Tobacco Root early season

Photo Casey Greene

Ski season never really ended this year, or hasn't really since I moved to Montana.  Other than roughly a month off of skis sometime between August and September, skiing was my main focus this summer.  Snow unloaded over the mountains of west-central Montana late September, and I promised myself to hold off on the early season skiing until at least November.  Other than a quick day up Lolo Peak area soon after the storm, I was able to hold off.  Ive had a lot of free time with work slowing down and last week I biked Blue Mountain, Sheep Mountain, Stewart peak.  That was enough biking for the week, and many of my favorite rides had snow, so skiing was the logical plan for this weekend.  After talking and viewing maps Casey, Mickey and I decided the Tobacco Root mountains had the most snow in the state and decided to make the trip.  There was reportedly 4 feet of consolidated snow with some fresh, and that held true.

From Carlton Ridge, October 4th

Skinning form the trail head with heavy packs, we arrived at Bell Lake.  Our first thought was to find good snow on north facing aspects.  We begin climbing north facing Brahm peak, only to find unstable conditions and cross loading.  The last couple days in the Tobaccos must have been windy, next we climbed towards a north Coulior on Tomphson Peak only to find another touchy windslab at higher elevation.  Powder skiing was finally located on the protected lower elevations around the lake and we made our way back to cold PBRs and dinner at camp just west of Bell Lake.

Day two our goal was to get a look around this new mountain range from a summit.  We found a direct ridge to follow from the lake up to Thompson Peak.  Kicking steps in this shallow, breakable crust was difficult and unmotivating, thinking "this is why I don't need to ski in October".  The crust finally ended and turned to rock ice climbing/ scrambling until the summit, somewhat more reasonable.  We dropped into an icy, wind blown east facing chute ~1800' above the lake.  Much to my surprise the skiing was great.  The ice turned to powder and wind slabs were isolated.  Skiing down I hit no rocks, even got some snow in the face.

Monday morning I found myself back in Missoula with work called off and tired legs.  Great weather and a motivated partner we decided to mountain bike Sheep Mountain.  Trail was clear of snow to the summit with patchy snow on the north face switch backs into east fork rattlesnake.  The yellow larch were stunning and wildlife was out on our evening decent, as we stopped to watch a large rather curious bull moose along the east fork. A great weekend of skiing and biking off of Montana mountain summits with good company, every weekend should be like this.

Near the summit of Thompson Peak

Our line near Bell Lake

Back on mountain bikes