Legendary Turner: remote, open three days a week, and $37.
The neighborhood: when they tell you what CB channel to monitor, you know it's remote.
Turner's lone chair.
Purcell Mountains.
Turner's front side.
Afternoon run on Flatiron Pass.
Storm day in the Libby Creek cirque, central Cabinet Mountains.
Snowy drive home.
Jumbo, Hellgate, and Missoula from Woody Mountain.
Elsewhere ski conditions have degraded markedly. Two weeks of little snow, warm temperatures, and clear skies up high have pounded and baked everything into a mess. I went up Sweeney with Mo, Derek, and Cassidy on Sunday and we found poor conditions.
Scott and I got skunked on Mill Point: plenty of snow but not enough to cover the horrendous amount of downfall there. I was on Mill two years ago but either there was much more snow then or much less downfall. Either way, we got to 6,300 feet and could see the summit and nearly the entire way was littered with downed trees. In some 20 years of backcountry skiing it was the first time I can ever recall where I kept my skins on for the descent.
So I got home at an embarrasingly early hour. Cooper was asleep, so on Laura's prodding I went out for a second time, this time to a spot very close to town. I found great snow, no downfall, cold temperatures, and clear skies. There aren't nearly enough good clear cold days around here, and on days like that I hate to see that sun going down.
(View west from the summit of Camas Point, down the full length of North Lost Horse Canyon and into the abyss of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness complex, one of the largest roadless areas in the United States.)
On Friday morning I sent out a flurry of texts seeing who wanted to go skiing, but since I had not heard from anyone by the end of the work day, and since I was feeling tired, and since it had not snowed in a while, and since it was at that moment cloudy, I started thinking about a small day to someplace I already knew pretty well. But Mo texted as I was making dinner: well how about Camas?
(Upper Camas, after all was said and done.)
Camas is a decent goal for a day of skiing, with skinning from the car, good vertical, and pleasing scenery; even better, while I’ve heard a lot about the mountain and spent plenty of time looking at it, I’ve never been. I met Mo at 7, Ted drove her Tacoma in 4 lo to 4,700 feet, we met the other half of our group at the turnaround, and were skinning by 9.
(First few turns from the summit: not bad. The Bitterroot Valley near Hamilton is about 5,000 vertical feet below.)
Turns out I was mostly right about the snow. Though we had spectacular clear skies and it was not too cold, after the initial 10 turns from the summit we were met with wind buff and a variety of semi-supportable crusts. Probably the best snow of the day was found on the kiddie slopes above Kidney Lake.
(Traversing to find softer snow.)
On the drive home I talked to Mo. Today, in fact, she begins a multi-week process of taking written and oral exams which, once she passes, will allow her to be called a “PhD candidate”. (Her beau Ted, I believe, has a master’s.) Missoula probably has more opportunity for ecological-type PhDs than most towns its size, but that’s not saying a lot. She and Ted said they did not want to leave Montana, or at least the Northern Rockies. So I posed the question I sometimes think about: what if the University of Kansas City called and offered a sweet job and tons of money? (Actually, I have no idea if there is such a thing as the University of Kansas City; I just made that up because Kansas City sounds in every practical way the opposite of Montana.) No way, they both said practically in unison.
(After a short scramble from the summit proper, getting ready to descend.)
You certainly pay a premium to live in a place like Missoula. Most people understand that pretty well and made the choice accordingly. In the pursuit of passport stamps and powder turns Laura and I made decisions that will have a lifetime impact on our earning potential. Then again, we got the passport stamps and the powder turns, and skiing Camas is a decision I can make the night before while making dinner. Anyway, something to think about.
Here's a picture of a sleeping baby:
If what you really want is all-Cooper-all-the-time, see my other blog
I found these along the access road while driving home from Cataloochee one night about five years ago. I used them for backcountry skiing and biking. Biking is hard on gloves and these have been in a stage of falling apart for several years now. When the duct tape shreds began to catch on the brake lever, and when I could feel air oozing through the holes, and when someone casually asked why I was still wearing them, I figured it was time for an upgrade.
It will be interesting to see how long these $13 Kinco gloves last. They're made for construction but are the go-to glove for patrollers. They are lined but I can feel cool air coming through the knuckles where the fabric is; Kinco had all-leather gloves, but they were $3 more.
