Day 1 at Bridger Bowl

My alarm rang at 7:36 this morning. I dragged myself out of bed, angry and confused at why I was awake so early. And then I remembered…I was going skiing! Adam and I loaded the car, the smell of the fresh wax on the skis lingering in the air. I settled in to the driver’s seat, sure that the usual five hour drive to the ski hill awaited me. And then 15 minutes later we were there.

I parked the car at the trailhead on the Summer Road trail and we started hiking up the slope under the Bridger Lift. Right off the bat there was patchy snow cover and by the time we reached the bottom station of the lift, there was a solid inch covering everything.

The trail (Bridger Run) became steeper and the climbing trickier the closer we got to the top. Two hours of slogging uphill under the lift…

…slipping and sliding on the unbonded snow and we reached the patrol shack at the top of the Bridger Lift. Hiking up, we noticed that the North Bowl area appeared to have consistent snow and appeared to be close to the top of the lift.

After resting at the patrol shack and enjoying some Arizona…

…and taking in the incredible views…

…we set out for the North Bowl. The trail quickly disappeared and we were led into a steep pine forest. I postholed into a tree well a couple times and then stepped out into an open chute. One step, and I started sliding. There was easily two feet of snow in the chute and it wasn’t sticking to anything. I grappled on the rocks and roots and finally managed to stop myself. Out came the ice axe. Thanking my judgment the night before as I pondered whether or not ot bring the axe, I followed Adam (who had somehow made it across the chute unscathed) into the next patch of trees.

The next chute offered similar terrain, but behind it I spotted another chute which cut horizontally down towards the rest of the North Bowl. I set out across the chute, looking downwards first.

I had no idea how far the cliff at the end of the chute dropped away and I really didn’t want to find out. I worked my way across the chute and tossed my axe over to Adam, who followed me.

After the extremely sketchy but fortunately safe chute crossing, Adam and I found ourselves at the top of another chute. This one, however, was skiable, and there were no rocks visible. The snow was extremely sticky and whenever we kicked chunks over the edge they would roll down the chute, growing and growing in size until they exploded against the walls of the chute. The chute below us looked perfect, and best of all, dumped out right into the North Bowl. After our hellish traverse this was an extremely welcome sight.

Finally able to take my pack off and set my skis down, I hiked up to the ridge between the two chutes and clicked in.

One nervous jump turn later and the 2009-2010 Ski Season was underway. The snow was very, very heavy and jumping was made increasingly difficult by the boulder sized chunks of snow littering the chute. I slowly made my way down and rocketed out into North Bowl, stoked as all hell. Adam followed.

North Bowl itself was a bit of a letdown after the chute. Once we lost a little bit of vertical, the terrain became a boulderfield. With each turn I could hear and feel a series of horrible scrapes as rocks ripped into my bases. Oh well. What else do you expect for mid-October skiing? We made our way down the bowl and before too long I ate shit. My ski tip caught underneath a buried rock and I went over the handlebars, so to speak, twisting the hell out of my bad knee. It hurt. Alot. Adam, fortunately, had his camera ready.

The rest of the ski out was of similiar quality.

I scored two impressive core shots and made alot of ugly turns, but it was worth it. The hike up was great, and the terrain at Bridger is incredible. I cannot wait until there is more snow and we can actually ski some of the narrow, bony lines we were scoping out today.

Oh, and the cliff we were traversing above? It’s the big one in the center of this shot:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 10:29 pm. It is filed under Adventure, Backcountry, Montana, Photography, Skiing and tagged with Bozeman, bridger bowl, Climbing, cold, early season, Hiking, ice, ice axe, Montana, Skiing, snow, Winter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.