I got a little delayed from my “post-per-day” strategy this last couple days due to the finals in my EMT class. Both the class final and the NREMT practical final were this week, so I was up to my neck in my wonderful EMT textbook.

I still got out to shoot some yesterday afternoon during a break in the storm that we’ve been stuck in for the last couple days. 2.5 feet or so in the mountains this last couple days has everything looking white and wintery again.

Heavy snow falling in the Roskie Parking Lot

A ranch house in front of the Bridger Mountains

A road leading towards the Bridger Foothills

This picture is from way back at the end of September, when we got our first snow here in Bozeman. It was also the day that I got a bunch of fluid pumped out of my lyme-diseased knee and then fainted.

I snapped this picture of an unknown racer at Mulecross last Halloween.

I shot this last week from the top of the parking garage in downtown Bozeman and failed to see the interesting graffiti in the background. Oh well. B&W Film.

Tucker and I skied off the ridge at Bridger again this past Wednesday. We took the Slashman’s Chair up, hiked to the top of the ridge, and then traversed north to the south boundary of D Route. There, we dropped down Boundary Chute and crossed over into Z-Chute. The Z-Fan runout was excellent soft snow but Tucker ran into some huge death cookies. South Bowl was a little on the soft and heavy side, as was the rest of the area. We skied the terrain off of Pierre’s, Deer Park, and Alpine before calling it a day at 4. Not a bad afternoon before class.

D Route South

Tucker traversing along the top of the ridge

Excited and ready to drop in to Z-Fan

Skiing the soft snow of Z-Fan

Montana

About a month ago I blogged about the Outdoor Pursuits Photography Contest. Well, the results came in and I won 1st Place in the Action/Adventure Category with my picture of Sam skiing some really deep powder back in mid-October. Along with a fancy ribbon I won a $20 Northern Lights gift card and a pair of Bridgedale hiking socks.

Yesterday I woke up and checked the snow report, saw the 11″ of fresh and the little blinking blue light on the Bridger homepage that means powder, didn’t believe it, and went back to bed. When I woke up two hours later it was still showing the same thing. Forrest, Tim, Tucker, Megan, and I hoofed it up to the hill. We skied a couple runs in North Bowl and Pierre’s Knob before Forrest and I decided to take a run on the Deer Park lift to ski a gully we’d scouted from below. The gully was awesome, with deep snow and a ton of fun drops and woods.

The clouds lifted and the views were awesome.

Twenty four hour snowfall total right now: 24″

Last week I managed to secure a beacon for a couple of days of skiing off of Bridger’s vaunted Ridge.

Tuesday, Clare, Taylor, and I hiked up from the top of the Slushman’s lift to ski some day old powder down to The Fingers. The view from the top of the Ridge was stunning. The Bridger range isn’t just one long single ridge of mountains, it’s several ranges sitting right next to each other. I will never tire of the view of snow on the mountains, especially from on top of those mountains.

Repping BCA, Slushmans lift below.

Taylor with the multiple ridges of the Bridger Range beyond.

The skiing wasn’t too bad, either. God I love Slushmans.

Our second week assignment for photography class was to toy around with F-stop and depth of field, two aspects of photography that I’ve always been interested in. I brought my camera to PetCo and shot some birds.

Today, I printed my first black and white print while part of the MSU Photography program. I’ve been processing and printing black and white film for the better part of three years now, but MSU’s equipment, protocol, and processes are slightly different (and apparently slightly less reliable). All of which resulted in a pretty “interesting” (read: messed up) print.

It’s quite dark, which resulted from the odd filter system that MSU uses in their enlargers. When the enlarger I was using broke (the cable which connected the enlarger to the light timer refused to stay plugged in) I switched enlargers and forgot to take the filter with me. Also, there is either a chemical splotch or a dust mark in the upper left. Oh well.