 Poster: A snowHead
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If you haven't heard of Big Sky, it may partly be because it's in the middle of nowhere. ("nowhere" in this case is Montana)
It felt like just yesterday that I went to Big Sky. But that was actually last March. This year, I wanted to go a bit earlier. But that didn’t quite happened. So I found myself back in BS the very same 1st week of March.
It had snowed just about everyday the previous week, so I was eager to take whatever leftover. But an arctic blast brought the temperature to the negative territory on my planned first day. Brrrr...
I would have loved to move the dates of my visit back a couple days. But unfortunately, there’s absolutely zero lodging availability for the next 5 days! So I opted NOT to ski at BS my first planned day. (cutting my 5 day at BS to 4, and skied at Jackson instead, where the temperature was a more reasonable...20’s).
03/04/2019 -- “Day 2” (1st day in Big Sky) — still in the teens, but thank god the sun was out, sometimes.
After booting up, I caught a small window of quiet in the ticket office and asked for suggestion on the best place to start our frigid day. The advice was to lap the Ramcharger chair first. The runs faces the sun, so it’s the first to soften. The heated chair with bubble cover doesn’t hurt.
For the first hr or so in the morning, the perfectly groomed runs were soft and empty! We lapped it and sampled all the groomers off that chair, until the masses woke up from their hibernation and started to ski the top layer of snow off.
We moved on the Thunder Wolf chair. The runs were again nice and soft. But we were getting a little bore with groomers only. So we were on the hunt for soft off-piste runs. A quick tour from there to Lone Moose then to Southern Comfort convinced us we were on the wrong part of the mountain. Although we found a few short stretches of tracked out powder, I knew BS has a lot better potentials. Also, the Southern Comfort chair reminded us we were skiing in a single digit day.
We moved to the main access chair, Swift Current. With so much snow the previous week, I was eyeing some of the trees in hope of powder sloppy seconds. But I was alarmed to see almost all the obvious trees had been turned into network of shiny toboggan trenches. Obviously too many people had been there the past few days.
We moved on to the PowderSeeker chair. For once, my buddy found the steep a bit disturbing, especially in the flat light. It’s time for a warming lunch break.
Afterward, there’s only one last place to try, the Challenger chair. Finally, the sun decided to came all the way out of the cloud and stay out of the cloud. So we had visibility at last! And the snow didn’t disappoint either.
Day 2 — Sun, warmth, powder. And a memorable trip up the Lone Peak tram
We went from previous day’s teens to the twenties and sunshine today!
Since we had such a great time at Rancharger yesterday during the first hour, we repeated again first thing in the morning. But for whatever reason, the snow wasn’t as good. Though the view made up for it.
So we moved on. The forecast was for snow and cloud the next 2 days of our stay. So if we were to go to the top of Lone Peak, today would be the day.
We beelined for the PowderSeeker chair after getting off the Swift Current. The tram line was already ungainly long. On the other hand, the Powder Seeker bowl itself looks very inviting! So naturally we started to lap the bowl instead. Plenty of chopped up powder to be had.
After a couple laps, we were ready for a break and some food. So we got back on the Powderseeker chair with the intention to get on the tram line and eat our food while we wait in line. We were alarmed by the tram indicator showing it was on hold.
Worse, 30 yards after our chair left the loading, it stopped. And it stayed unmoved as minutes ticked by. Finally, my buddy called ski patrol, and was told there’s a mechanical issue with the chair! They said they’re turning on the “auxiliary” of thing kind to get us going "soon". Sure enough, we even saw a mechanic heading up to the top on a snowmobile. However, they wouldn’t give us an ETA. With nothing to do but wait, we started munching on our food. 
The good news is, there’s no easy way to get to the tram other than the Powder Seeker chair. So our wait on the chair is the same as standing in the tram line anyway. And we had our "lunch break" sitting down, sort of. 
Eventually (probably 15-20 min), the chair resumed moving and we got to the top. Naturally, we all dashed towards the tram, only to find there’s NO ONE there but a guy in red coat! Turns out the tram had been down all that time!!!
A quick chat with ski patrol, another but unrelated mechanical problem. They expect the tram to run again before the end of day, but wouldn’t give us ETA either. Dejected, we debated whether to move on to Challenger chair. But the skiing in the bowl was really good. And the sun was still high. (Powder Seeker Bowl goes into the shadow in afternoon) So we decided we would lap it a few more times before breaking for a sit down lunch. (Powder Seeker Bowl is also the only part of the mountain that has food and place to sit down. Hence the reluctant to move elsewhere until after we have our lunch)
(top of Powder Seeker chair, with bottom part of the Big Couloir in the background)
Every time before we load the chair, we glanced on the tram status light, hoping. It remained yellow (on hold) for runs after runs. But then on one more run, I watch the light went from yellow to green!!!
I motioned my buddy in the direction of the lift status board. She looked and then we looked at each other, didn’t say a word. No need to say anything. As we slid off the chair at the top, we straight lined for the tram! (the wait ended up being 1/2 hr, because ski patrol and private lessons have priority. We wind up sharing the can with mostly ski patrollers, from which we got some suggestion on which way to go down)
(Tram station)
(top of Lone Peak)
We opted to go down Liberty Bowl partly because I want to hit the Shedhorn and Dakota area, which is hard to get to otherwise. But unfortunately, when we got down, Dakota was already closed for the day! So we end up lapping the Shedhorn area twice before the Shedhorn lift closed. Given that outcome, I wished we came down the Dictators instead. The snow condition is usually better there.
(Bottom of Liberty Bowl, top of Shedhorn lift)
End of day wildlife sighting:
I celebrated a good day of skiing with a 12 oz Elk tenderloin. My friend a giant beef tenderloin. (there’s enough leftover for next day's dinner)
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Thu 9-05-19 5:32; edited 4 times in total
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Great report - and photo!
Do you record your runs? I can never remember where I've been from one day to the next, let alone after several months!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@Hurtle, I wrote a short version of it for my local ski club. (actually, all my belated trip reports are based on either my e-mail to others or a short version on the local ski forum)
Regardless though, I do remembered most of the chairs and sectors we covered. US resorts aren't even close to the size as the Alps. Big Sky, though being the 2nd largest resort in US, only has something like 10-15 chairs. But each chair searches very different terrain. So we're usually in one section for a particular reason.
(noticed that I never list runs?  )
The Big Sky trip is a little more challenging to remember because I was on a 2-week long trip. So it was a little bit of a haze by the time I got back home. Fortunately, there were 2 of us, so I got to ask my buddy to confirm.
(I added more photos on the post above)
Last edited by Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see? on Thu 9-05-19 1:12; edited 1 time in total
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Day 4: last day, last deep powder run on Challenger.
Another poultry 1/2” of snow. Not even worth getting up early. But since we need to quit early to drive back down south, we’d better start at a reasonable time to put in a few hours.
I spied a couple of runs on the grooming report that wasn’t groomed the day before. They should have the smoothest surface. We sampled them and found them to be enjoyable. Again, when we tried to lap them, we were deterred by the lines. This time, the cause of the lines were clear: the chair had stopped for considerable length of time. Combined with our experience of the previous day, seems Big Sky should change its name to Big Stop!
2 laps of RamCharger bought us enough time to see the lines cleared.
Again, we lapped the PowderSeeker chair. The snow were still soft and deep. But with cloudy sky and flat light, there’s only so much we can managed before it starts to feel more like work than fun.
We moved on to the Challenger chair.
I know a line that usually has good snow, though a bit hard to follow. Harder still, is trying to convince my companions to take the awkward traverse to get to it. Everyone always got lured down earlier lines which, while look smooth and creamy, are full of little rocks that migrate upward perpetually until they reach the base of your skis! This time, I insisted strongly, by dashing off right after saying “follow my line closely”! (I knew my buddy can handle it, and I knew she would enjoy it, because I’ve had excellent result with a less skilled partner last year in similar condition).
The moment we dropped in, my insistence as a pseudo local was instantly vindicated! Deep soft snow with only one other group sharing a huge (only moderately steep) face.
We lapped that twice. And sadly it’s time for us to get off the mountain and hit the road. But the memory of those run would be with us the whole way!
(a parting shot of Lone Peak on our way out)
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