Snow Cave Camping

It's been about two months now, but Dad and I took an overnight snow-camping expedition into the Middle Fork as a training excursion for Denali. Our goal at first was to do a traverse of of the Great Bear Wilderness, summitting 4 peaks in the process. However, it took us longer to get to the first pass than we thought and the travel of the ridge was excruciatingly slow. So we bailed on the traverse, went and dug a snow cave, made some dinner, and slept soundly. The next morning we had at least 2 inches of new snow on our camp and visibility was very poor. We went up on the side of Mt. Penrose as high as we felt comfortable with the wind slab potential and skied back to camp. Then we stumbled back down the valley, barely able to see in off-white, ping-pong ball conditions. Down lower the fresh snow was super unstable and we fled back to the trees avoiding sliding snow as much as possible.

Trip in review: no traverse, horrible skiing conditions, but a fantastic overnight trip to prepare for our Alaska expedition.

Dad on the gnarly ridge heading toward Nyack Mountain.
The cornices were bad enough that travel was too slow to continue
our intended traverse.

Snuggled up in a puffy waiting hot water for dinner.

Digging the snow cave.

Home away from home for the night. It was a lot warmer and less wet
than I had always pictured snow caves. Just one of those things: you
never know unless you try something.  

Toasting good times, warm clothes, and hot co!

Trying to ski on the inside of ping-pong ball...even the trees were
difficult and after the trees you can see there was nothing to break
up the terrain. 

Giant Day in the Great Bear

Spring generally brings better weather in Northwest Montana. High pressure systems come through more often and we actually see the sunshine. There haven't been many blue-bird days this year, with the up-side being clouds have been dumping a bunch of snow! But there is a saying I'm partial to: "Make hay while the sun is shining." In other words: when you have visibility and good weather, you better get after it because you don't know when you might get it again.

We skied the route shown by the dotted red line. It's dubbed the "Z-Couloir" by Brandon and
friends for the shape made by the optional exit off the initial ramp shown by the blue arrow.

Taking this to heart, my vertical-ski shredding buddy Brandon and I made our way into the Middle Fork area we've skied a lot this year on April 13th. New snow was glopping pretty good on my skins on the way in, but I eventually got it fixed and we jumped on a familiar ridge hoping to drop off to the west into a drainage via a gnarly line Brandon had seen from across the valley the week before. We dropped in, tested the snow, felt good about the conditions (more stability-wise, it was kind of crusty for skiing). After entering from the ridge we hooked left under some cliffs and proceeded across a strip of snow in a "no-fall" zone above some cliffs. We made it to the exit and blew down some fairly good snow to the valley floor. This is the most committing line that I have ever skied, and I have to admit I was feeling a little over my head. But skiing something like that definitely boosts one's confidence and I'd be happy to tackle something like it again, with a little better idea of what's expected.

Brando looking for the entrance. Sub-Penrose to the right
of his head and Great Bear the next peak over.

View back up the ramp. It was aesthetic, but not conducive to
good turns.

We then toured up the valley heading for the summit of Great Bear mountain. Gaining the summit, I saw terrain that I had never seen before both to the North and the South. I love Montana: so much untouched and protected land in which to explore and have fun.  We didn't have an exorbitant amount of turns off of Great Bear but the snow was soft and fast. While skinning up the valley, around a sub-peak of Penrose, we had seen a cool trough coming off the shoulder of Mt. Penrose. We headed for this next and skied a phenomenal fall-line run down to the tarn at the head of the drainage and then out to the car, completing a huge 8400' day that included some steep technical skiing, the summit of a named peak, and good powder turns. Mark it down as a Top-3 Ski Day of the season, for sure.

Summit photo on Great Bear.

Brandon shredding the trough with our earlier
ramp-route above him.

We were amazed at how good the last run was: perfect
snow and lots-o-vert. The trough is the highest non-rocky
strip of snow in the light directly above my finger.