Hello everyone,
Here we are, a few days into the free skiing week for all our Frequent Sky Cardholders, a time we affectionately refer to as Freek Week. I saw a lot of friendly faces and even though it's been a few days since snow, everyone I talked to was equally psyched to have so much terrain to choose from in November.
We had a few industry friends escape from Salt Lake City to explore our mountain and I had a chance to jump out with them this afternoon. Matt Sterbenz, president and founder of 4FRNT skis was on hand as he's becoming a regular with Big Sky's steeps. He's great fun to ski with and to watch rip down runs switch as comfortably as I hold on moving forward.
The group spent their morning on Challenger and as we rolled up Swifty, it dawned on me I hadn't really explored the blue runs from the bottom half of Lone Peak. We had a big group including Logan, Chad and a pair of Eric's and we decided to ski a screamer down Calamity Jane. The run had been track-packed with a compressor bar and has remarkable coverage considering no snowmaking on it. It's still early season conditions out there, but what a feeling to actually pick up some speed and lay down some big carves! (My first ski day I just skied steep powder, which is OK too.)
On the trip up we were scoping out the terrain to the right of the lift line (lift rider's right) near Buffalo Jump and lower Crazy Horse. It's not very often that I'd look around that area, but our goal was to have fun and snake some powder photos with Matt in town. So we took off to spin a few laps on the untouched snow in the trees. Sterbenz wasn't messing around after launching off of the Buffalo Jump jump and we spun a few laps, bouncing and banging through the forest enjoying the adventurous spirit of the group.
This happens every year of my 10 years I've lived here, and it happened again today, I was in such an unfamiliar area, I ended up skiing a section I had never done before. At the bottom of Crazy Horse there was one single track veering off the right that went directly under the Gondola line. Matt suggested we take it and since I'd never done it before, we checked it out. It turned out to be a blast, it was low angle, but it was soft snow and as each time we'd pick up enough speed, we'd float up and bonk off the wall. It was goofy, but fun, which is what skiing with friends is all about, after all, it's freek week.
Forecast is calling for snow this week, looking forward to rolling into December getting more and more terrain open.
We'll see you out there,
Dax