Moonlight Basin, MT: New story & video

OK, gang, we're making up for the lame soundtrack in the Magic video :wink: with a spectacular new piece of work from our contributing writer Jay Silveira, and his J&E Productions video company. See Moonlight Basin, Montana's brand-new ski and snowboard area, in Montana's New Frontier.

Here's a scene from the movie:



And here's a glimpse at the terrain:



As always, feedback is welcome.

Admin":dtj245x9 said:

And here's a glimpse at the terrain:

As always, feedback is welcome.

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OUCH!!! :shock:

Montana, Montana, Montana. Drive the Trans-Canada highway all the way to Alberta then turn left.

Fantastic video... great editing and I love those helmet cam shots in the trees.

Not to bite the hand that feeds me, but what's with the soundbites from the CEO and marketing director? Makes it seem like an "official" video put out from the resort.

At the NASJA annual meeting in March 2001 we had lunch at Moonlight Lodge. The Iron Horse and Pony Express lifts were part of Big Sky then. I also had a day of snowcat skiing http://216.250.243.13/discus2/messages/ ... ?985739867 in the terrain now used by Moonlight Basin. Due to an atypical freak rainstorm conditions were actually better at Big Sky http://216.250.243.13/discus2/messages/ ... ?985742852. In 2001 I was told that lifts would be going into the Moonlight terrain, but not that it would be a separate ski area.

Big Sky/Lone Peak/Moonlight Basin is a flawed mountain for several reasons. One is the predominant sunny exposure of the Big Sky terrain that Jay mentions. Another is that the true annual snowfall, as measured at a ski-terrain representative 8,920 feet, is only 258 inches. Then the terrain itself: the intermediate terrain on both mountains is pretty flat, with an abrupt transition to the hair-raising extremes of Lone Peak/Headwaters/A-Z Chutes. The latter terrain needs abundant snowfall (which it doesn't get by Snowbird/Jackson/Squaw standards) and good exposure (only Headwaters and Lone Peak's Gullies) to be reliably skiable.

Despite the above caveats, my 3 days at Big Sky in 2001 were great skiing. Marc Guido was there 2 weeks before me and not so lucky.

Big Sky and Moonlight Basin really need to end their spat sometime and offer a combined lift ticket. From Challenger I skied north-facing Nashville Bowl, which I'm guessing is now Headwaters Bowl within Moonlight Basin's terrain. The Headwaters Chutes are a 5-10 minute bootpack from Challenger, but a grueling once-a-day slog from Moonlight's Six-Shooter lift. With the varied exposures of the combined areas, knowledgeable skiers could enhance the quality of skiing by skiing various sectors at the appropriate time of day. This is a mountain where the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts IMHO.

jamesdeluxe":2xat15q4 said:

what's with the soundbites from the CEO and marketing director? Makes it seem like an "official" video put out from the resort.

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Merely something that J&E Productions chose to do. "J&E Productions" is headed by someone who occasionally pokes around these boards as JSpin, so some of you may be acquainted with him. We commissioned JSpin and J&E last winter to do that story and video, and as the director JSpin apparently felt that it was a good way to introduce what a brand-new ski area was trying to accomplish, i.e. which niche it is trying to fill. Honestly, I felt that Spin's idea worked well.

Big Sky and Moonlight Basin really need to end their spat sometime and offer a combined lift ticket. From Challenger I skied north-facing Nashville Bowl, which I'm guessing is now Headwaters Bowl within Moonlight Basin's terrain. The Headwaters Chutes are a 5-10 minute bootpack from Challenger, but a grueling once-a-day slog from Moonlight's Six-Shooter lift. With the varied exposures of the combined areas, knowledgeable skiers could enhance the quality of skiing by skiing various sectors at the appropriate time of day. This is a mountain where the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts IMHO.[/

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nice little video. funny to see Mr. bos (aka, king of 4th place) throwing is cute little flips in there. how'd ya like those pretty colors on thier coat's? haha

about the hike up the Headwaters, so true. here's the thing.

the challenger lift is part of big sky that sits along side the shared border of BS and Moonlight. if you ride the challenger lift, you are not allowed to hike the Headwaters and drop into the Moonlight area. you either ride BS or Moonlight. the Headwaters hike from the six-shooter lift located at MLB(Moonlight Basin. not Major League Baseball) is about a 30 min hike straight up to the top of the challenger lift (if you're in good shape), but on Moonlights property. then you can hike along the Headwaters ridge to whereever you'd like to drop in at (up to an additional hour of hiking). chutes and lines are well marked on the Headwaters, BUT you can get cliffed out if you don't know where you're going. you can usually get a good look at your line as you ride up the six-shooter chair and get a good look at the terrain to pick your line. although, it is a different story when you get up there........an hour and a half later. two laps on the Headwaters will give anyone a good workout, and kick most peoples asses. there was talk last year about a poma lift getting put in in place of the hike and to meet up where the challenger lift(BS property) drops you off at, but on MLB's side of the rope. needless to say, it was just talk. that never happened. although there is a new lift that accesses more than 25 new trails (a lot of which are glades), a new bowl, and some new hike-to terrain. oh, and a backcountry access gate too. non patroled, non controlled terrain.

i broke down and took the gamble at getting a pass here this season instead of BS......only because the place is always dead and snow lasts for weeks at this place rather than days at BS. drawback: lots of hiking, lots of tree's, and no park or pipe. i've only ridden at MLB once last year and it didn't seem worth it to have a pass there with the limitted terrain they had available. this year is a bit bigger, and i'm expecting a big snow year. last season only dropped about 230". that's the kind of coverage you all saw in the video. not all that bad, but keep in mind, it's a light fluffy pow we get here in MT and we need a lot of coverage to have things ridable, or dropable. we better have atleast a 300"+ year here. i'm psyched for it and hope to take a lot of laps off the Headwaters and do some exploring in the backcountry terrain. i just hope that there's some lift accessed terrain that keeps me occupied for when i don't have a partner to hike the Headwaters.....other than boring trees. a lot of the new trails seeem to be rather narrow from looking at the trail map. the trail Meriwhether is a narrower trail that was open last year, and all the other trails seem to be very similar in the width. there are a few things that will determine if i go back for another pass next year or not. this is the trial year, and i don't think i'm the only one doing that. that will have an effect on my decision too. will it become busy? montana busy

atleast my frequency card at BS gets me a day pass for $26. backup and change it up. BS's park is suppossed to be going off this year. hard to believe, but we'll see.

one more thing. about that pic above that show's some of the terrain. i'm not sure if that is from last year, but i highly doubt it. the same picture has been on MLB's website for the past two years. it looks as if if might be from '95-'96..........or whenever that big year was.

The big year was 1996-97. 342 inches at Big Sky 8,920 ft., 572 inches at Jackson Hole 8,200 ft., record highs for both.

Last year was an AVERAGE year in the region: Big Sky 249 vs. 258 average, Jackson Hole 365 vs. 368 average. One of my progress reports from last year http://webpages.charter.net/tcrocker818/011604.htm noted that a 4-foot dump over the holidays allowed most of Big Sky's extreme terrain to open in early January. So last year's conditions were probably above average in January and February. After that the entire western U.S. was baked by an unseasonably warm and dry March.

i'll have to take a look at that progress report from that 4' dump at BS.

the 4'+ was at bridger. BS nearly recieved half of that. still impressive none the less. i'm sure you have the exact numbers in the progress report, so i can eat these words, but i do remember riding bridger after the dump....defintately 4'+. i also rode BS and it wasn't anything like the amounts that Bridger recieved, though i did get to drop some cliff's i otherwise wouldn't in january. Bridger had an overall better snowyear than BS last year though. it's a gamble to which place you choose to ride for the year here. sometimes BS gets slammed, sometimes BB gets slammed.

darnit! log in before you post. what a pain in the arse. the guest is me posted above.

i click the little box that says that i automatically sign in, but i always have to sign in anyways. is it a bad cookie? i might have to reset my cookie settings. ??? oh well.

It's your cookie settings. Set them to allow http://www.firsttracksonline.com to set cookies.

Big Sky/Lone Peak/Moonlight Basin is a flawed mountain for several reasons. One is the predominant sunny exposure of the Big Sky terrain that Jay mentions. Another is that the true annual snowfall, as measured at a ski-terrain representative 8,920 feet, is only 258 inches.

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Tony, thanks for the update on actual snowfall in the Lone Peak area. I simply used the numbers from the Big Sky/Moonlight websites in my article, which both say 400 inches, but it is amazing to see what a HUGE difference that is from the actual 258 inches at 8,920 feet. Where in the world are they getting this 400 number? Are they somehow measuring snowfall at the summit?

After living in Montana for a few years now and watching the snowfall trends, it really seems that the most consistent (and maybe highest) snowfall is along the western border of the state (Big Mountain, Lookout Pass, Lost Trail etc.) where we often get into the moist flow off the Pacific. The trend seems to be that as one heads further east towards central Montana, snowfall is more feast or famine. The more eastern resorts really score big when there is a clash of cold air pushing up against the front range with an appropriately-timed slug of moisture, but they don't seem to have the consistency. This is evident when we find folks from other parts of the state coming to Lost Trail in the early season because places further to the east haven't quite hit the big storm they need to build a good base.

Although Lost Trail seems to get some of the most consistent snowfall in the state, I'm pretty impressed with the snowfall they get up at Lookout Pass. It's just amazing that they can get so much snow with a summit elevation of only 5,650 feet. In March of '02 their base depth at the summit reached 225 inches! I had been watching it build, but I was still in awe when they reached such a number. They have a log of the '01-'02 snowfall observations at:

http://wallace-id.com/ski_season.html

J.Spin

I have always view NW Montana, like Schweitzer to the west and Fernie to the north, to be primarily a Pacific Northwest climate. The Lizard Range has a localized microclimate that boosts precipitation, and perhaps Lookout Pass may as well. I will be visiting Silver for the first time at the NASJA meeting in March 2005, and I would be interested in the local truth of its weather, as they claim more than Schweitzer and it's not obvious to me why that should be.

As one who crunches numbers, I still always advise: believe what your eyes and skis tell you, rather than a number someone quotes. When you see bare ground in the town of Park City vs. what's piled high at the base of the Cottonwood Canyon ski areas, you don't need me to tell you about the relative snowfall. Big Sky isn't like the Park City base, but when you compare its upper mountain terrain to Jackson Hole's, it's not difficult to figure out who gets more snow.

Could the top of Lone Peak get 400? Maybe, but snow measurements are unlikely to be accurate in such an exposed location. The long term monthly data (supplied to me and to avalanche forecasters) at 8,920 is a representative elevation for the ski area as a whole and seems fair to use. I prefer to be low-key about this issue because, unlike Park City, Big Sky does give me credible monthly data each spring and I hope to continue receiving it.

In the case of Big Mountain the conditions I observed personally in 2003 exceeded my expectations. The higher elevation it has vs. Fernie can offset the lower but still considerable snowfall. And the south exposure is not as much of a problem as I expected due to chronic fog/overcast.

As I have neither visited nor collected data from Montana areas between Big Mountain and Bridger/Big Sky, I don't know where the transition from the Pacific climate of the former to the continental climate of the latter occurs. But the difference is clear, particularly in terms of temperatures.

just took a quick look at that progress report of Tony's from last year:


stowe had more snow than BS.

the 6' reported for Bridger is ~1'off. when i rode after that xmas storm there was definately a lot of snow off the ridge, but 6' is a bit much. it dumped about 4'-5' in two days around xmas, then snowed more after that to bring that up to ~6'. control was done on the ridge for about 4 days before it was opened. i was lucky enough to be there when they opened the southern half of the ridge. rode that 4'-5' of fresh. a good couple of runs. got my money's worth that day!

Big Sky on the other hand was reported to have 4'........maybe from xmas through the first week in january at higher elevations (upper mtn), but not when Bridger got that 4'-5'. BS got about half that from that storm. maybe a little more, but not much. snowed consistently through early january as well which made for great riding every day.

i'll have to keep an eye on stowe this xmas to see what's going on up there this year.......among others. those east coast snow depths from that progress report kinda surprised me. musta happened after i left.

god, i can't wait for snow.

anyone ever built any funboxes before? any tips on sliding material i can use on the top other than steel pipes? fiberglass? some sort of high impact poly.......? there was some dude who did the park at cannon who used to post here. hey, any suggestions for my funbox?

The in-season Stowe report was out-of-line high, and I had some misgivings about using it. The "official numbers" I use in historical reporting are from the Mansfield stake near the WCAX TV tower. These numbers are very credible but tend to run a bit lower than ski area reports because WCAX measures at 4PM while most ski areas measure around 6AM. I would very much like to get running totals in-season from the Mansfield stake.

For progress reports I need timely info and must sometimes accept less credible data than I use at the end of each season. The Jay minimum and Sugarbush season-to-date totals in-season are more credible than Stowe's for evaluating Vermont.

Something like 60% of New England snow fell in December last season, and it was possibly the highest December in my records. Therefore the progress reports in early January make the numbers look pretty good. It was a lean season in the East after that. You will also note that December had a few big rain events along with all that snow, including one at Christmas which degraded holiday ski conditions considerably.

Tony Crocker":3bq7vc6u said:

Something like 60% of New England snow fell in December last season, and it was possibly the highest December in my records. Therefore the progress reports in early January make the numbers look pretty good. It was a lean season in the East after that. You will also note that December had a few big rain events along with all that snow, including one at Christmas which degraded holiday ski conditions considerably.

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"Degraded"? "Literally wiped out" would be a better descriptor. That December 27 thaw was positively heartbreaking, especially after the 4- to 5-foot dumps that fell upon many New England resorts only 2 weeks earlier. We're talking down-to-bare-earth meltdown here.

"Degraded"? "Literally wiped out" would be a better descriptor. That December 27 thaw was positively heartbreaking, especially after the 4- to 5-foot dumps that fell upon many New England resorts only 2 weeks earlier. We're talking down-to-bare-earth meltdown here.

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4'-5' dumps two weeks prior to xmas last year? not in NH.

i rode the 23rd at crotched. warm and soft. ~6 runs top to bottom. fun day, but slow lifts.

rode the 27th at 10E. firm, hard, solid ice. cold and windy. had to look for "golfballs" to get a good turn or two. two NARROW trails open. this place was down to bare earth as Marc says. just ugly!

dang! i guess it did wipe everything out. not this year though. i've talked with motha nature and she's going big this year........don't know when though. she didn't want to give away to much.

hamdog":2e0x6pdk said:

4'-5' dumps two weeks prior to xmas last year? not in NH.

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Au contraire! IIRC Wildcat was one of the 50+" recipients from that storm. The line of heaviest snowfall was north of a diagonal stretching from the Berkshires of western MA to central Maine. The heavy banding stretched well north, too, for even places like Stowe in NVT beat the 4-foot mark.

However, as mentioned before, it was wiped out before you arrived.

yeah! i'm a blue square now. mooooovin on up.......

figured out how to get pics up on here. woohoo!

here's those cliff's i dropped in early January at big sky last year, after all the snow we got. 2' of fresh on this day.

the first one is the far away shot. you can't really see me, but there's a little arrow pointing to where i am coming off the cliff.

the other pic is the same pic, but the zoomed in version where you can kind of see me a little better. look for the snow flying off the cliff and the yellow on the base of my board(doing a gay mute grab). i'll try to get some better pics up this year(some you can actually see), and hopefully i can hit these suckers again. they're about a 25'-30' drop from where i hit it. landing isn't so great. you drop like a bomb.

the moonlight cliffs is what they're called. seen from the top of the Iron Horse lift. accessed by coming down from the Challenger lift and through the moonlight trees, bare left, watch your step.