Homeboy Ski Blog - Ski Gear, Ski Resorts, Interviews, Reviews, Tips & Tricks

Ski season has begun all over the world – and so for us too. Me and Laura will be over in US and Canada for the 09/10 season, chasing the snow whenever possible. We’ll have our ‘home base’ in Western Montana until January and then we’re moving on to Canada. We got a taste of Mt Bakers epic conditions last week (scroll down for that) but here in Montana early-season conditions still exist. Here’s the biggest and only downhill part of our skitour from Tuesday, couple days ago:

The annoying thing at the moment in Montana is that there’s enough snow accumulated on the logging roads so that getting up with our little Subaru is hard, but still there’s not enough at the same altitude to ski. Here’s where our original plan for that Tuesday met its “turning point and how we ended up skinning on XC trails instead:

“Yep, can’t really get up here and even if we do the car will be snowed in during the next couple of hours” – leads to shoveling a platform to turn the car around..

I was able to get a taste of some sled skiing with couple of locals last weekend, getting towed to the spot American style (total of 5 guys + 1 dog hiding in the cat cutter)

A bit more snow up here…

Visibility was bad up high and I didn’t manage any real action photos but here’s a happy dog and a happy skier at the end of the run.

A week ago at Mt Baker was a bit different. We knew that they had got a nice base already and as the next storm rolled in to the Pacific Northwest we had a quick look at the snow report (80inches / 200cm base) and Google maps (only 560miles / 900km drive to Bellingham!) and we were already on our way.

The next morning we liked what we saw on our way up to the resort, pretty tall snowbanks for this time of the year:

We liked the looks of these trees too:

Laura and 21st of November:

What you really can’t see from the admittedly grainy and crappy photos is the thick snowpack that the area already has. With enough new snow each night during our stay to cover the old tracks we had great 3 days of riding at Baker. I’m more used to the smaller European resorts where things don’t get tracked out in the first 20 minutes after the opening though, but that wasn’t a problem after getting used to it. Unfortunately the visibility was bad the whole time so we didn’t have a chance to see the Baker backcountry. On 23rd it looked like the freezing levels would shoot up for the rest of the week and so we made the tactical move of saving some money and heading first to Seattle and then back to Missoula. Thanks to Bill for the couch space!

And finally, here’s what we’re using to avoid paying for an internet connection at the moment. A steel kitchen sieve ($5), a usb wlan dongle ($25) and Petzl Vasak crampons ($150) combined boost the signal and receiving strength of the cheap WLAN dongle, creating a high gain antenna that’ll enable you to use the nearby open wireless network. PS: Use of ice crampons as weight not obligatory, can be substituted by a cheaper item (e.g. a rock). But you’re not hardcore enough for those crampons anyway and they are probably one of the least used items in your house, so that’s a perfectly fine use for them, just admit it. I did.  (also notice the use of ice axe as decoration)

We’ll report back in two weeks at latest! There’s some areas opening in Montana this weekend and a storm is lining up to hit the eastern part of the state, so we might head there and have a look. Enjoy the snow everyone, now is the time to start your season if you haven’t already..