A Few Runs Through It from carl beideman on Vimeo.
The worst winter of my life doesn’t look so bad in a three minute burst. Just a few of the better runs I scraped together mashed up with my winter/spring fishing around Missoula.
While the Bitterroot and Mission mountains are glorious, access is limited. A typical day involved waking at five, driving to a horrid logging road, chaining up and driving to elevation. From there it’s 6-8 miles to a peak (usually an avy gully). Surviving that, I still had to drive back down. Chains helped, but the worst thing for me was the logging roads. So much stress. I ski fast and drive slow, you know.
All in all I wouldn’t recommend Missoula as a base for skiing, but there are gems, and if you have a decade to explore the area, then it’s all for you! I think I liked the pillows best: short hike, easy laps and tons of bunny hopping from one to the next. I’d never skied pillows before. Too bad they were melted out by FEBRUARY. Crazy. Perhaps if it was a better season, I’da had a better time. I think elevation is a factor here, which is why access is so hard. In the end, Missoula made me butch, but it didn’t make me a better skier. Props to the guys who make it happen out here, you high-powered mutants.
