Morrell Mountain powder exploration

I finally made it out to Morrell mountain for a solid day of solo ski exploration.  Yurtski is situated high on the mountain, and tales of a mandatory snowmobile approach coupled with mixed reviews of the terrain kept me away for years.  As it turns out, I was woefully misinformed.  Foot access is reasonable enough, and the terrain is awesome!

Hard to see tracks, but my first and second runs are the first and second layers of the mountain.
All three faces shown can be skied to a convenient point where two gullies meet at 6,000 feet,
from which it is efficient to set one skin track and crank out powder skiing.

I rallied out of town at 5:30, started skinning from the Seeley trailhead at dawn, kicker skinned flat roads for a long hour and a half, made the long climb up one of the West ridges, dug two pits, and topped out four hours after leaving the car.  I started the day off by skiing two long west facing runs, which had the added benefit of recycling my skin track.  To my surprise, I saw a party of five on the summit ridge and decided to follow their tracks down an excellent powder run on the East face.  From the basin, I headed to the main summit of Morrell.

First run. Super fun steep burned tree skiing.

Second run.  A better than it looks moderate avalanche path.

Big air in the gully at the bottom of the first two runs. 

Climbing for more.

 The rest of the day was spent on the main peak, skiing the South face (perfect powder),  North face (surprisingly poor rimed snow with terrible visibility), and the West ridge to exit (OK, but I don't think this is the best exit).  The weather deteriorated at the end, and I bonked a little on the last climb, but the weather and snow were so much better than forecast that I was not in a position to lodge a credible complaint.  I was pleased that the exit only took 90 minutes from the summit of Morrell to the car.  10,200 vertical feet done in 10 hours, 54 minutes car to car.

Excellent powder skiing dropping east from the ridge.

Climbing for more after a good run on the South face of Morrell.

Weather deteriorating as I prepare to ski the North face.

That special feeling you get when the snow is blowing so hard you can't see and you just bonked.

 All in all it was a great day.  Although a snowmobile would save up to two hours of trudging, foot access is not too bad, the driving is straightforward, and there is a lot of terrain even if the avalanche danger is a reasonable Considerable.  I will be back.

The day.

West Yellowstone powder get away

Leah skiing good powder.

Leah and I were able to get away for a few days of skiing on President's day weekend.  With all manner of storm, wind, avalanches, and cold in the forecast, we eventually settled on West Yellowstone.  Fortunately, the weather and snow gods treated us well, and we had a great time.  With the exception of a few hundred feet of skiing on the first day, every turn was powder!

Day 1
We finished the drive just in time for a two hour spin before dark on the South end of Lionhead.  It was a very windy day, but we had fun.

Dusk patrolling at Lionhead.

Day 2
We skied the normal terrain at Hebgen.  I expended more energy than expected trailbreaking, but got it done if not a little slowly.  We ended up taking five excellent runs for around 7,500 feet of powder skiing.  We had to dodge a few other skiers, but still ended up finding untouched snow for most of our runs.  We did get blasted by bitter cold wind on the egress across the lake, but it was not enough to damper our spirits after a great day.

Powder busting on the first run.

Powder on the second run.

Powder on the third run.

More powder on the fourth run.

Leah climbing for one more.

Day 3
We headed out on a cold but clear day to the Ernest Miller ridge from Bacon Rind.  Getting out of the car was bitter cold, but the sun came out as we ground our way over the top of Bacon Rind and continued west.  An easy climb put us on the Ernest Miller ridge.  We took a good powder run on the East face, skinned to the actual summit, and took an even better run down the Southeast ridge.  It was a long flat skin with some wandering, but we found my preferred exit gully, which served up one last immaculate powder run back to the highway.  It was a good day.

Getting things rolling on Bacon Rind.

Heading over the top of Bacon Rind.

First run on Ernest Miller Ridge.

Leah not afraid of the bitter cold and excited for another run off the summit of the Ernest Miller ridge.

Heading home from Bacon Rind.

The last few powder turns in the exit gully on Bacon Rind.

A big thanks to Sam's grandparents for watching our little one and allowing us to get away for such a special trip.

Good skiing off Ernest Miller ridge.

Fred Burr Creek, Burr point 8,469

Castle Crag from a high perch in Fred Burr Creek.

Ten years ago, the last time I was in Fred Burr, conditions were so I icy I barely used skins and ran around from sunrise to sunset exploring.  The skiing was actually pretty good, so with adequate low elevation snow coverage this year, it seemed fitting to return for a second round.  I struck out on partners, so headed out alone by headlamp, excited to explore.  I walked and jogged the first three miles before there was enough light to see and snow to skin.  From the reservoir inlet, I slowly made my way up the trail another mile, successfully navigating the stream crossings.  In retrospect, I wonder if one could just fight it on the North side of the creek.

Crossing #1: The Sketchy Log. What could possibly go wrong?

Crossing #2: The Sketchy Boulder Hop.  What could possibly go wrong?

Crossing #3: The Sketchy Ice, Bridged with Skis.  What could possibly go wrong?

Crossing #4: Not pictured. I walked through the creek and soaked my boots, but was on the way out so it was OK.

It is a little tricky to ascertain the correct place to leave the trail, and I overshot by a bit, but a minor course correction put me back on track.  Aside from a water stop, I put my head down and climbed straight to the summit of Burr Point (my informal name), Point 8,469.  The upper headwall of the peak looked like splendid skiing, so I spun a long low angle powder run down toward Bear creek.  The skiing was quite good.  Another good push put me back on top again.

First run off Burr point.

More of the first run.  Sky Pilot in view on the left skyline.

I had hoped to ski the excellent southeast bowl, but general stability was not as bomber as I had hoped for, and I was concerned about South facing snow warming up too much. So I headed for my main objective for the day, a steep couloir dropping peak to creek off the southeast shoulder of Burr point.  To my delight, it was easy to skirt slabs on the upper headwall, and the ensuing run was excellent, with good corn snow and much better coverage than I had feared.

Looking down the second run.

I skied the obvious sunlight couloir.  Burr point is directly behind it.  My ascent route was in the shaded bowl looker's right.  

I had originally planned to ski several steeper lines, but wasn't super excited to do another dance around wind slabs, so I bushwacked across the creek and made a 3,000 foot climb up low angle terrain in the Castle crag basin.  I had hoped the run would be mellow powder, but it was pretty wind hammered and unforgettable.  I also faded a lot on the climb. Not sure why.

The third run was down the rolling sunlit slopes looker's right of Castle crag.

I rounded out the day by climbing to the top of a series of North facing peak to creek gullies which drop back to Fred Burr creek just above the reservoir.  The skinning was trickier than I would have liked given my fatigued state, but I hammered away at it, eventually topping out.  The run took a great line, but the snow was again wind hammered, so the skiing was just OK.

The gully I skied on the last run.  Photo taken from Burr point.

At the bottom of the last run.  It was about as interesting as it looks. Classic Bitterroot boulder hopping.

From the trail, the exit took 90 minutes, and was full of great drama including wading through the creek, tricky high speed downhill skiing with kicker skins, a striking sunset, and about two miles of jogging in running shoes back to the car. 10,300 vertical feet, done in 11 hours, 38 minutes car to car. Kind of slow, but I took the pace nice and easy most of the day.

Thoughts
It was good to go back to Fred Burr/  On a gear related note, this was the first day using a new Black Diamond Cirque 30 pack, purchased at the gamlber sale at the Trailhead.  As long as it is durable, I am quite impressed with the pack.  So Fred Burr requires quite a bit of low elevation snow to make anything happen on skis, but once things fill in there is quite a bit of good skiing, and the drive to the trailhead is safe.  I think Burr point is the best place to start, since it is just high enough in the drainage to have good coverage, and there is a lot to ski as long as the avalanche danger is on the low end of Considerable or lower.

I would like to return with a lot of snow and ski some of the more accessible North facing terrain above the reservoir.  I would also like to return and ski more of the North facing terrain on the northwest shoulder of Castle Crag.  It is getting way up the drainage, but there are also a bunch of nice South facing runs below Totem peak in the upper corner of the drainage that look excellent.  On a bigger but doable note, it would be quite fun to do a mini traverse from Sheafman to Fredd Burr, skiing something out of the head of Sheafman, then skiing one of the North facing runs in to Fred Burr from the northwest shoulder of the Castle Crag massif.  On a little more out there note, It would be rad to do a traverse from Fred Burr to Bear or Gash creeks, skiing Totem and the striking unnamed peak at the head of Bear creek, and maybe Sky Pilot.  Hmmm....

Downing Mountain Lodge, 2018

Powder, stable enough snow, and good weather were on tap at Downing Mountain lodge this year, and a great crew of revolving characters made for a memorable trip.  Thanks to Katy and Doug for organizing, and to everyone for all the great turns and laughs in the lodge.

Good skiing.

Day 1  Leah and I had the day to ourselves and were excited to wake up to clear skies.  After dropping our stuff at the lodge, we immediately headed way out to the less visited south facing terrain.  We skied the upper half of Fallen Jewels, a long peak to creek gully dropping toward Sawtooth creek before starting a bowl bounce home.  We skied mint powder in the Barley bowl, Ninas, the Wave, and the avalanche bowl on our way back to to the lodge and returned even more giddy than our little one.

Leah, dropping into Sawtooth creek.

And climbing back out.

Returning to the lodge under a crescent moon.

Day 2  I had excellent sunrise and sunset avalanche bowl runs.  Did a mini-interval workout on the second climb to keep things interesting.  The rest of the day was spent with babies.  Everyone else skied all day and had a blast.

Good headlamp time contemplating rabbit tracks on day 2.

Day 3  We all climbed and the Wave and Wolf glades before the group fractured.  I was lucky to be able to stay out, so Natalie, Russ and I skied a trio of perfect runs around the Crown before rendezvousing with the rest of the group for an evening avalanche bowl return run.  Trailbreaking was fun, the group logistics played out well, and all of the skiing was impeccable.  It was hard to leave.

Natalie and Darcy getting things rolling on the last day.

Natalie skiing the Crown.

Russ skiing the Crown.

2018 Randonee racing post

Unless I have a standout race, all ski races will be grouped in one post.  I use this writing heavily for my own training, so readers who do not care about lactate threshold pace or relative training volume might want to just skip the post altogether.

For fitness, the lead-in to ski season was weird.  I am not super fired up for ski racing this year, but still want to do what I can to race well and position myself well for big ski days.  I had a combination Achilles injury and sickness in October that put me way behind.  But the dueling maladies resolved quickly, and I had a consistent late fall twelve week block of training with very good bi-weekly strength work including a once a week Momentum class, and consistent, low volume intensity work.  The two big missing puzzle pieces have been total easy aerobic volume, which has been woefully light, and specific training.  To my surprise, fitness is on the soft side of average for ski racing, which is great.  It would be rad to get a nice block of intensity and plyo gym work leading into Shedhorn, but honestly, I'll be happy stay health and maintain fitness.  A hidden layer on top of all of this is my efforts to rehab my temperamental left knee, which has been injured but manageable for almost exactly a year.  I have been diligently back at daily rehab for about a month with moderate success.  Fingers crossed for a continuing upward trend leading into longer days and (hopefully) bike season.

Shedhorn

Spoiler: I had a bad race.  I had been kind of sort of sick the proceeding two weeks, but was hopeful a full week off would be sufficient to have a good race.  Right from the start, it was clear that my energy was just not there.  I did, however gut it out and had a good race relative to my fitness and health on that day.  As a double crushing disappointment, I also finished with relatively trashed legs and a few adductor twinges, which left me wondering how much better I would have done even with better health. 

The weather was quite challenging, but the course is awesome and the turnout was great.  I will be back.

If I am honest with myself, my body is tired.  In theory it should not be, but it just is.  I had put in what I though was a good training block leading into the race, and it paid no dividends.  I don't know exactly what it is going to look like, but I am going to commit go getting a good re-set with a stated goal of having a solid build up into running season.  I do have some big days and hopefully some fast ski days that I want to engage this spring, and will try to mix them in intelligently.

Whitefish Whiteout

I went into the race feeling good.  To my surprise, I did not have any kick on the first climb.  I was in about 30th at the end of the initial scramble.  Even with a little too much time above anaerobic threshold, I topped out in about 20th position, well behind some of my normal racing buddies.  Damn, people take this thing out hot! With the drag race over, it was time to start moving up.  The first run had terrible snow, which allowed me to move up, and the North bowl climb was long and technical enough to pass a few skiers outright and sweep up a little carnage.  East Rim was a new to me run, which I enjoyed, and the Chicken fingers climb was a great addition to the course, although the ensuing run was forgettable.  I switched to skinny skins for the NBC climb in anticipation of cat track skinning at the top of the run, and almost lost them right away technical skinning up to the booter, but they stayed stuck enough, and I made good enough time up the booter and excellent time on the flats, almost catching Alan.  Any hopes of passing Alan were slowly crushed, and he skied the next run quickly, and stomped up the last climb with authority.  Ah well.  With Jeffrey comfortably behind, I pushed the last climb at a very hard but sustainable pace, double skin ripped, and scooted down the easy groomer for an 8th place finish.

I was about 180 seconds slower up Benny Up than my fastest time, indicating my fitness is a touch off.  However, I was able to push very hard for the rest of the race, working up eighteen positions after the first climb, maintaining the gap behind the racers in front, and finish in the top 10.  It would be disingenuous to say that I wasn't a little disappointed, but in context, I didn't cramp, closed confidently, and executed well.

Thanks to everyone who made the race happen, and to our friends for watching Samuel so Leah could race.  It is kind of cool that Leah does not care about ski racing, but she would be a crusher with race gear. Also, nice work to all of the fast ladies, to Foote for the commanding win, to Andrew, Caleb, Joel and Jeff for throwing down a fast time, and to all of the racers on non-race gear for coming out and giving 'er.  This was a new course.  It is the best course I have skied at Whitefish.  I hope they keep it.

Bridger Bowl skin to win

I went into the race with my stomach a touch off, but otherwise well tapered and excited to race.  While Bridger Bowl does an excellent job hosting this race, they set the skin tracks absurdly steep, and this year was even worse than past years!  As a result, a lot of the second half of the race was a battle of attrition, but fortunately I prevailed with a trusty pair of wall to wall full length nylon skins.  I also used leashes for the entirety of the race to be consistent with the intent of the race directors.

The course.  Better than it looks.

The blow by blow was:  I had an average le mans start, and settled into a only slightly stupid fast pace in about 12th place. Using skinny skins, I was able to make up a few seconds on flatter terrain, and maintain on the steeper stuff.  I worked up to 6th by the bottom of the North Bowl road, and maintained that position to the top of Hidden.  Predictably, Mike Foote was way off the front, and he would grow his untouchable lead linearly for the remainder of the race. Hidden skied super fast, and my trademark semi-reckless skiing on the Apron was sufficient to get me up into 3rd place at the Motor room transition.  I would maintain 3rd for the remainder of the race.

I pushed the second climb as hard as possible, but Alan Adams and another racer out-climbed me and closed the gap.  On the third climb, I almost closed the 1-minute gap to Andrew, and everyone behind me fell off due to either fatigue or skin failure.  I think I could have taken some risk and gone deeper into beast mode on the last climb, but was not strong enough psychologically to squeeze everything I had out of my body.  I did, however, push hard and stick to a successful "smooth is fast" mantra, which was sufficient to close the gap to Andrew to about 20 seconds at the last transition.  There was no one behind me, so the last run was a battle for second place.  I can almost always close a 20-second gap on the downhill, but Andrew aced the downhill, and proceeded to out-skate me to the finish by about 40 seconds.  I crossed the line in 2.06 pretty knackered but very happy overall with how things went. Results here.

Thanks to Andrew for the wicked battle, and hats off for executing a solid an controlled race!  And always, thanks to Bridger Bowl for hosting the event, and for the pay out for 3rd place.  Thanks to Leah and all our friends for supporting me during the race, and to our little one for hanging out for daddy at the finish line.

Rando Radness

I really enjoyed the local race series spearheaded by Mike Foote and Montana Snowbowl.  It is, in my opinion, a perfect community race series format with a simple route that accommodates all abilities, good non-racer turnout, and just enough competition if you want to throw down and race.  As always, I contend backcountry skiers would be happier as a sub species if we could get faster and more efficient, and race series like these are perfect for learning new tricks and teaching others the craft.

Week 1:  I had a cold but raced at a 95% effort.  Fun to work some cobwebs out and pass John Fiore at the last transition with a double skin rip to finish second.

Week 2: To my immense dismay, my stomach was off, but I once again raced at a 95% effort.  I also got lost on the first climb, but rallied back to second place behind Mike.  Transitions starting to come back together.

Week 3: Taper week for the Bridger race.  I did laps 1, 2, and 4 at a 50k effort, and did lap 3 at race pace.  I also tested leashes and a pack for the Bridger race.  I did not fare well in the overall results, but had a lot of fun and was able to move up a little toward the end of the race.

Week 4:  Baby watch, no skiing.  Super fun evening.

Week 5: See Week 4.