Cooke City, MT

first trip to Cooke for me. no sled and had to get a tow by Bill at the Bike Shack($15/per person, one way). we could pretty much ride back to town at the end of every day. we were limited of where we could go, but the options were still enormous. rode 4 days; 3/15-3/18 <BR> <BR>Day 1. got towed up and dropped off at Henderson Mt. rode a big wide open bowl for a few laps. then we rode down through some trees to get back to the sled road to hike back about a mile so that we could ride down the rest of the way back to town along the sled road. well, that tree run was pretty sick. kinda sketchy too. we got some 10" slabs to release, but they didn't accumulate to much. the slope was hovering around 40 degrees i think, but i neglected to measure it with my inclometer. oops! a really fun bombing type tree run out into a little open bowl at mock speed. <BR> <BR>Day 2. towed up to Daisy Pass. rode down into what ended up being the wrong side to see what was around the corner. got to the corner and saw an awesome slope that we wanted to ride. started hiking up it and felt some collapsing as it was recently windloaded. traversed over to the rocks, straped in and got the hell out of there. hiked back up the bowl we came down to go back to where we started. all this was about a 2hr detour. then we found a ridge that appeared safe to hike up to and hike along to get to a big chute and another wide open bowl. that's just what we did, but when we got on the ridge top, we found wind gusts nearly blowing us over at times. i'm guessing between 30-40mph winds, but i don't really know. all i know is that it sucked when it blew. it was also to steep to skin in most areas, so i had to switch over to the board mode and just carry it and use it for leverage as i kicked boot holds in the windblown boiler plate. taking the skins off up there was quite fun. ya right! hiking up the loose rocks was just to sketchy as it was a long rocky way down on the other side of the ridge. needless to say, we got to where we wanted to ride down. straped in and had an awesome run. i really didn't think the hike up was going to be worth it, but it kinda was. awesome snow, nice steep slope, and big wide open turns at mock speed. after all that it was about 2:00pm, so we had some lunch and then rode down through some trees to find the sled road to head back to town. ended up getting sucked into a gully. had to hike out of that which took an extra hour. then, finally got back to the road and back to town. <BR> <BR>Day 3. we're not paying for a tow today. we'll find our own ride. just ask some sleders to tow us up for like $20 for all 4 of us. 2 sleds, 2 people get towed per sled. that should be no problem cause there are tons of sleders heading up every day. Cooke City is a snowmobile meca for those who don't know. insane endless amounts of terrain for sledders and backcountry skiers/snowboarders. to make a long story short, no ride at 11am, after trying for 3 hrs, so we called it quits and screwed around in the trees behind our cabin. this day sucked cause i was with two slow hiking gaping females. my buddy who was with us the first two days decided to take off cause he had to work the next day. i'll cut this day short and say it just sucked, but wasn't a total waste cause we got SOME turns in at least. where's my beer dammit!?!?! <BR> <BR>Day 4. paid for the ride up the hill to go back to Hendeson and build a jump. blue skies. partly cloudy. beautiful day! a bit windy though. we built a 40' jump. i hit it about 8 times. one girl was scared of it, so she just sat around all day after helping build it, and the other girl just ate shit every time she went off of it, but at least she went for it. oh well, i got my switch FS 5 down and drank a couple of beers in the beatiful mountains around Cooke City, and got a nice goggle tan. we also dropped a little cornice a couple of times that was near our jump. headed out at about 4:30pm to ride some trees that we were directed to by the guy who had towed us up in the morning(Bill at the Bike Shack). that tree run was like a friggin dream. super spaced trees, kinda mellow slope, but steep enough to get moving pretty fast, and it brought us right down to the sled road which we took back to town. rode right back into town every day. that was pretty convenient. <BR> <BR>the only hiking that we had to do was up bowls and along the ridges of what we wanted to ride. we were out at least 6 miles back in the backcountry every day, so we got about a 4 or 5 mile run at the end of every day to get back to town. the place is pretty crazy even if you don't have a sled, but i would only go back there if i was with some more capable riders and with someone who had a sled to get to even some more sick shit like some bigger lines and big cliff's. it was good to get an idea of the area right outside of the town, but if we had a sled we would've been a lot better off. still a good trip though. <BR> <BR>sorry it's so long. i never read posts that are this long, so thanks for reading if you actually finished it.