Skiing

Ryan and I took a skiing trip to Big Sky, Montana this year. We went all by ourselves, which I think is a first for us. Normally, we tag along with Ryan's parents. The girls stayed with grandparents while we were gone. I was actually a little nervous about this trip because I always think I'm holding Ryan back by waiting on me and not wanting to ski blacks or double blacks. So, I was worried if this would actually be an enjoyable ski trip.

After arriving at our ski in/ski out condo, we quickly realized it was not really a ski in/ski out condo. Not even in the best of conditions. You have to walk up their steep driveway and then cross the street to get to the trail. We got a really good price on the condo, so we decided to not complain. The owners just rented out the basement of their house. It was really nice and cozy and had all the amenities of home including a washer/dryer. We ended up driving to the main base area to park and ski everyday.

The first day of skiing was nice. It was definitely spring skiing and at the base area the snow was slushy. We explored all over the mountain. Ryan even convinced me to go down a bowl, which was a black, but I figured I could traverse the whole thing down if I was scared. I made it down, but it wasn't pretty. After two more runs of that trail, he decided he wanted to try some runs off this other lift. Unbeknownst to me it only serviced blacks and double blacks. Upon quickly figuring this out, I waited at the bottom while Ryan rode to the top. Ryan said it was a good thing I didn't follow him. After the lift got to the top of the peak there was only room for about 3 skiers and they were surrounded by 4-5ft snow drifts and there was only one way out, which was a hole poked through the snow. After jumping through this hole there was a 5ft drop off. Not my cup of tea, so I am very glad I didn't go up because that probably would have been my last run of the trip!

The next day of skiing was probably our best day. It actually started out raining and was pretty slushy, but you could cut right through the slush and there was no ice. We have an app on our phones that is called ski tracks. It keeps track of your speed, distance, and altitude and subtracts the lift rides. We skied nearly 16,000 vertical feet in 5.5hrs on our second day. I think that is pretty awesome!

Our last day of skiing was the coldest and they actually got about 6" of snow the night before, so we thought it would be ideal conditions. And it might have been had the previous few days not been so warm. We quickly discovered it was like cutting through powder to find slippery ice. We found our way to a few groomed runs and stuck with those until everyone else figured out that was the only ski-able terrain. We decided to call it a day after lunch. Since we were so close to Yellowstone (within 45 minutes) we decided to check out what that had to offer. Yellowstone was still closed for the winter season, but there was a neat bear/wolf discovery center that was just outside of the park. It was a really neat place to visit. They take care of nuisance bears that have been accustomed to eating human food. They also have two wolf packs and some birds. We got to see some bears feeding. The two we saw were from Alaska and were their largest grizzly bears.
It turned out to be a really nice day and I'm glad we got to visit the Grizzly discovery center.
The next day we traveled back home. It was nice and relaxing not to have to worry about getting kids ready in the morning and planning around nap/bed times. I had a great time, but I was ready to see my girls!

Sleeping wolf

The bears trying to find their snack