Day 1:
Rolled into Bozeman around 5:00 PM on New Year's Eve. The girls (my gf and her sister came along) and I cleaned up and headed to Ale Works. Had some good grub and a micro then headed over to the Beermuda Triangle. Stopped in the Hauf for a PBR. Pretty dead except for the same locals that were four years ago there playing open mic. Completed the triangle with running into an extrememly drunk blind guy with a seeing eye dog. He was having a good time, but not sure what the dog thought about what was going on. I hope the dog got the dude home safe and at least he didn't have to worry about a DUI. We then headed to the Rockin' R, but the line was too long. Heard the Eagles Club was also hopping so we crammed in there for beginning of the New Year.
Day 2:
Slept off the hangover's and headed up to Bridger. Pulled in the lot around noon fifteen and rode a half day. Great weather with average snow. Some wind loading had occured in the South Bowl so I made a few laps in there. The Bro's were loving being back on some soft snow again.
Day 3:
Made the drive up to Big Sky. This is where it got real fun. Big Sky only reported an inch overnight, but there was at least 7" on top of one of the best bases I've seen there in 20 years. The only lift line on the mountain was at the Tram of course so I only made one trip up. Skied virtually untracked lines off of Shedhorn the rest of the day. The lift ride back up was super slow, but there was nobody hitting the glades so I continued to ski fresh tracks all day. Due to me being extremely out of shape I got faily licked by days end, but it was still a blast. Met up with an old buddy who works in the terrain park up there and some of his friends for a last run. They put on a nice display of backflips and spins on the way down. Headed down to Buck's T-4 for supper and called it an ealy night in Bozeman.
Day 4:
The decission was to head to Moonlight, however, the mountains received snow again overnight so since none of us had skied Moonlight before, and the girls were fairly drained from the pervious two day we decided to go back to Big Sky. I was fine with the decision since I once again figured I'd be able to hit up secret stashes as the snow became tracked out.
This proved to be one of the better days of skiing pow that I've had. It wasn't super deep, but Every line I skied was between knee and waist deep. All the lines I had skied the day before were filled in over night with another at least half foot or more of fresh. The Bro's absolutely rocked in the deep pow. I made lap after lap without feeling any fatigue. The Bro's did all the work and even threw in a face shot here and there. We were extremely sad to leave as the girls had overcome their fatigue as well and also had a blast on our last day.
On a side note, we got stranded in the mountain village for about 4 hours at the end of our last day. The road had been extremely slippery and we came very close to going sideways on 191 at least three times the previous morning and this was on straightaways only going between 20-30 mph. Sadly, on day 4 a SUV did exactly that and was t-boned by a van resulting in 3 fatalities. It took workers four hours to clean everything up and get the road cleared. Very sad situation and may the deceased RIP.
