Facing a rather desolate and gloomy week (Lab on Wednesday, classes until 9pm on Thursday with a bonus Economics midterm thrown in for fun) I decided to blow off studying and packing and go for a hike. My goal was 8914′ Baldy Mountain, the first mountain visible along the Bridger Range from Bozeman. The trail to the summit of Baldy is about 4.5 miles, with 4000 feet of elevation gain.

I woke up Wednesday morning and it was dumping. Again. Awesome! I packed up, throwing my ice axe and crampons in my pack at the last minute, and left campus around 9:00. Mid-drive, I decided to change my plans and hike up from the access road trailhead at Bridger Bowl to see what the ski terrain was looking like and scope out next week’s skiing. Midway up the access road, however, I turned around, not trusting myself to make it back down the snowy, dirt road. I returned the the M Parking Lot, which doubles as the trailhead for Baldy Mountain. Short on time due to my trip to Bridger, I changed my goal to simply making the top of the ridge and set an 11:00 turnaround time. 20 minutes in and I was at the base of the M itself. The view was stunning.

Amazing view from the M

I continued up past the M. The trail to the righthand side was packed, slippery mud, so I retreated to the right and rejoined the ridge trail above the M. As soon as I entered the trees again, the snow began to get deeper. It went from a couple patchy inches at the bottom of the trees to a solid, continuous two feet of packed snow at the top of the ridge. It had been snowing all day and there was about two inches of fluffy fresh pow on top of the packed snow.

The snow only got deeper the higher up the ridge I climbed

Approaching treeline.

The trail to the top of the ridge was steep and short. Another 40 minutes, and at exactly 11am, I gained the ridge. The view was incredible…

The view from the top of the ridge was awesome, easily eclipsing the view from the M.

Standing in deep snow on October 7

The trail stretched on uphill towards Baldy, but my overactive conscience demanded that I return to campus and study. I hopped, skipped, and jumped down the trail to my car in about 20 minutes. 5 hours later, and it is still snowing quite intensely here in Bozeman. More pictures from the trip follow.

The full-size version of the panorama is here.

Overall, a great, although short hike. I’ll definitely be back to this ridge and hopefully to Baldy. And I now know that there is enough snow to ski on the ridge.