. The airline indicated that his bags would likely be on the morning flight and they would deliver them pronto. Chris wasn't too worried, and knowing that he had many days of skiing ahead the thought of taking a day off didn't seem to phase him much at all.

Unfortunately, I didn't capture any frames from the video of the first day to serve as stills (and Weston didn't get any with his camera, but there are many ski pictures to come.