Jay Silveira
New member
Saturday was a rare SkiVT-L gathering at Lost Trail Powder Mountain. Steve Kijak was stopping in on his tour of Montana, and Laura Maxson was in town on business. Combined with E and myself, that meant it was probably the most SkiVTers Lost Trail had ever seen. <BR> <BR>We’d moved into spring conditions, which meant that there was no rush to arrive for 1st tracks. Laura rode with us, and we met up with Steve in the parking lot sometime before 11:00 A.M. The parking lot was a sheet of groomed ice, and it got me concerned about the conditions on the hill. <BR> <BR>E took first sit in the lodge with Tyler, and I was in charge of giving a tour. Conditions weren’t quite like the parking lot, but they were firm enough that we stuck to the groomed. I decided to take Laura and Steve on the standard groomed route down to Chair 2 (Meadow Run – Upper Far Out – Chicken Out – Southern Comfort). Since chair 2 is both south facing and ends 400’ below the main base area, I thought it might give us our best chance for soft snow. Although it certainly wasn’t great corn yet, the end of the run featured snow that had softened a bit. <BR> <BR>Next run, I took them over to Chair 4, which was also new to Laura since her last visit. On the way, I found nice soft snow on Side Street that carved like corn; those were definitely some of my favorite turns of the day. Off Chair 4 we hit Sacajewea, which was still a bit firm up top, but when we connected to Odyssey and Two Dot, things got a bit softer. After that we headed back via Chair 3 since I wanted to give E a chance to get in some skiing. <BR> <BR>After lunch, and my shift in the lodge, I wanted to get in a couple more runs and show Steve a little of the steeper terrain. I was hoping the afternoon had softened the steeps up nicely, but lack of continuous sun meant that our ride down Slides (a bit shy of 40 degrees) was less than spectacular. Although it wasn’t rock hard, the chopped up snow made for an inconsistent surface that would throw you around a bit. Dropping into the bowl below Femur Ridge, we found similar conditions, although since it wasn’t quite as steep, things were maybe a touch smoother. For a final run, I took them on North Face, which had seen more traffic to chop things up a little more. I think in this case, “skier grooming” helped to make it a better surface. <BR> <BR>It’s too bad we couldn’t get Steve a powder day at Lost Trail Powder Mountain, but maybe next time. At the end of the day, Steve gave us some extra Green Plaid to display (sort of like a SkiVT-L emissary). Steve had already been on skis for more than 10 days, and he was off to Missoula, then Great Divide for more skiing. Although his second week may not have been the best snow of the trip, it seems that hitting the biggest storm of the season during his 1st week more than made up for it. As we were packing up and leaving the parking lot, a steady rain began, and I was hoping it would change to snow overnight. At the Sula store on the way home, the cashier said that they were calling for a foot of snow up at the mountain. I found that a bit hard to believe, but it seemed like they would get at least something as soon as the temperatures cooled off. A bit of a powder day would be nice, since I was heading up for my first snowboarding day of the season on Sunday. Stay tuned!