Big Sky

Well today was a fun day, we got a fairly early start. We got up had a nice breakfast and headed across the street to the lifts. We got tickets and heard a nice loud explosion! Avy work? hmmmm... What is going on, it was snowing but not very hard, the peak was in the clouds. Was it dumping up there? Interesting. We made our way over to Swift Current lift and headed up with a goal of heading straight to the Tram and making our way down Liberty Bowl to start the day. We got about half way up and heard another explosion, ski patrol is trying to get something to slide. I wonder where they are working? We unloaded and headed down toward the Lone Peak triple lift... It was closed, we also learned that Shedhorn, Dakota and Challenger lifts were also closed. The wind had really picked up it was blowing out of the north and the visibility in the bowl was zero. While we stood there we heard another explosion. Wow... I really wish I could see what was happening. But no luck and we had skiing to do. We made our way down Crazy Horse, the wind had taken it's toll on that run, it was hard and had very little powder left on it so it was a challenge to say the least.

We decided to head up Ramcharger lift and check out the runs on Andesite. Good choice, we skied: Deep South which is my favorite green run at Big Sky, it runs right along the Yellowstone Club and it is really fun to look in and see the beautiful homes in there. After Deep South we head to Big Horn which is a huge blue and turned out to be great. We also did Silver Knife which was also a fun run. We took a break and then headed back up Swift Current to see if the Tram was open. It was! So we headed up the Lone Peak triple and made our way to the Tram. We asked a ski patroller how Liberty Bowl was skiing with all of the wind and he said it was good, a lot of snow had blown over there and had started to fill back in the dumps, so he said there would be so areas of good powder. We got to the Tram and there was no line so we got on the first Tram and made our way to the summit. Holy crap it was windy up there, a little spooky with the gusty winds and the snow blowing, it was hard to see. But we got started down Liberty Bowl and the patroller was right on the money I found good pockets of ankle deep powder and it was nice and soft. Liberty Bowl was skiing awesome! We made our way down slowly but at a good pace. It was a blast. That run is so amazing! It is huge, steep and the views are incredible in every direction. We exited the bowl and enter the run Screaming Left and made our way to Middle Road. About 1 hour later we had skied 6.5 miles and about 4000' vertical feet. My legs were burning and I had to sit down for a bit, so we took a break had a little something to eat and reflected on our run for the summit. So awesome!

We did discover what was going on with the avy work, the big bowl was closed because the snow in the gullies above the bowl was very unstable and we saw evidence of at least 3 slides into the bowl which was pretty freaky to see that. Not sure if they were ski patrol induced or natural but they were slides none the less.

We finished with a few more runs on the front side of the mountain. What a great day.

We went down to the village and went through our favorite stores. I found a cool beanie and then we went to Bucks T4 for dinner. We both had Buffalo burgers which were excellent. Now we are sitting in our hotel room talking about the day and planning another ski day at Big Sky for tomorrow...

I am thinking we are going to sleep well tonight.