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Big Sky - Day 5 The morning started out cloudy with some heavy flurry action going on. The peak was socked in again, so we probably wouldn't be heading up the Tram. Since we hadn't got any snow overnight, it was gonna be a search for good snow. With the winds out of the South, we thought our best bet would be on the North side of the mountain, so that's where we started. From the Village we took Swift up and went down to the Powder Seeker, since that's what we were gonna be doing today. From the top of the lift however, we found it wasn't going to be a fun day. The light was flat and made the run blind. It was difficult just trying to see the traverse. After fighting our way down that and having enough of the flat light, we headed for the trees. We made our way down to the Challenger lift and down Midnight. Ran the Iron Horse liftline and made our way down Elkhorn to the Six-Shooter. Thinking that nobody goes out to the woods above Six-Shooter because it's a pain due to taking 2 lifts to get there, the snow would still be good. Luckily this paid off. We found some good snow and fun tree runs in and around the Jacks. We lapped them a few times since they were so good. After lunch we made our way over to Andesite to hit some woods that we didn't run the past few days. War Dance and Mine Shaft were my favorites, being freaking steep with lots of soft snow and big bumps. We also ran some perfectly sized bumps on lower Mad Wolf. For shits and giggles we made a run down Freemont's Forest which turned out to be a fun roller coaster ride. Seems as though they have their crazies out here too. On a ride up with a SP who had his radio up, a call went out for a lost person somewhere in some woods. The caller said he should be easy to spot as he's dressed in an Iron Man costume. We all got a good chuckle out of that. We made a final run down Spotted Elk which still had some fresh piles on the sides and headed into the bar for some apres beers. Had an interesting waitress from Cleveland so we had to mess with her a bit for some fun. Slopes were crowded today! Chicken Tikki Masala

Jesus. Best turns of the year for sure. Didn’t expect face shots on the east coast. About 20” before the power shut down. I guess I’ll be back to use my voucher. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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On our way. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Looks like about 15" here. Wind still howling, but snow has stopped now.

We got the 4th gondubie up. Quick beer on the way up. When we got off there was 14-16” of new snow. Half the people in front of us turned left. We went right. Completely untracked everywhere. There were 5-7 people breaking trail in front of us and we got in their tracks. Once we got over the edge of Dot Nobel, they completely disappeared and the entire run was again untracked. Shadows and toast got ahead of me for a bit but once I figured out my lean back point and that I didn’t even need to turn I was having the best run this season. Back into the gondubie and another beer we were all sweating something fierce and agreed to drop a layer after the run. Back off the gondi we went left this time. I went down Seneca and I have no idea where the fuck shadows and toast went. Top was wind blown hardpack but past the head wall it was all untracked and ungrommed. Now that was the best run of the season. Back at gondubie base I dropped a layer and tried to stop sweating before they got down. On the way back up we had another beer and things got foggy. We went left again back to where the guys went before. As I was clicking in the Gondi stopped and an alarm and 🚨 started flashing. Snowing 2-3” an hour and zero viz into the Ski pack I caught up to them. Shadows skier ahead. I went next and crashed. Clicking back in was fun but this last run easily became the best run of the season. Heading back down the Gondi still wasn’t moving. As we were gathering out gear a local started complaint to us that they didn’t groom enough last night and we just started laughing. Inside the lodge the power was out and we caught wind they were shutting down. Some asshole lost his shit over this and it was glorious. After two lodge beers we headed out to the car. There were 50-60 people waiting outside for a shuttle to the upper lot. People were still arriving as we loaded up and left for the brewery.

20” up top maybe 12” at base. Not as heavy as expected. Power was out when we got here so we got in two runs so far. All untracked. Wind isn’t bad either. Had to drop a layer at Gondi base. I think toast and shadows made a wrong turn getting back here. Still nuking snow Mountain staff is saying they are expecting 36” by closing. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I had mentioned before i was up in the air about Elk, or Frost, with Montage as a backup for today. i was guilt-ed into going to the cardboard classic last night by some friends from the neighborhood here, so off i went. Hung out and did the tailgate thing for a while, a little after nine i clicked in to make the most of the cards i was dealt with. It was snowing at a pretty good clip at that point. I pretty much knew right away this was gonna be a bust and the epic-ness was way up north. The wind was blowing straight up the slopes. i basically had to pole and skate down lehigh. The base snow was just waterlooged sort of firm but not frozen, and any kind of head wall was pretty much just blown off. Hopped on the park lift, which, holy fuck, if it was to go any slower it would be going backwards. Demattes was pretty much just as bad, there was a tiny bit of pow on the sides, but any turn you made just killed your speed. Onto the East Mountain lift which must be propelled by gerbils. Lightning (yeah, right?) to Rivershot. Just straightlined it, for fear of not making it too the lift without too much effort. I didnt even bother with Floyds, Doug. They still hadnt started to send the sleds down the tubing slope, so i figure down Exhibition to take a pee, since there was a line up for the porta-potties. Pole, Pole, skate, skate, down Exhibition at a turtles pace. Up the worlds slowest lift again, down T-bolt, which was the same as every other trail, windblown headwalls. Back up East Mt, stopped at the top to watch the start of the sleds going down. They had to basically move the finish line up closer to the start line twice. The snow was hampering the downward motion of the sleds. they basically had to push them down....lol. So i was done my workout for the day, so i stowed my gear in my truck and resumed the tailgate thing. Good food, good people, and some wonderful apple pie moonshine, that was just off the hook. I might be able to get my hands on some, it would be fun for Blue party day. We went through about a gallon of it. I am completely jaded by the high speed lifts, the vert, and the trails at Blue. I still want to like Frost, but it just doesnt have much going for it anymore in my eyes. They are in rough shape over there with their base. i'm not sure i have ever seen it so thin. lots of poles up where there is just no snow. Trees are not in play. I know its been a tough week or so with the rain, but, wow. And i doubt much of whats falling today is gonna help since its blowing off the slopes and into the trees. We stayed a little while after the cardboard classic was over, which was a huge mistake. Really slow traffic getting out of the place. My buddy got a call from his wife 940/115 was crawling. made a plan to go the opposite way to the turnpike, down to the slip ramp and be home in a jiff. Nope, turnpike closed in between our entance/exit. so 940/115 it is and just deal with it. Nope, had to turn around. now i try to go through split rock. again, denied. Running out of options, we ended up going down past the turnpike and taking 534 all the way home. it was super sketchy, but there werent that many cars on it. had to stop twice to clear out some hills of cars that werent making it. 2 hrs to get home from frost. What the fuck is it with this area that when it snows, the roads shut down because of people dont know better, and arent equiped to drive in it? long story short, cardboard classic fun, good time with friends, sucky skiing, but i did manage to get a small work out in doing so.

Great day with you both! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Big Sky - Final Day Well the storm that's raging over the West decided to stay West of us. Day started out with flurries but the storm never materialized and flurries were the max we received. We're gonna try the South Face, but Dakota was in hold so we hung out for a while on Andesite. Took some runs down Blackfoot which was pretty good with snow, trees and bumps. Went back up Swift and saw Dakota was open, even though the big board still said it was on hold. Ran the trees over in Bavarian which were fun, but snow was wind blown and crusty, so we headed back to the Nirth side for lunch at the Burrito Shack at the top of Swift. I had a loaded tamale with black beans and guac which was quite good. Spent the rest of the day in search of good snow as most was wind-blown. Ran the bumps under the Ramcharger lift a few times as they hadn't been skied much. Getting late and need to pack, so made one final run down Spotted Elk which had some huge bumps, but surprisingly good snow. I REALLY like both Bridger and Big Sky except for the cost of flights. Had a real good time at both and would definitely return to either or both. Both have some serious steepness to them and would have liked to get to some of the more challenging terrain if the weather had cooperated, unfortunately it didn't on this trip. Perhaps the next.

Be safe getting home boys, its brutal out there.

Best fucking day of the season. So deep, no need to make any turns. Brewery time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Absolutely puking snow here. We set out to snowshoe with myself breaking trail. Probably snowed at least a foot overnight. It was so socked in you could barely see. I had to keep my goggles up and deal with snow pelting my face because they were so fogged up I just couldn’t see. I didn’t take my phone out at all for pictures. We didn’t last long. Think it took an hour to cover a little over a mile. Should be an interesting snow coach ride back to Mammoth this afternoon. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Doesn't Camelback groom everything out though?

Excellent day. Bit far for three runs but three are enough considering. Cant do much about power issues. Place was empty. Thisll be my first travel ski day since 2008 or so. Wouldve been fuckin stellar brah if it was open all day. Roots an excellent host.

Nice work fellas....gold stars for all of you.

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Power out in my neighborhood but I have a generator mothafuckaz! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Good beer. Good food. Cool dog. Really good beer, too. Keegan Ales. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Magic Mtn is similar too. Place is a blast if they have enough snow.

You see what happens when @NMSKI comes home?!?!

Power is out all over the catskills, Huntah is down too. FKNA sick shit dudes super jelly

Top day in a good decade for me. Yeah closing down. Power issues i guess 3 runs i think. Maybe 4

Ok Blue looking like a better bet than JF for tomorrow

4”-8”over night. Probably get a foot up top overnight. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Cause i actually have money for stuff now

Yes they gloriously cover Razors and Razorback top to bottom with bumps

Everyone loves a lunch pic Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

170% fucking fun. HTFU . It wasn’t that heavy, especially up top. Best day of the season and I get to go back again for free now. No hot chocolate or cookies though.

It is a fine and charming group. I've very much appreciated their kind welcome this year. I have to go to Vermont next weekend to help my mom get her house/things ready for a big move to an independent-living place. Unless I can get away Thursday evening, or they stay open longer than anticipated, I may not get a chance to ski Blue before they close. If that's the case, I hope some of you would be up for a PASR bike park day!

8-10....hopefully.

Looks epic. Hope you didn't get too much of that stuff in your face. I got a lot of it just from shoveling.

Awesome, you guys gambled and won. I shoulda called out and tagged in. Hope I make it home from work. @saltyantthis is why you listen to @RootDKJ

Camelback tomorrow, Blue Sunday. That’s what I’m doing.

Giftcards for everyone!

Get a room and ski tomorrow

Definitely switch over to Blue. It's a lot better than Camelback.

Yes you're probably right. I remember being in our HS which was grades 7 - 12. Remember I'm a forgetful old phart...

Starting to changeover at Blue.

Subjective and relative to how you ski. I have 172s (RTM 84s) and they are awesome; perfect. They are burly, stable, grippy skis and are plenty fast for me. I'm more interested in deliberate turns than speed anyway, but still: the 84s have an impressively high speed limit. The 177s were too unwieldy for my low skill level and the way I ski. Salty likes to go fast and publish his max speed. He should have bought the 86s in 177. Harder to get on edge than the 81s, but I don't think he uses his edges anyway. His stats would be savage if he'd bought the 86s.

I gave a bunch of shit to salty for buying both the skinny and short versions of the RTM. I found him a sick deal on some last seasons 86’s in the snow 177 length but be vomited on the deal and now we’re stuck laughing about it every time it’s mentioned. tl;dr - short skis suck, long skis truck

That is very cool, you saw a moose. Every time I go to Vermont, I hope we see one. As long as it's not in front of the car! Would love to go to Elk County, Pa and see some elk.

For pa at least, elk will be the place to be tomorrow. I'm thinking I "won't be able to make" to work due to the roads...but I will have no problem getting to the mountain! Waxing the skis right now

No. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not often. Probably post more here. I'm on Pugski. I looked at some others, but really nothing has clicked.

Big Sky - Day 3 The morning started out pretty much the same as the others, get up, eat, write TR, etc., go ski. Today was the day after the storm bluebird day, unfortunately it was a bit windy, more on that later. Since it was bluebird, we could get up to Lone Peak with good visibility, unlike all the previous days, so that was the goal. Took the Otter up and then down to the base to see a pretty large crowd had already formed at the Swift. Looks like everyone has the same idea as to where to go. Headed up the Swift and down to the Powder-Seeker. Up the PS and down to the Tram to a small corral of people, not too bad. Took a bunch of pics and watched a skier come down the Big Couloir, followed shortly after by a boarder. Midway down the couloir the boarder fell and tumbled a couple of times. To the crowd's amazement, he miraculously popped back upright and continued the run down to the line. He was wearing brown pants for good reason, we thought! Up the Tram to the top where the winds were howling. From the top, the decision was made to head down the South Face, as they had been here before and found a nice powder field there after a storm. Well, that decision quickly came back to haunt us, as the storm's winds were out of the West and had blown Liberty bowl almost completely bare of powder. Oh to be a local! We picked our way down Liberty and down to Dakota and lapped the trees a couple of times. Riding up Dakota I was drawn to Kircher's Cliffs, looker's left. There were some avy explosion marks in the snow and a few tracks. I wanted to check it out but the others wanted to do another tree run. My curiosity got the better of me and I told them I was headed to the cliffs, but none followed. Headed down past the blue Badlands and the an avy gate and made my way out a traverse to the base of the cliffs and a wide-open Hanging Valley perder field all to myself. Skies down that and found the way back to Dakota and the others. Of course, they now wanted to check it out! Having done it once already, this time I pushed even further South, going around a cliff and further South some more to the avy pockmark to score some more Fresh tracks. We grew tired of South Face and made our way back around to have some lunch. Since the snow was better on the North side, we headed over to Andesite and lapped the bumps on Mad Wolf a few times. Departed Andesite by way of Spotted Elk which still had some freshies and made our way back over to Challenger as its close to the house. We lapped Challenger liftline bumps and the trees around there until we had had enough and made our way back to the house for some homemade guac and beers. One of the local bars supposedly had poker and a ping-ping table, so we made our way there after dinner only to be skunked on both fronts. Poker night was Thursday and the ping-pong table was no more. Yellowstone Club

Big Sky - Day 2 Snow began falling around 7am and was coming down at a pretty good clip and avy guns again going off on the mountain. The plan for the day was to head over to the South Face right off to take advantage of the falling snow. We headed down to Mountain Village and checked the big board to make sure both Shenandoah and Dakota lifts were good and both were green, sweet! Rode up the Sweet quad to make our way to the backside. At the top of the lift we catch a sign that both the other lifts are closed. WTF? Is the big board right or these? We decided to take a chance that the lifters forgot to change them last night and went over to Paradise, not Blue's green version by any stretch! At the bottom of Paradise we found to our dismay that the big board was wrong and the lifties had it right. Let that be a lesson to all! Took Middle Road all the way back to the base and decided to hang out on Andesite for the morning. Took Ramcharger lift and proceeded down Crazy Raven which had some nice, partially filled bumps down to Everett's Anger. At that point, the group took a right, heading down to Big Horn, but me and another went left, deeper into the woods...mistake. The farther we went in, the steeper it got to get down to Big Horn. We did eventually find a route down which had pretty thin cover to which the nicks in the bases would attest. Up the Thunder-Wolf and down Mad Wolf which had some gnarly bumps all the way down the liftline. Next lap, some went back to the bumps, me and another decided to go tree searching, as we can ski bumps back st Blue but not many trees. We headed down to check out Shady Chute which was ok, but nothing spectacular. It was shot and we popped out too soon and went straight back down to Thunder-Wolf. Others wanted another bump repeat, so we tried Broken Arrow. It was a little like Shady, but more open with some huge bumps at the bottom. They had enough bumps so we all went down to the Bolivia woods area. Lots of fun and good snow were down there. Last run through we pushed right into Marlboro Country where they have a bunch of avalanche fencing and a tight, bumped corridor next to them, pretty cool! We broke for lunch and asked SP about South Face who confirmed it was open. It was still pumping snow and we had probably received a good 4-5" by now. We made our way down Spotted Elk under Ramcharger which was a lot of fun. We made it around to the South Face the same way as in the morning and took the long run past the Yellowstone Club which we heard some wild stories about from people in the lift. Must be nice to have gobs of money... Up the Shenandoah and down Sunlight and Mike Skinner to the Dakota. We marveled at Kircher's Cliffs off in the distance and wondered how one would extract themselves if the had got too close to find themselves cliffed-out. It's some pretty wicked terrain out here and you better know what you're doing! Evidence of a fresh slide was still up there. We ended up lapping the trees under the Dakota which were all freshly filled, so finding powder was as easy as going around the next tree. The weather was a bit fickle on this side, as at the bottom of the lift it was barely flirting, midway up it was dumping snow and at the top, it was sunny! It was after 2pm now, so we decided to depart and make our way back to the house. As we came around to the other side it was still snowing hard and there were still untracked runs to be found. At this point, my legs were noodles and I just wanted to get back. Some decided to make a few more runs, which for one member, wasn't the smartest of ideas. He went off a little roller, spun around and torqued his Achilles bad. No need to push it when you're tired! Beer, dinner (Shrimp Scampi), Johnny Walker and a movie, to which I didn't pay any attention because it was so boring. I didn't even get the title.

Keep it on topic GSS! Montana (not fireplaces).

that's a beautiful airport...