I met flyover and his friend John from Seattle Saturday night in Missoula.
We drove I-90 west for an hour and 40 minutes, with it snowing for about the last 15 minutes up to Lookout Pass. It was supposed to be warmer, but when i arrived at 9:15 it was 4F with wind in the parking lot, So I wore all the cold weather gear as on the past two days. It snowed all day at the ski area and all the way to Spokane after skiing.
Lookout is a classic "Mountain Pass" ski area of high snowfall, modest vertical (1,150 feet) and mostly intermediate pitch. It's one those famous snowy microclimates so of course I inquired about data. Their new marketing guy Chris Cash, is eager to get those details himself, but as a mom-and-pop area the data is is the form of daily paper records stashed away by the general manager. So it would be a time consuming off-season project to assemble.
3 lifts converge on a single peak. The Idaho lift side is west facing from the day lodge and parking, the Montana side is south facing and then there is the North side. We headed for the North side, expecting the best snow, but it was windblown with an occasionally crunchy subsurface. The previous 2 deep freeze days I had been at Fernie and Castle featured north winds which had scoured some of this side of Lookout. We heard from a local on the lift than snow was better on the Montana side. We spent the rest of the morning there, taking 7 laps mostly through the trees between runs. Where the trees were tight it was mostly low intermediate pitch, so quite manageable as it was mostly untracked. About 2/3 of the way down it got somewhat steeper but the trees were also farther apart for awhile.
Going back to the front Idaho side, we sampled the Lucky Friday glades. Here the trees were so far apart as to not be defined as "tree skiing" by flyover whose formative ski years were at Mad River Glen. After lunch we ran repeated laps through this area, maybe 10 more runs. Yes it's repetitive, but there was no one there and with the ongoing snow the powder was only getting better. I decided to let my hand suffer for part of one run for a few pics.
John:
Flyover:
19,400 vertical, 12K of powder. You'll hopefully hear soon from flyover, who was 4 for 4 on powder days on his trip.
We drove I-90 west for an hour and 40 minutes, with it snowing for about the last 15 minutes up to Lookout Pass. It was supposed to be warmer, but when i arrived at 9:15 it was 4F with wind in the parking lot, So I wore all the cold weather gear as on the past two days. It snowed all day at the ski area and all the way to Spokane after skiing.
Lookout is a classic "Mountain Pass" ski area of high snowfall, modest vertical (1,150 feet) and mostly intermediate pitch. It's one those famous snowy microclimates so of course I inquired about data. Their new marketing guy Chris Cash, is eager to get those details himself, but as a mom-and-pop area the data is is the form of daily paper records stashed away by the general manager. So it would be a time consuming off-season project to assemble.
3 lifts converge on a single peak. The Idaho lift side is west facing from the day lodge and parking, the Montana side is south facing and then there is the North side. We headed for the North side, expecting the best snow, but it was windblown with an occasionally crunchy subsurface. The previous 2 deep freeze days I had been at Fernie and Castle featured north winds which had scoured some of this side of Lookout. We heard from a local on the lift than snow was better on the Montana side. We spent the rest of the morning there, taking 7 laps mostly through the trees between runs. Where the trees were tight it was mostly low intermediate pitch, so quite manageable as it was mostly untracked. About 2/3 of the way down it got somewhat steeper but the trees were also farther apart for awhile.
Going back to the front Idaho side, we sampled the Lucky Friday glades. Here the trees were so far apart as to not be defined as "tree skiing" by flyover whose formative ski years were at Mad River Glen. After lunch we ran repeated laps through this area, maybe 10 more runs. Yes it's repetitive, but there was no one there and with the ongoing snow the powder was only getting better. I decided to let my hand suffer for part of one run for a few pics.
John:
Flyover:
19,400 vertical, 12K of powder. You'll hopefully hear soon from flyover, who was 4 for 4 on powder days on his trip.
