I'm surprised at what they call a "run" on that mountain. You could call it a giant mound of rocks for short, and in short, that's pretty much all it is. Snow on rocks, and that can be one hell of a recipe for disaster.
Depending on where you live, the trip there can range from just a couple hour drive, into one long -ass drive. From when we left, it took us about 6 1/2 hours to get there. Not exactly what I call a fun trip, but it's not as bad when you have your friends dad with you who can't stand 5 minutes of silence in the car. Always something to talk and do with Steve, whether it's boring or interesting. On our way there we managed to kill close to an hour with ou search to find a Subway for lunch. It really happened by accident; we were all craving 12" of goodness, and so we decided to stop in Deer Lodge for lunch, Guess what? No Subway. Next we tried Anaconda, which is a bit out of the way for us. We managed to get there right after school had gotten out for lunch, and every student managed to be there in line at Subway. Nonetheless, we were still hungry, and finally stopped in Butte to eat at the Subway there. Mmmmm, Sweet Onion chicken teriyaki on monterey cheddar bread roasted to..... oh sorry, I should get back to the trip.
Anyways, we arrived there around 4:30 in the afternoon at The Lodge at Big Sky. Honestly, that place was one of the most legit places I've ever stayed. The attitude of the place was so laid back in everything, making it "fun" to stay there. Everything ranged from local barbecues every week, to liquorice jars that required you to sing for a twizzler, to the fact that the owner of the place himself was the driver of the morning shuttle to the base area. Unbeknownst to us, we didn't know about the last fact until our last night there, but more on that later.
Now I didn't shoot many photos of the trip, and most of the video we got is still being edited. I did however to get a small compilation of helmet cam footage up for now.
The skiing is amazing there. Simple and to the point. You really don't grasp how massive the terrain is unless you've been there, it had been close to a week since the last dump there and we still were skiing fresh lines for the most part of our first day. Luckily for us it was a friday, and the tram line was almost nonexistent that day. Did I mention they have a tram? Oh go look it up, I'm not explaining all of that to you. We rode the tram twice that day, and that was all that we could really handle then. While Lone peak tends to get more snow than the rest of the mountain, it also gets a lot of wind. Skiing up there was more of trying to avoid hitting rocks on you way down, which was impossible i might add. You almost need to wait for a good snow year to charge that terrain with much confidence. We made do with what we had, which was perfect for a first day. That night we played the hell out of Jenga, and managed to beat it. Twice. I'm serious, ask conway if you don't believe me.
Last day: we wake to 3 inches of new snow and decided to try some of the tree skiing today. I was actually surprised at the amount of cliffs and pillows that we had found, and made for some creative skiing too. The best tree skiing I found was underneath the swift current chair, and the challenger quad. Most people seemed to overlook these areas, which left plenty of lines for us. We skiied hard until lunch, which we ate at the same place every time. The market there knows how to make some pretty delicious chili dogs, I'm not going to lie. It is cheap too, and we both ate for around 6$ each day. A great place of you are on a budget. For breakfast? If you are staying at a place that does not offer breakfast, then try the breakfast place right across the market in the mall area, good coffee and good proces too. Filled with a slurry of pork and chili, we began planning to try some of the A-Z chutes that afternoon.
Now these chutes are some of the sketchiest skiing I've ever done, but was hella worth it. Depending on which chute you wanted to ski, the hike time ranged from 10-45 minutes in length. Note: the hike is not for those with fears of exposure, because at times one slip with land you at the bottom of Moonlight Basin, so be careful when you do it.
This is only half of the A-Z chutes.
I ended up skiing the Drunk Men chute, honestly the second scariest line of my life. The first 100 feet force you to either hop turn it or point it out, since there were plenty of rocks present, i decided to play it safe. Third turn in I caught an edge and ended up tumbling 20 feet before stopping myself. Luckily I didn't lost any skis during the fall, at that point I ended up just getting the hell down the face. Scary? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely.
It ended as the sweet note to the end of our trip. 6 1/2 hours later I was home for the week. Relaxing, and licking my wounds the mountain of Big Sky left me as a souvenir.
Pray for Snow!
The S-Jenk
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