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Montana 2016

We met up with Chris and Lizbeth aka Moon Vapour and Silver Fox in Montana for a fun ski trip. Chris and Lisbeth are from Sandpoint Idaho. I met them at the Icefall Ski Lodge in BC. They are super fun and great to travel and ski with.   The first week we stayed with Mike and Patty Ferrington at their beautiful slope side home. From their deck you can ski down to the lift, and at the end of the day, after stopping at the Hell Roaring Bar, ski back to the condo.  Thanks Mike and Patty for your hospitality.  The day Sarah got in it dumped over a foot of new pow and we had a great pow day.  It was great having the locals show us all the secret pow shots and even great side country routes.

It started warming up so we headed out to unknown higher altitude spots in central Montana.  Philipsberg is a virtually abandoned mining town population 850.  A few of businesses on the downtown are starting to renovate.  Discovery Ski area is 20 minutes away and has awesome steep terrain and $42 lift tickets!!  Can’t beat that.  We asked around at the rental shop and got some beta about some lines a few miles away.  We discovered a nice little zone we called “Noodle Bowl” and got nice protected low angel pow in a gladed area.  We stayed at the Santuary Bed and Breakfast  http://www.thesanctuarymontana.com/  which was an old abandoned Presbyterian Church with a full kitchen, pool table, sauna, hot tub which we had all to ourselves for $129.  The chapel had great acoustics for playing music. Chris and Lizbeth are in a bluegrass band and sing and play, so we jammed and sang every night which was super fun.

We headed back to Glacier park and stayed at Izaak Walton Inn in a Caboose.  The snow turned heavy and avalanchy so we decided to head back home to Hawaii.

Next trip, Sierras and Valdez Alaska.