Pintler rambling, pt 2 West Goat peak

West Goat peak.  Who wouldn't want to ski that?

My last full ski day was spent exploring around West Goat peak.  It is a shame that West Goat peak is about as far as possible from Missoula, but with an early start, I made the long drive around to the Big Hole and was walking by 7 am.  The trail is a bit hard to follow and pretty long, but I had all day, and was still on the high point of the Pintlers just under 5 hours into the day.  The Southeast face was too enticing to pass up, so I skied it and re-climbed to the summit.

Fun skiing on the Southeast face of West Goat peak.

I had a surprising amount of difficulty ascertaining a correct entrance to the West couloir, and with fresh slippery snow overlying loose scree and firm old snow, I also had to traipse around surprisingly gingerly.  But eventually I just started skiing and had a great, 2,000 plus foot run.  To my absolute delight, the first half was powder!  It was also pretty satisfying to ski such a long, quality, West facing run in mid-June.  I was a little behind schedule at this point, and I now had a lot of rapidly warming snow above me, so I kept lunch break brief.  Fortunately, the long push back to the top went more quickly than expected.

The West couloir of West Goat peak, taken from Warren a few days prior. 

Powder in the West couloir!

Looking up a satisfyingly long West couloir post ski and pre re climb.

I had hoped to ski the also spectacular Northeast couloir, but abandoned the plan when I was unable to find a safe entrance.  Stymied but otherwise happy, I bopped up to the summit, skied the Southeast ridge, then climbed East Goat peak for the first time.  I ended the day by skiing a nice run off East Goat's Southeast face.  Back in approach shoes, the bushwack to the trail and jog out were relatively straightforward and brief.

The ski run off East Goat peak provided a nice snow highway toward the car.

Thoughts  I would like to go back and ski the Northeast couloir.  Also, there are a few ridge scrambling days and obvious link ups around West Goat peak that would merit a return in summer.  I didn't track vertical very well, but around 8k vert, done in 10 hours car to car.