I was wondering if we'd made a big mistake deciding to go snowboarding over the boys' school spring break. It tends to be all or nothing this time of year, and when we drove up to the dropoff point the first day the ground was bare and the temp was in the high 30's. Thankfully, the snow on the mountain was pretty decent. Hunter, of course, was off right away while Luke and Will had to get their snowboarding legs under them. We spent most of the first day on the easy blue and green runs off of the main chairlift. Luke and I finally went up to Lazy M, a long dramatic blue run with an incredible view of the plain that runs all the way to Billings. He did have this slight mishap, but we got down OK, including taking a black run called the Face of M. After that adventure and a few more runs I had a well deserved Bent Nail Pale Ale brewed right in Red Lodge. It was quite busy for a weekday so we knew Saturday would be wild.
Friday night we ate at the Bear Creek Steakhouse which is in...Bear Creek, Montana, and the home of pig racing (summer only) and some really terrific food. On Saturday, there were ski races going on and Luke and Will were happy to stay together for awhile, so I went exploring and tried to find Hunter on the backside which is called Cole Creek. Mostly black runs, quite steep and treed. After a couple of hairy runs on my part I snuck off to the Palisades and took a few runs on the blues over there.
When I got back to the front side Will decided it was his turn to try Lazy M.
He really did quite well considering he was still having trouble going toe side. I think he was afraid he would fall on his face, whereas he didn't mind falling on his butt.
Saturday night we were all pretty tired so went back to our lovely log house rental on the golf course and had pizza and played "Keesdrow" which is a "Scrabble-like" word game we recently got. We woke up Sunday morning to a couple of inches of fresh snow so made sure we were at the mountain for first chair. Luke and Will had never boarded in powder so were skeptical, but Hunter and I had to agree it was probably the best conditions we'd ever seen. He went up to Cole Creek again right away while I introduced the other two to the wonderful silence of powder skiing. There was about 6 inches of fresh snow on the front side and more like 8 on the back side. Absolutely terrific conditions and there were very few skiers. Hunter made a dozen runs on Cole Creek and didn't see anybody else, and only had his own tracks to deal with. By midday we had gotten together with our good friends the Goodmans from Bismarck.
This got Luke and Will a partner and I took off in search of Hunter. Needless to say, I can't do the things that Hunter can do on a snowboard and every time I tried to push it I crashed. Eventually I worked my way back and did a few more runs with the younger boys. The final highlight was watching Hunter come down "Lodgepole" a double black diamond that drops down right to the backside of the main lodge. I'd have wet my pants (and then crashed). After three hard days of boarding we were in need of some relaxation. We invited the Goodmans over , and they brought pizza and we drank a few good beers and pops and played a large game of "Apples to Apples."
Monday was reserved for the long ride home. It was 50 something in Billings, where we did a little shopping, and then I drove home while Hunter did his homework and Tami and Luke and Will watched "Slumdog Millionaire" and some other movie. I checked the weather on Tuesday and it was almost 60 degrees in Red Lodge, so barring a big Spring storm there won't be much snow left. Luke and Will are officially converts so we may get to do this next year, but I think we'll try to go earlier in the year-depends on the snow, of course!
