Oh deepness this week, if you hadn’t already heard from all your friends Facebooking and Tweeting of the epic conditions we’ve had. With snow that just won’t stop, every day just keeps refilling from the day before.
From time to time I get requests from folks to not just focus on the over the shoulder blower snow I find on Lone Peak from the Tram, they want to know about some of the lower mountain terrain they like to ski. As it turned out my last tour will get to tell that story, after all, my words pale in comparison to the amazing video we’re now putting on the home page (check out late January BSPN).
Plus, for this story, I get to share how diverse our terrain can be, even on the same run! You’ll see.
I met with Grace who is visiting from NYC, she has been to most every major Rocky Mountain Resort and absolutely loves the snow and terrain that the mountains in the west get. I wanted to give her a full exploration of the different terrain we have, I picked up a grooming report and we started up the Ramcharger Chair. For the first run we hit El Dorado off the back side of Andesite. This run is absolutely huge, width that is. I liken it to a guilty pleasure and with the fresh, soft corduroy; Grace exclaimed this is hero snow! She was right.
From there we spun up Southern Comfort for a lap on Deep South, at this time it might have been about 11 a.m., yet I rarely crossed another ski track with the perfectly manicured grooves holding my edges with confidence. We tilted the pitch for the next couple of runs for some blue squares, we hit Elk Park Ridge with the bottom of Thunderwolf in sight, I could shoot right and grab the soft, powder snow while Grace could stay up on the ridge and keep skiing the groomed. We met at the bottom about the same time and we went up for a Big Horn. Here again the groomers courteously left the left edge natural, so I could ski powder and Grace could ski machine groomed, all while skiing the same run.
We hit Ambush to work our way down to lunch, this time I opted to stick on the steep groomed slope myself to get the legs moving on the several headwalls that run offers. We filled up at Whiskey Jacks, the Gringo Gut Buster can’t be beat when it comes to sustenance through a ski day.
Big Sky continues to impress me, sure we have some of the biggest, orneriest black diamond terrain you can reach with a lift, but it’s the variety for everyone that makes the place unique.
Don’t worry powderhounds, I’ll get my face shots in due time, there’s plenty of season left and like I said, the snow keeps coming!
We’ll see you out there,
Dax
