Lost Trail Powder Mtn, MT and some ID
- Thread starter tseeb
- Start date
After driving nearly 7 hours after skiing Panorama yesterday, we left Missoula at 8AM to drive another hour 45 minutes south to Lost Trail. We knew we had made the right call when we got out of the car to a packed powder base area. I remarked that was a first for this trip. Tseeb said he hadn’t seen it since his trip to AltaBird and Jackson over a year ago.
It was lightly snowing until about 11AM and cleared after that. Temps were 10-15F all day, but it felt cold due to the long chair rides, at least 15 minutes on Chair 4. We headed there immediately in search of soft snow. It had only snowed an inch but there were plenty of leftovers from a foot of snow a week ago.
From the pic above you can see that Chair 4 rises very gradually for 80+% of its 1,800 vertical, then more abruptly at the top.
The trees near chair 4 have comfortable spacing at low intermediate pitch.
No wonder JSpin’s kids got familiar with powder skiing at such early ages.
Chair 4 faces east, but to far skier’s right the ridgeline bends around to partial north exposure and some soft snow. The top of Bottleneck was excellent here:
Unfortunately the large evergreens closed out not too far down.
Skier’s left featured mellower but wide open skiing. View from the top of Lewis and Clark across the hill toward the base area a couple of miles away.
The SacJac trees at far skier’s left had the best powder skiing.
It was about 2:45 when we returned to the main base area. Chair 2 had good fall lines on Thunder and Southern Comfort. This area faces SE but snow was decent on the groomers or shaded areas.
We finished the day with short steep runs on Outlaw and along the liftline of Chair 1. There were some snow sculptures at the top of Chair 1.
We skied 18,700 vertical. I went into their office at the end of the day and found that Lost Trail has 45,000 skier visits on its 1,800 acres. Adjusting for Lost Trail only operating 4 days a week, this tied Castle Mt. for the lowest skier density stats I had found, a record to be broken the very next day.
It was lightly snowing until about 11AM and cleared after that. Temps were 10-15F all day, but it felt cold due to the long chair rides, at least 15 minutes on Chair 4. We headed there immediately in search of soft snow. It had only snowed an inch but there were plenty of leftovers from a foot of snow a week ago.
From the pic above you can see that Chair 4 rises very gradually for 80+% of its 1,800 vertical, then more abruptly at the top.
The trees near chair 4 have comfortable spacing at low intermediate pitch.
No wonder JSpin’s kids got familiar with powder skiing at such early ages.
Chair 4 faces east, but to far skier’s right the ridgeline bends around to partial north exposure and some soft snow. The top of Bottleneck was excellent here:
Unfortunately the large evergreens closed out not too far down.
Skier’s left featured mellower but wide open skiing. View from the top of Lewis and Clark across the hill toward the base area a couple of miles away.
The SacJac trees at far skier’s left had the best powder skiing.
It was about 2:45 when we returned to the main base area. Chair 2 had good fall lines on Thunder and Southern Comfort. This area faces SE but snow was decent on the groomers or shaded areas.
We finished the day with short steep runs on Outlaw and along the liftline of Chair 1. There were some snow sculptures at the top of Chair 1.
We skied 18,700 vertical. I went into their office at the end of the day and found that Lost Trail has 45,000 skier visits on its 1,800 acres. Adjusting for Lost Trail only operating 4 days a week, this tied Castle Mt. for the lowest skier density stats I had found, a record to be broken the very next day.