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A ski vacation at Big Mountain in Whitefish, Montana – February 2012
On Friday Feb 3, 2012 we flew to Denver where we connected with Louise & Bob Messner for a flight to Kalispell Montana. There we picked up a Jeep Rangler and drove to our accommodations at the Crestwood Resort in Whitefish.
On Saturday morning we began what would become a daily routine of driving a few miles to Big Mountain Ski Resort for a day of FREE skiing (free over 70 years). Chair 6 took us to the bottom of chair 1.
Big Mountain has very steep but spacious trails on the south side facing Whitefish Lake. The Tony Matt trail extends from the summit to the base of chair 1. This picture of Bebe gives some feel for the pitch.
On day one the valley lay under a vast cloud with the mountain tops looking like islands in a vast ocean. We quickly discovered the north side trails which were varied and had snow which hadn’t been sun melted and refrozen and had some dry stashes in between the trails.
South and west facing terrain like “Glory Hole” must have been great after a fresh snowfall but was not tempting in its refrozen state.
Our return to our Crestwood digs included a hot tub in our backyard.
On the following days the cloud had disappeared and Whitefish Lake came into view. To the west we explored the long winding Hellfire trail to Hellroaring chair.
Southeast from the summit was Inspiration trail and as we discovered later in the week our favorite “Moe-Mentum” named after local Tommy Moe.
