Day 13 Thur Feb 6. Bozeman – Big Sky – Missoula. 2580m vertical (37340 total)

Peered out the window around 3am (gotta love waking up in the middle of the night) to the lovely sight of a well covered car.  A lot more than just pixie dust to brush off this morning – about 10cm on the car.  Reporting between 20 and 30 com on the hill.  Yippee!

Was worried about the drive up but the biggest challenge was navigating the sidestreets around the motel where there had been minimal plowing.  After that the drive up to Big Sky town was pretty good – snowing the whole way but well plowed road and no idiots trying stupid overtaking manouvres.  Slowed to a crawl on the final 8 miles up to the resort and getting into the parking areas – and then getting onto a zoo cart – was complete chaos.

So it ended up being two and a half hours for what would normally be about half that.  And of course EVERYONE was out enjoying the new snow.  Queue at Ramcharger looked horrendous but got through singles line in a couple of minutes.  Headed for the other gladed run off the top of Southern Comfort and it was just wonderful. Gliding through calf deep fluff with a bow wave building up over your knees, so nice I had to do it twice.  The run down Africa to base wasn’t quite as good as yesterday but still pretty damn fine.

Was only going to have a short day so took an early lunch and emerged to find queues had dropped considerably.  Still snowing steadily and all the high and exposed lifts closed and sweet FA visibility when you got out of the trees so headed up Swift Current and had a run down Crazy Horse.  Seemed to be collecting quite a bit of windblown as well as the falling stuff and was just great – though I did take a BIG tumble that knocked the wind out and took a bit to get the skis back underneath me again.  Though at least I didn’t lose a ski like one poor sod.

Was going to head down through the trees next run but looked a bit tight so played in the fluff at the edges of the next run before darting back into Lois Lane, but with this much fresh the only way you could keep your skis moving was to ski already tracked terrain – which sort of defeats the point of it all.  One more run down Crazy Horse and my knees and quads had had enough.

The two days here have provided some truly fine storm skiing and helped make up for the disappointment of the missed storm at Targhee

Remarkably easy trip back down the Gallatin – only issue was when I pulled over into a turnout to take a photo and nearly got bogged cos it was so deep.  Back down in the valley, equipped with coffee and lemon cake it was onto I-90 and 130kph most of the way to Missoula.  While you could see the storm clouds in the mountains to the south the highway was for the large part mercifully dry and was at the motel just after 7.

Still more snow forecast for the mountains overnight and it’s been snowing steadily here for the last few hours.  Looks like I’ll get more practice at clearing snow off the car in the morning.  Too tired to go through photos – maybe tomorrow.

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