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!