Louie enjoying the pow in one of the shoots on Scotch Bonnet. Lightest pow ever! This is where I started to worry PNW pow just wouldn’t feel the same after this trip….Photo: Jen Petrut
Cooke City has somewhat of a mythical reputation among skiers. A tiny town nestled in some of the most rugged country of Montana, with nothing but mountains, powder, and very few people for many miles in any direction. Can you even drive there in the winter? Don’t you need a snowmobile?
Legends like this are enticing and Louie had wanted to check out the little Montana town for years but never got around to it. The close proximity and endless mountains of British Columbia seem to have a stronger pull on both of us. However, this year, the Covid Canadian border restrictions redirected our attention stateside. The decision was made to venture to Cooke City, so we loaded up the sleds and the skis for some Christmas time adventure.
It turns out you can drive there, although the plowed road ends at the end of town and from there the mountains are only accessible via foot or two-stroke. Watch out for the bison on your way through Yellowstone National Park, and expect possible major delays due to wildlife traffic.
I can’t really take any credit for making the trip happen. Our friends Lee and Jenny really instigated the idea and organized the food and lodging. We ended up staying at a rustic collection of cabins called the Big Moose resort, which I’m sure is quite busy with Yellowstone tourists in the summer. In the winter it’s a different story. Requiring a four mile snowmobile ride to get to the front door, and correspondingly far from the relative bustle of Cooke City, we essentially had the place to ourselves.
Our biggest interaction outside of our group was with the resident husky puppy, appropriately named Little Moose. A perfect Covid-safe ski trip.
Cooke City is certainly known to skiers, but it’s an even bigger destination for snowmobilers. There’s tons of skiing that doesn’t require a sled, but we wanted to take full advantage of such a unique locale, and accordingly used our sleds for access. It really is incredible how many mountains you can explore in a week with a snowmobile and a pair of skis.
We spent seven days in the area and even that didn’t seem like enough. Excited to hopefully get a chance to come back and explore more of the area in the future!
First day we were greeted by sun and cold weather. We explored the area just outside of the wilderness boundary. This day we reserved to explore snow conditions, checking out stability and focusing on building our plan for the week. We stuck to low angle terrain and still found some awesome pow! Louie slashing a fun first turn of the trip.
Left: On the second day we decided to adventure to another wilderness boundary, heading over Lulu pass to mountain Abundance (seen in the middle of the photo in the distance). We originally were hoping to climb up Abundance, but after a snow pit and a few whumphs, we ended up skiing low angle boot deep pow in the trees.
Right: On the third day, the snow started falling. It was only forecasted to pile up a few inches but it seemed like the snow faucet just never turned off. The snow quality was amazing as well, so light you cant feel like as you make turns – only the snow that hits your face, best king of face shots. In this photo you sort of see Lee, engulfed in a pow cloud.
A few days later, once the skies cleared, I snapped a shot of the lines we skied on day three, pictured in the previous photo. We skied the four chutes, starting from the right of the photo. We heard the locals call these “Rasta Chutes” coming down from Scotch Bonnet mountain.
We needed at least one rest day, so we spent the morning waxing skis and enjoying the sun. Louie and I went on a small exploratory tour just below Henderson mountain. We spotted a snowmobile track going almost all the way to the summit. Whoa!
On day five, we decided to get a little “alpine-y”. It was fun to enjoy the new snow in the sun. We were still keeping it pretty mellow overall but snowmobiles around us were not holding back and making some good snowpack tests. In this photo Louis is descending down towards Crown Butte, seen in the background to the right of the sun. The next day a snowmobiler actually triggered a slide (no one was hurt) on Crown Butte, even after the mountain had been what felt like bombarded with sled traffic the day before.
The snow continued to stabilize as our trip progressed. Towards the end of the trip, we pushed our terrain comfort a bit, coming back to Scotch Bonnet, skiing the shoots seen in this photo. You can spot our tracks in the shoots on the left. Louie and I went back and skied the shoots to the right in later runs. It was phenomenal skiing!
A rare sight, Louie and myself in a photo together, on top of Mountain Abundance. Montana sure is a cold place – in this photo I am wearing three layers of puffy plus shell. Thanks Jen and Lee for such an amazing trip! Photo: Jen Petrut
WildSnow Girl, Julia Dubinina, is a weekend warrior chasing snow in winter and sun in summer. A lover of long tours and steep skin tracks, she explores the Pacific Northwest and beyond. When she is not out adventuring, she is working away at her corporate desk job for a software company to make her next adventure happen.
