Jay Silveira
New member
As expected, this week has been somewhat dry relative to the last few. Since last weekend, 6 inches fell on Wednesday, and then another inch today. Greg had contemplated coming over from Seattle for some Lost Trail Powder, but the fair weather scared him away. I can totally understand. Since we're heading to Vermont tomorrow, and it wasn't going to be an outrageous powder day, E decided to forego skiing to get some cleaning and packing done. I figured I had to hold up the skiing end of the family, and headed up to Lost Trail for a couple of hours. <BR> <BR>The first order of business was to pick up my season's pass, which was ready and waiting for me. I could see that with no new snow, basically everything was tracked out, and even some bumps were beginning to form on South Face. I hopped on Chair 1 and decided to warm up on some groomed terrain: Far Out/Southern Comfort etc. The groomed snow was generally soft packed powder, although I did hit a couple of firmer spots that may have been a result of traffic. I was really enjoying being back on my Volant Midfats. I know that some folks like to use their CMH fats as their full-time ski, but they're just not built for carving quick turns on the groomed, even compared to a midfat that's not especially a carving ski. <BR> <BR>Enjoying the groomed run, I decided to hit some groomed terrain on the opposite end of the area, North Bowl. I encountered more soft packed snow, and to my surprise, I found that the Boomer Tow, and even Chair 3 were running. This was a nice surprise, and I decided to head down to the Chair 3 area and check out Main Street/Side Street for powder. While traversing to the area on the Candy Stick trail, I finally got a close up look at the location of the new towers that have been put in for Chair 5. I could see that the towers went up onto the Bear Claw Ridge, and I decided that my next run would have to be a reconnaissance to check out what this lift would service. I found good powder on the left side of Main Street in the trees, even though the bulk of the trail was well tracked. It was pretty settled powder, in which I sunk in just a few inches for the most part, although I was getting my knee and hip to sink in on harder carves where I leaned over. Great stuff, although certainly E wasn't really missing anything epic. <BR> <BR>I ran the circuit of lifts to get myself back to North Bowl, and after a few minutes of hiking, I was atop the Bear Claw Ridge. I was tempted to head down into the powder of Elk Basin, but I stuck with my original plan of checking out Chair 5. The traverse across the ridge did have a nice track laid down, and I followed it out quite a ways, eventually passing and greeting a couple of other skiers that had made the journey. As I neared the end of the ridge, I could see what looked like it would be the upper terminus of Chair 5. It was at the top of the Bobcat trail, and it seems like the new chair will only really service a few trails and offer 400-500 vertical. It would be more useful if it went all the way to the top of the ridge so it could provide access to both sides. It will provide nice access to many of the trees on the south side of the ridge. I guess we'll have to see what sort of traffic patterns evolve when they start running it next season. <BR> <BR>There had been a few breaks of blue sky when I first arrived, but now the clouds had rolled in and it was snowing lightly to moderately. It made it difficult to get some pictures of the Chair 5 area, but it did start to freshen up the surfaces a bit. For my run down the ridge, I took a little cut through the trees that I finally got to ski with Weston during his visit in February. I had seen that it was untracked from below, although when I finally got to the top, I saw that another skier had taken it! Oh well, I guess I'd have to settle for second tracks. The snow was a similar settled powder to what I'd experienced on Main Street, nothing out of this world, but quality turns in untracked snow. I stopped to get a few more pictures of the area around the new lift, then finished off by heading down to the Chair 3 area and catching some nice powder on the right side of Side Street in the trees. After that, it was a quick trip up Chair 3 and a walk to the car. <BR> <BR>It was a great way to finish up my Montana skiing for 2003, but tomorrow it's off to Vermont for some skiing in the homecountry. It looks like most areas received a few inches today, to top off the deep base set up from the huge storms of the past weeks. It should be a lot of fun! <BR> <BR>I got a few scenery shots from the day, generally in the area surrounding the new lift. It had started snowing so I lost a bit of contrast, but they give a nice general impression of the conditions and the lift setup. They can be viewed at: <BR> <BR><A HREF="http://www.JandEproductions.com/2003/21DEC03.html" TARGET="_top">http://www.JandEproductions.com/2003/21DEC03.html</A> <BR> <BR>J.Spin