Triple Black Diamonds at Big Sky

The first time you are pretty much shitting yourself but that’s like a lot of things in life. The worst is if it stops for some reason. The car suddenly drops big time but that doesn’t happen very often so it’s not something you get used to. Marz was talking about wind holds before. It might take a while in the morning to get things open if it’s windy but that has to do more with patrol not being able to do their work or if there is a lot of wind loading going on. Challenger and the old Bowl chair sometimes go on windhold but usually not the tram. It obviously depends on the direction but it can operate in very high winds. It was built to be very wind protected. People scurry like rats out of there when it’s like that. This is also the conditions under which tram island occurs. A rare phenomenon where the Bowl chair is closed but the tram is not. If you are lucky enough to get stuck up there you can run laps by skiing the Big or 1st Gully to Cron’s with no one around and no line. The last time I was there it was blowing well over 50 mph with much stronger gusts and the tram was open. It was a fight to get over to Lenin and Freebird was getting blown backwards on his snowboard on the Yeti traverse. It was worth it though because when we got to the Dictators it was waist deep. Usually is.
 
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Ripitz said:
The upper mountain is all black.
The lower has lots of terrain for beginners and intermediates.
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I just realized my browser had enlarged the map and I wasn't looking at the whole thing. Doh! :rolleyes:
 
Ripitz said:
Andesite holds lots of secrets. On powder days when everyone is rushing to the upper mountain I would sometimes head there first. Elk Park meadows is great in powder, it has the most consistent pitch even though it’s a little off kilter. The Elk Park groomer is probably my favorite. Super fast. Rock Pocket and Marlboro Country have cliffs to drop with deep landings. Even Southern Comfort is a blast. Nice place to hide out in the sun. It has the lowest elevation so you have to be mindful of that. Sometimes if it hasn’t snowed in a while and there is a wind event the snow blows off the trees and fills it all in. People would wait on the tram line to clamor around the summit on wind blown boilerplate and we’d be banging laps skiing knee deep pow on Andy with no one around except a handful of tourists on the groomers. It’s big, lots of places to hide.
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That whole section between Elk Park and Silver Knife is way bigger than it looks from the trail map. Shady Chute was where I wandered around a few times in pretty deep untracked powder when I ended up solo for a while. It's actually wide open once you in there, but close enough to the groomer to not really have to worry much. I watched a couple guys jump into the double blacks below the blue crossover trail. They were happy to find them open since they had been closed for a day or two.

Neihues did a good job showing which areas have been gladed and which can be tight trees. Colter's Hell is one of the first glades I skied more than once.
 
Harvey said:
I know there are hundreds of awesome mountains that would inspire me out west. I think about what I've seen and read about Wolf Creek a lot.
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That's where I'm going in Dec. Learned about Wolf here. Had a ball there last Feb. :)
 
There's a video taken from the gondola of somebody ejecting on his second turn and ragdolling/sliding down pretty much the whole length of that thing. I think it was from this season.
 
Alive and (gulp) well?
 
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