“No friends on powder days”, its the modo when you have snow dumping on your head. When Ana and i arrived at Moonlight for our first day of riding, we had a POW day at our disposal. We had connected with a friend of Ana’s, Bryce, who was living in the Bozeman area. He took tuesday off so he could come snowboarding with us. Bryce invited his friend from work to tag along too, Andy. Bryce is more of an archer, and Andy does all the sports you can do in the Bozeman area, snowboarding, hinting, paddling, etc. It was the four us vs. the mountain on day one.

After we got settled and every one was ready to disembark, we started the day by dropping into the trees behind where we parked the car. There was a small cliff the Andy said was worth hitting, about 4 to 5 feet he said. Andy and i dropped in and bombed through the trees, jumping and swooping in between the trees. Jumped the cliff and road the opposite side of the trail to wait for Ana and Bryce. About 4 minutes later we see Bryce jump out of the woods and over the cliff and about 8 minutes after that Ana scrambling out and over the cliff in a cloud of snow.  With all of us in high spirits we headed up the lift. We we reached the top Andy and I took one look at the top of the ridge and were immediately intent on going there. Bryce and Ana… not so much. We set up a meeting time and parted ways till lunch. Andy and I headed for the top.

When we got off the lift at the top of the ridge, we started to hike along the top of the ridge. (the picture) The ridge hike was epic. We are on top of the ridge where is drops on either side, about 45 to 60 degrees. The wind is not bad but even when the wind blows 5 miles an hour it becomes scary. I didn’t have a backpack so I was carrying my snowboard with one arm and using my other to grab rocks while I am hiking. We hike like this for about 20 to 30 minuets. We choose a shoot, made a sketchy traverse, over to where the snow opened up. The traverse was a snow shoot across the top of a rock field and cliff, the path was about 3 feet wide. We did this and then stood on top of our route and started gracefully dancing our ways down the slope. Turning in the deep and steep snow, like it was a hot knife in butter. The was drifts, cliffs and rocks, to maneuver our way around. It the speed that you would go was amazing and snow snow it self was incredibly soft and smooth. At the end of the run we jetted through a narrow shoot and ripped some more fresh tracks in the deep snow.

An exhilarating way to open my trip to Montana.