Another year in the books! Left MN around 3am last saturday, hit Red Lodge (just south of Billings, MT) about 1pm, skiis hit the slopes by 1:30. In the parking lot everyone was leaving saying it was raining, but there was obviously a storm front moving in so we stayed and lucked out, snowed the entire afternoon!
Back on the road at 4:30pm, cruised into Bozeman to stay with relatives. Saturday night it snowed a good 4-5 inches at Bridger Bowl, so we stopped in there for some boot-deep shooshy goodness.
an ex-coworker and good friend Chris Thielen (bananas, he drives a 300whp A4!) came with us this year:
Then down to big sky sunday night. Overnight we got a few inches of snow, nothing crazy but maybe 2-3" just enough for some smiles. The triple chair on the upper-mountain is struck by lightning at some point leading to issues which led to awesomeness.
Tuesday: powder day, 4-6 base, maybe more like 8" or so in the upper areas. Thing is, they could not run the upper lifts and tram due to the power problems, so we tore around on groomers with 5" or so of powder on them with a huge crew of friends we've developed over the years. Imagine a wide open mountain covered in pow run just completely over by this crew:
Wednesday: It snows all day and night. We wake up early, get first chair, and wait in line for the upper mountain stuff to open and after a bit we have the entire upper mountain as our epic, epic playground. 10-12" of completely untouched powder, we freaking lap the triple chair and tram 20+ times and basically collapse around 3pm, beer in-hand.
Then it starts snowing again
Thursday we wake up to 4" of new snow and it is just snowing and snowing. After a few laps on challenger, we find some nice and relaxing tree skiing to slow things down a bit as another 4" falls through the day.
I made a slight boo-boo and got my skis hung-up on a tree, tails down. Trying to make it around a fallen tree, the left side was covered in brush so right side was my only option. A quick turn to check speed and then pull around this tree, I didn't make it. Caught tree about 1' from tip of ski, boots ejected twisting to the left (as they should!), skis planted, I flew into the tree with my left thigh and then did a front flip over it, landing upside down, poles still in-hand.
Bruised thigh and ego, broken volkl mantra:
Freaking goats:
It keeps snowing. Broken ski > Broken leg though I guess! Talking to the manager of big sky sports in the AM, they're gonna help me talk to volkl about getting this warrantied. No core damage, everyone at the vario es the ski is fuct but w/o core damage it should not have failed like this.
Friday: wake up to another 4"+ of snow and it just keeps coming. We are freaking dead tired, I have a broken ski. I demo a pair of these:
http://k2skis.com/skis/twin-tips/obsethed
Resort is pretty empty this year, we decide a tram run is in order for the last day even though our legs are completely toast (as are our livers!)
Again, nobody here, just us and the snow!
The rest of the time is filled with drinking, eating, hottubbing, and sleeping!
Still snowing as I type this, headed home
Bloody Seal Bounce Champion!
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