So with storm systems rolling through southwestern Montana on what seems to be a daily basis, why wouldn’t you head out to do some skiing?
I rolled into Big Sky late Friday afternoon to snow continuing to fall out of the sky, the only unfortunate thing is that is was a little windy (some might argue very windy). Drawing from my 20 years experience of skiing the Sky I knew that the wind was only going to do one thing…make skiing better! You do have to know where to go, usually, but this weekend was different, very different.
I woke up to even more snow Saturday morning, made my early morning calls to rally the troops, and we were off exploring the 3000+ acres Big Sky has to offer. First to the bowl where the Patrol was still hard at work taking care of the wind loaded slopes combined with the fresh snow. Matty and I decided we should probably head to Challenger instead of wait for the Bowl to open. We made the right call, and the wind did a super job of buffing out EVERYTHING! It was incredible, we tried to hit it all, Outer limits, 17 Green, Highway, BRT main and even the normally bumped out Moonlight was smooth….JACKPOT!
You all know it’s not a day at Big Sky without hitting up the Tram, so that’s where we headed next, again there was zero disappointment. The snow made it a little hard to see, but we knew where we were going and just took our time to get there-you know, to be on the safe side and stay with the group. We spun a quick one and ran into my best ski pal Mike Mannelin, he was skiing with Matt from So Cal and Ryan Turner. We spun a few more (since it was walk on trams). Matt was just amazed that the line was almost nonexistent with such good snow! I told him the visibility had something to do with that, but because Big Sky is so “Big” there is great skiing on other parts of the mountain. We pretty much skied ourselves into the ground and made our way to the base area to enjoy a super fun après ski! Oh yeah, how can I forget the dummy jump!?! We just happened to roll into the base area to watch. Talk about a fun event that Big Sky puts on, of course Brandon made it even more fun with his great ability as an emcee.
Sunday, I again woke up to snow falling out of the sky! All I could think of was “wow,incredible”! It has literally snowed every day I have been in Big Sky this winter (now, just so you all know I am pretty much a weekend warrior, but every now and then I sneak a weekday in every now and again-so pretty much it has snowed, at the least, over 30 days). The storm broke today and the skies turned blue right around 10 o’clock. This was perfect because we had just decided to leave the trusted wind buff of Challenger to head over to check out the Tram once again. When I said that the wind can do amazing things in Big Sky, it showed me that it did once again. Actually, the wind grooming that occurred with this storm was the most incredible I have ever witnessed in all the time I’ve skied Big Sky. Everywhere we went all the bumps were blown smooth. The most incredible thing though, was that even though all these runs were smoothed from the wind, it was still super soft. It felt as if I was skiing on whipped cream. If you ever get that feeling, you will know that you feel like nothing can go wrong and you can ski like a Hero, maybe that’s why they call it “Hero snow”.
I have a pretty good feeling that there is snow in the forecast, so make sure you get your skis all waxed up and ready to go. See you on the mountain!
Remember, Big Fast Turns and Face Shots!
Stergy
