Ski Southeast Messageboard

I was pleasantly surprised to learn on Wednesday I had a personal day I had to use before the end of the year.



Snowbowl it was.



Good morning Big Sky!







I think by this point the situation with Montana's winter is pretty well known. After a short wet summer and a ridiculously long fall, the hammer fell hard Nov. 1 and has not let up since.



Snowbowl had 30 inches new in 48 hours.







Its infrastructure features a tbar and a lovingly maintained Riblet.







It stayed clear most of the day.







Friday morning dawned clear and minus 6 we were soon off for Jewel Basin, near Big Fork. We parked at the trailhead and started skiing up the summer road. A half hour later we were passed ... by an SUV. Two miles up the road we came across this:







the Chevy sunk up to its hinges in snow. The nice couple from Minnesota said they were out to see the countryside. An enterprising local stopped to help and for an hour we shoved, shovelled and pulled ... and got the car 10 yards down the road. We wished them good luck and skied on, returning two hours later to find them ... in the same spot.



At night we went up to Whitefish for the rail jam







and torchlight parade and fireworks.







We snagged a $34 hotel on Hotwire and were asleep by 10.



Saturday we were up to snow and minus 11. We skied Whitefish on $50 tickets thanks to ... Costco!







New snow but cold. Not a day to work the tan.







Sunday dawned snowy and warmer -- 6 above. We had $26 tickets to Blacktail thanks to ... Costco!







Blacktail got 36 inches in 24 hours last week and a lot of it was still around.







A nice, cold snowy day.



We rode the lifts until 4.30 and headed for home, a two hour drived turned to three thanks to icy roads. When we pulled up in Missoula it was snowing again. I wonder if that Chevy is still up Jewel Basin road?

Well played, Porter. Excellent...

@k2josh 232628 wrote:Well played, Porter. Excellent...



+1. And thanks for the Costco shoutout, Porter. We appreciate it and your business.

wow, looks great!

@porter 232615 wrote:







New snow but cold. Not a day to work the tan.













Tan's can wait -- Porter is that a snowboard?

@GreshamB 232667 wrote:I love how Porter comes through every once in a while and just blows the doors off this bitch!



Nice work!



Whitefish is def on my bucket list



Pretty much all of the above.

Love the low cost trips. Montana Snowbowl looks like my kind of mountain... I wonder how the Porter likes it there?









edit: have not found much independent info on it yet....

Great pics!

My favorite hill is Big Mountain.... errr.... Whitefish.... carvers paradise (aside from the voodoo fog)

@pagamony 233085 wrote:Love the low cost trips. Montana Snowbowl looks like my kind of mountain... I wonder how the Porter likes it there?



edit: have not found much independent info on it yet....



Honestly, I'm mixed on Snowbowl. On the plus side, it's the real thing. There's no second homes, hardly any grooming, $40 lift tickets, squeeky lifts, lots of steeps both marks and unmarked, and a lot of hard core locals. It's also about 20 minutes from downtown.



On the minus, it's a poor deal at $40 when compared to places like Blacktail and Discovery. Most of it faces south (common in Montana) and can have gooey snow. Most of the frontside runs funnel into a distressingly narrow road that's too long to be fun. The only real beginner run from the summit to the base actually has an uphill stretch in it. They don't allow uphill traffic and don't sell single ride passes. And their customer service slogan is a big FU.



So you can see, all in all, it's quite a place.