Back to Cadotte, exploring another gulch

Looking back toward Red Mountain country 

Up the drainage toward the pass

On the open ridge

Working our way out of the wind

After a weekend snowstorm, well, really it was an ice storm, we ventured back to Cadotte Creek on the west side of the Continental Divide on Monday.
We had hoped to ski in the Teton country, but the winds were too high and we thought the west side would be calmer.
It wasn't.
We chose First Gulch for our ski trip.
We started up the bottom on about four inches of new, fresh powder on a thin base.  We had to be careful of stumps and snags left over from the extensive logging in the area.
In about a quarter-mile a drainage, with a low pass at the ridgeline, presented itself and we worked our way up, some 750 feet to the top.
Despite the clear blue skies, the wind was howling on top, so we traversed to the east side of the ridge and stayed away from most of the blowing.  The views of the Continental Divide country and Red Mountain were dominant.
Eventually, we exhausted the ridge and worked our way down to the bottom and across the small tributary and eventually climbed to an old logging road, which we used to get back to the open bottom and out.
Instead of calling it a day, from the car we skied into the willows and found a snow-ice bridge across the Blackfoot River to the other side.  It wasn't long when we hit a fence-line.  That and some guard dogs persuaded us to turn around.  We could hear a dog pursuing us as we scrambled across the river and safely back to our car.