Yesterday, thurs. 2/28, was the best powder day of my life. This was at Lost Trail Powder Mountain, MT, at the top of Lost Trail pass. The pass lies at the end of the Bitteroot Valley which extends like a long finger into the mountains, almost 100 miles from Missoula. Montana has many rugged ranges running crazily in all directions. Straight line travel in winter is impossible. My drive from Bozeman to Lost Trail was 3 times longer than a straight shot. Fortunately I have a big old paper atlas that shows the roads and passes that are closed in winter, and enough sense not to trust a GPS without checking the atlas. This topography that so vexed Lewis and Clark keeps Lost Trail a lightly patronized locals secret.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Trail_PassThe area is open only Thurs. - Sun., so if there is any snow on M, T, W, and there was this past week, it stays and waits for folks like me on Thurs. The place to be is the Saddle Mountain chair reached by a very long mostly flat run from the top of a short chair that starts at the base lodge. On that trek I passed 2 chair lifts that were not running, stopped, noticed that I had seen nobody for a while and could hear no voices or sounds. It was disconcerting. There were old tracks so I cautiously pressed on, eventually finding the Saddle Mountain chair. It is very long and very slow and on both sides there are stands of open trees with fewer tracks than I could count on 2 hands with the perfect pitch for tree skiing. Short of the loading and unloading zones, I never skied groomed snow, just run after run, turn after turn, top to bottom perfect powder.
I first learned of Lost Trail from a VT friend who lived in MT for a few years and skied there. He was always posting trip reports of skiing powder with almost no competition. I once accused him of having a magic door that he could step through any time he wanted to ski powder. Yesterday and today I stepped through that door.
