Big Baldy Mountain, the highest peak in the Little Belts at 9,175 feet, is draped in new snow as 61 inches of powder fell in the past week.

Pillows of powder cover O'Brien Creek.

Tim and Janis Horan of Helena ski through the deep snow on the O'Brien Creek run.

This shows how much snow is piled up at the Kings Hill Pass parking lot.

Big powder, great Little Belts weekend

The new pool at White Sulphur is nicely sculpted and enhances the  soaking  experience aesthetic.

I can't remember the last time we got so much snow in the Little Belt Mountains.
Some 61 inches of new powder fell there in a week's time.
Of course I took advantage of it, taking a personal day Friday and returning Saturday and Sunday.
Saturday was the "rest" day when we drove through the heart of the range in a snowstorm to soak at the Spa's new pool in White Sulphur Springs.
Spooked by all the fresh powder atop the 40 inch base, which is resting on hoar frost, I stayed on the Showdown Ski Area slopes.  I skinned up and went bottom to top three times, hitting such runs as Speculation, Big Seven, Ripley's and the used the lift towers as my own personal slalom route.
The powder was heavy and had been churned up the two days previous to my run.
I had no trouble climbing the 1,200 feet to the top, but found myself out of breath every 200 feet or so of descent because fighting the powder with my tele turns was such muscular work.
Toward the end of the day the sky started to clear and I got great views of the snow drenched mountains to the east.
The new pool at the White Sulphur Spa is quite modern and nice and offers a pleasant "extra" to the experience of soaking.  There's a new addition to the motel as well.  The soaking-only price has been raised from $5 to $7 and the cost of a room in the old motel is now $90 and the new addition is in the $130 range. Soaking at the Spa is one of the premiere winter diversions in this part of the country.  The Spa maintains its small town character, but the new pool enhances a visit.
On the way back to Great Falls Saturday through Kings Hill Pass we got caught in another dump of powder, as another 10 inches fell overnight.
On Sunday I joined Helena friends Tim and Jan Horan for a ski down O'Brien Creek, an 8 mile run I've never missed in my years in Great Falls.
I had been worried about breaking trail with all the new powder, but was pleasantly surprised another group had taken care of that chore the day before.  There was still about 6 inches of new snow in the track, but it was easy to push aside.
It has been quite a long time since I've seen such large pillows of snow on the O'Brien Creek bottom.
We were quite happy that the snow machines had passed on the bottom half of this run.  In most years the snowmobiles create icy bumps that are tough to navigate on our cross country skis.  It was pure, fluffy powder on this lower end.
It appears as though the snow deficit has been taken care of.  There's sure to be plenty of snowpack this spring and summer.

Katie on a Deerlodge National Forest trail that began at Echo Lake near Discovery Basin Ski Area outside Philipsburg.

P'burg relaxation

We took a President's Day weekend trip to Philipsburg to check out a couple of Bed and Breakfast places and to explore the backcountry skiing around Discovery Basin Ski Area.
I was particularly taken by the Quigley Cottage Bed and Breakfast for its homey atmosphere, friendly proprietors and incredible breakfast that included steel cut oats served in a parfait dish with fresh blackberries and kiwi fruit and topped with ice cream.  And there's more!  Two kinds of fresh bread, an interesting citrus juice blend, homemade jams and fresh-ground coffee and an incredible mix of teas.
Dave Letford regaled us with tales of his days in the Prudhoe Bay oil patch and discussed the books that lined shelves in every direction.
This was the highlight of our trip.
The backcountry snow was so-so and we had a nice trip on Deerlodge National Forest trails that began at Echo Lake and worked their way up to the top of a ridgeline where I found the best telemarking in an old clear cut.
My wife and I are charmed by Philipsburg with its gem and candy stores and Old West bars.  Because it is so close to Butte, Helena, Anaconda and Missoula it has been "discovered," but not as much as say, Red Lodge or Bigfork.

Looking down into Bartlett Creek, not far from Rogers Pass, that comes off the Continental Divide. This was our longest telemark slope of this gray day. We found our best snow here.

The bright green tree moss breaks up the monotony of the snow and gray skies.

Skiing along an old logging road above Bartlett Creek.

Jim Heckel works his way back up from the bottom after a long ski downhill linking tele turns.

Continental Divide country: Bartlett Creek

This should give a pretty good idea of where we skied if you orient from Rogers Pass and Alice Creek.

The ease with which we can reach great backcountry skiing near the Continental Divide Trail has meant we've nearly abandoned our old haunts in the Little Belt Mountains.

For the third time in the past five weeks we've headed to the Rogers Pass area, a mere 66 miles from Great Falls and an hour's drive, to enjoy good snow while other areas are hurting.
We've been working our way progressively west from Cadotte Creek, exploring.
The warm weather has consolidated the snow at the lower elevations, making for some icy skiing down low.
We had to climb nearly 1,500 feet to find really fine powder for our telemark turns.
We got to a spot where Bartlett, Three Gulch and Cadotte Creek ridgelines come together.
There was no sign of snow machines or other skiers.  We had the place to ourselves!
Unfortunately, Jim Heckel took a spill on the way back down, injuring his right elbow.

Early in the trip we were obscured in the shadows below Summit Mountain which was bathed in alpine glow above Three Bears Lake.

There was mile after mile of tempting tele slopes along the way, like this one.

Looking back at Mount Henry.

Enjoying some open country below Calf Robe Mountain.

Me and April Carr, who organized the trip, below the Summit "thumb."

On the Summit to Lubec half of the trip we went in and out of steep drainages that spring from Summit Mountain.

A cross country ski grove within an aspen grove.

Glacier Park heaven: Marias to East Glacier tour

When I got a call to ski in Glacier Park from Marias Pass to East Glacier Park I was skeptical about the snow depth and its quality.
Heck, the temperatures have been near 50 degrees in Great Falls and there's been lots of snow-eating wind.
I was more than pleasantly surprised to find great snow when we skied that 15-mile stretch on Saturday.
We were treated to bright blue skies and winds to our back.

We had already skied in about a mile when we saw this buried park trail marker telling us we  still had 14.3 miles to go.

It must have been more than seven years since I've done this tour that starts at the pass, just opposite the obelisk on Highway 2, and runs the lengths of Summit and Dancing Woman (formerly Squaw) peaks back to the Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier Park.
There are dozens of drainages running off the faces of those two mountains, which means there is a lot of up and down skiing.
We figured we gained some 2,100 feet along the tour.
Because there are so many drainages there are many, many tempting telemark slopes.
Of course, I didn't pass them all up and added to the elevation and distance by carving some turns.
Several in our group of eight that went all the way through wore skinny "classic" touring gear that I hadn't seen in the backcountry for many years.  It turned out that their lighter gear (we wore backcountry tele gear) was a faster fit for the run.
Two more skiers who started out with us at Summit cut the trip in half by going out at the Lubec trailhead.
The snow was pretty protected and soft most of the way, although there were instances of a icy crust in spots and in the afternoon it got sticky, requiring everyone to apply glide waxes at least once.
Since it had been so long since I had skied this terrain I had forgotten some of the difficulties of following the Park Service's florescent red trail marker "tags" on the trees.  The incessant wind had sandblasted the red away.
Early in the trip we skied Summit's dark shadows, but the mountain itself was bathed in alpine glow.
Members of our group spotted many animal tracks including elk, moose, mountain lion and wolf.
While it was just above zero when we started, it got warm enough in the afternoon sun to take off hats and strip down to light shirts while we kicked and glided.
The trip was set up by April Carr and her husband, Gary, of Shelby.  When I got to the Two Medicine Grille, where we organized, I was surprised by many old friends who I had not expected to be on the trip including Bud Iszler, Brian Kennedy, Mark Haemig, and Laurie Littner.  It was great to make new friends like Ursula Mattson, an impressive skinny skier.

It may have been in the 50s in Great Falls, but there was plenty of great snow just west of the Divide on Sunday.

Lots of bright green moss on the spruce.

The rock in the area is a bright red. You can see the snow depth.

Here I am at the head of Third Gulch. You can see the wonderful open slopes behind me.

Pocket of snow west of Rogers Pass

Third Gulch (in blue) in relation to Cadotte Creek.

Temperatures were in the 50s in Great Falls, and 40 degrees on Rogers Pass on the Continental Divide Sunday.
The highway was wet from a rain shower.
The wind was honking on the east side at more than 50 mph.
Not exactly the kind of day you'd pick to ski, right?
Wrong!
We found great slopes just west of Rogers in an a draw just west of Cadotte Creek.
Mark Hertenstein called the snow on these slopes "hero" snow, a soft corn where you couldn't make a mistake.
I was returning from about 10 days fighting off an upper respiratory infection that locked my chest down, so I was looking for something short and sweet.
It didn't take too much to reach open slopes.
We packed just beyond the Cadotte Creek turnout on Highway 200 and started up an old logging road on a draw called Third Gulch.
The area is an old clearcut, but in great shape on both sides of the gulch.
We skied on the west side of the gulch and hit the high point, more than 1,000 feet above the valley floor, spending time to tele turn in the clearcuts before gaining the top and skiing back down a broad ridge that led to the gulch bottom.
As we found on Cadotte Creek, there are plenty of open slopes with plenty of shelter from the wind and sun and holding good snow.
We skied for about 4 and a half hours, just enough for this recuperating ski bum!

Once we reached the ridge we could see massive Red Mountain in the Scapegoat Wilderness, the highest point in the Bob Marshall complex.

Only one way to go and that's up!

Looking at the old clearcut we chose for our telemark destination.