The powder sure lasts a long time around here, I had the opportunity to ski with a family visiting from our sister resort area in Sunday River, Maine. 
The Burke family had been here before, but it was about 7 years ago, before there was a Moonlight Basin, before the Village Center, before many of the new places to eat around the mountain. They’ve skied all week and yet I knew we still had places left to explore. You can’t possibly cover everything in only a week, I’ve been here years and I still find new places to explore, plus we found powder!
I caught up with Greg, Heather, Ian and Aspen for lunch as they were getting a chance to ski the biggest skiing in America for the day. Before I caught up with them they had achieved the epic ski run off the north side of Lone Peak called the North Summit Snowfields, the only way to get into this run is with a Biggest Skiing in America ticket as you ride Big Sky’s Tram and ski down Moonlight’s terrain. 
Well, since they bagged this big run before I caught up with them, we decided we’d go up and explore the Dakota area, a place that didn’t exist seven years ago. We got there from the Tram via Liberty Bowl. It gave me the perfect opportunity to ski the right edge of this massive run. Since early December the belly of this bowl has been filled in but the edges sometimes only come around after the February and March snows. As it turned out this line was really good skiing and clean, probably around 3-4 inches of soft snow with a few pockets that would crawl up to boot top.
After skiing the line, we took a right toward the Kircher cliffs to ski the Dakota Bowl. Even though all this terrain is in bounds and lift accessible, there was plenty of great snow to be found and the sun was poking out enough to keep our cheeks warm. 
From the bottom we loaded the Dakota Chair and at the top I asked “who wants to follow me and get lost in the woods?” I was only half joking considering much of the Bavarian Forest is still unfamiliar to me with its massive amount of choices and lines. Naturally this Maine family was all about the adventure and they followed me down through the ski gate.
We stopped more often than usual to regroup, but what we found in here were a lot of untouched lines with 6-8 inches of powder. 
You actually can’t get lost, you just find moments where you don’t know where you are, but all fall line leads to the Hippy Highway that takes you to Shedhorn. The beauty is now with the Dakota chair you can spin multiple laps to begin learning more of what’s out there, I picked up a few new things today.
The family visiting was pleased with their week at Big Sky and Greg commented on how genuinely blown away at the size of the terrain here. Ian, a senior in high school is contemplating his next step and maybe become a Bobcat at Montana State University, his parents assured me he’s a great student, but I had to wonder if they were thinking his education time might be more on the mountain and less in the classroom. As an MSU alum myself, it’s safe to say most of my lessons learned were outside and clicked into skis, what did you learn today?
We’ll see you out there,
Dax
