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Last weekend I headed out the the Sweet Corn Festival somewhere near the end of the world in Cooke City, Montana. Guy Zoellner and I rolled out early Saturday morning, and arrived in Cooke City to find about 6 inches of fresh had fallen in town that morning. As everyone tried to get the logistics organized of getting skiers up to Daisy Pass, the clouds parted and it looked as if the skies were going to turn bluebird on us.

Cooke City, Montana, Saturday Morning, April 17, 2004

The town had much less snow than I have seen in previous years, so we had to hitch a ride in a truck up the road to where the snowmobiles could start running. After that is was about a 5 or 6 mile tow on our snowboards behind a snowmobile. We arrived at Daisy Pass and the snow was decent. About 5 inches of fresh layered on top of solid ice so it made for some variable conditions in windy areas.

Guy Zoellner, looking south toward Miller Peak.

As we started hiking, the weather started blowing in and we were in for a day of riding in pretty flat light and some windy conditions. We headed out to explore some new terrain further north than I have ever been in that area. We got some pretty good runs in and when the clouds lifted we got the occasional glimpse of some really impressive terrain. We paid the price with a long boot out though. We rode most of the way down off the pass and due to lack of snow had to walk the last stretch into town.

The Beartooth Highway

Sunday morning we got an early jump on heading back to Bozeman. We cruised through the east side of Yellowstone park and saw massive amounts of wildlife, as always. A guestimate of elk herds that were probably 300-400 head strong. We got delayed for about a half hour by a 200 head herd of buffalo in the middle of the road.

Buffalo in Yellowstone National Park

We stopped for a good hour long soak in the "Boiling River" to top it off, and called the weekend good.

Video: Buffalo Traffic Jam. 3MB

Old but interesting news. Whitefish, Montana kid cleans up at the Tampa Am skate competiton.

I finally got around to scanning some pictures that I have been putting off for a while. Go to photos and check out all the pictures of the Peru trip 2003, and a couple more Ecuador travel and mountain photos.

Cool trick: Go to Google.com, type Miserable Failure and hit "I'm feeling Lucky" and it will pull up the site most relevant to that phrase.

Click here to see it all.

Just got back from a long weekend trip into Bear Basin in the Spanish Peaks. That place has some of the best terrain I've seen in recent years but is a trek to get into. I went in with two friends on tele skis, and I bit the bullet and huffed in on snowshoes.

We headed in Friday at 7:00 PM after work to get a little bit of a jump on the hike in. After about 3 hours in we decided to set up camp. we got up in the morning to Bluebirds skies and headed back into Bear basin. We arrived at a prime base camp location at about 10:30 in the morning. It ended up being about 75 degrees and sunny so we set up camp and sat in the sun for a while until everyone was good and fried. Almost the entire basin was wet sliding a little but there were a couple of good ridges that were well sheltered from the sun so we went for it. After a steep climb up we arrived at the ridge with amazing views in all directions. We all dropped in and rode a bowl with good but somewhat "variable" conditions. Rode back to camp and climbed into the tent as the sun disappeared behind the mountains. All in all it was a super good day. Sunday came and the clouds were rolling in. We climbed above camp and made a short run. Packed up and headed out. Bear Basin is pretty much a nightmare to get out of on a snowboard. It holds enough fall line to make you not want to put your snowshoes on but there are enough flats and uphills to make getting out a pain in the ass especially with a huge pack on your back. We made the decision to climb out of Bear Basin over into Beehive Basin. That ended up being a difficult route out due to the fact that it was another 1400 foot climb with added weight and the super slushy snow conditions. Every other step on the snowshoes resulted in sliding back five feet or sinking up to your chest. We arrived at the Beehive trailhead thoroughly worked and reluctantly started walking out to the highway. Brett seriously considered taking the keys off the back tire of a Subaru parked at the trailhead to run the shuttle, but we convinced him it wasn't such a good idea. A nice Minnesotan out for a joyride and a couple of beers just happened to roll by and offer us a ride all the way back the car down about a half hour drive down the Big Sky Road. That was my weekend.