Tenney | January 27, 2011
Got a late start today and decided on Tenney Mountain, a recently closed resort located off the Plymouth, NH exit. Andy heard this place had some good terrain and it’s moderately close to home compared to our regular adventures. The place was a ghost town but there was a lot of cat tracks running up and down the trails, almost like someone’s been doing snowcat laps. There is some awesome stuff over to the skier’s left but the majority of the main trails still had a ways to go until it could be considered full coverage. We had a great time anyways and prospected some stuff for future trips. Finally replaced the broken D5000 with a Nikon D3100, here are some photos…back to the grind tomorrow.
Andy just bought a splitboard — much more accessibility.
The up.
Next time we know where to go.
Shot from my backyard, these most recent storms have been all coastal, hopefully things turn around.
Bolton Valley | January 23, 2011
Got back from Bozeman last night around 7pm, pretty wild ride into Denver and even scarier into Boston but I’m still here. We ventured up to Bolton at 4:30am yesterday morning, apparently they had been getting cranked the last few weeks while I was in Montana, one storm after another. The temp was forecasted to be a high of -4, we’re used to it being cold up at Bolton — last year we skied in -37 degree wind chill, each one of us got a little tinge of frostbite and mine is still there. 
Yesterday was a perfect mix of clouds and sun, just enough to make some beautiful photos. We had planned to scope out the centerline chute down the middle mountain at Bolton – which isn’t lift served. Once we started skinning we realized there was definitely enough snow for this line to go. As we started to ascend the road from the Vista lift to the Wilderness lift we realized it was going to be pretty difficult to find this line, it was very clear from the bottom of the mountain but things are different from elevation. We reached the point where we thought it would be and headed into the wilderness in search of the chute. In the process I got myself stuck up to my neck in a treewell which was terrifying to say the least, and Lucas did as well. The problem up high in VT right now is that there is a ton of thick brush and trees covering the ground, when the snow falls on that it doesn’t exactly fall on the ground, it usually falls on top of the brush and continues to accumulate on top. When you step on some of these areas the brush holds up, but some areas fall clean through to the ground and some holes an be endless deep. It took me 20 minutes to get out of this hole and by the time I got out and started skinning back to where Andy and Lucas had been before, Andy had found the famed Centerline Chute. Well, it was completely scraped off, we were not surprised, pissed or agitated about this because the guy who found it before us was on foot, in 4′ deep snow. We somehow got down it, into the lower angle terrain that was actually pretty awesome. Just another reason why we love Bolton Valley so much. We’ll be back to the mountains this week/weekend — enjoy!
Mantana | Downdays
We have had some really warm weather these last few days in Southern Montana. Needless to say there hasn’t been much skiing going on, so what are some things to do during these off days:
-Drink beer, the same sport as the East coast with a much more expensive taste.
-Browse ski shops, some seriously awesome gear in a ski town such as Bozeman.
-Boiling river, haven’t been down yet but hopefully this week.
-Fly fishing, I’m more of a saltwater spinning reel fisherman but Casey is really into fly fishing.
Temperatures finally dropped below freezing about an hour ago for the first time in a few days. Bridger is reporting an inch but word is there was at least 4-5″ at last chair. The drunk and delerious weather forecasters are continuing to predict 1-3″ overnight for the next few nights — the same forecast as the last 5 nights with no avail. 
We are located in South Western Montana, at the edge of the purple cloud that is directly off of the pointed angle in North-Western Wyoming.
Casey and Andrew went out for a little fly fishing today and Casey nabbed a 9″ trout, unfortunately the GoPro ran out of batteries for the fish. Back to Bridger tomorrow hopefully, fingers crossed.
Misc. – Coming home on Saturday, it looks like the East Coast mountains are getting bombed again tomorrow. Unfortunately the Nikon camera that I sent in for maintenance was sent back in peices, they couldn’t fix the camera and we’re sh*t out of luck. I’m looking into the D3100 with it’s full HD and continuous auto focus. Stay tuned!
Grand Targhee | January 15, 2011
Bozeman has been beautiful, I’ve had some amazing powder days during my 18 day trip and it just gets better each day. Four of us decided to head to Alta, Wyoming and scope out the famed Grand Targhee Resort — myself, my brother, Andrew Whitney and Nick Marchi. There was a big warm up that effected resorts up North like Revelstoke, BC as well as Montana resorts like Bridger, Big Sky and Moonlight…a ton of snow melted down low and conditions up high were mushy and creamy. This surely isn’t a complaint, just an observation — and in light of this beautiful vacation we decided to search for some deeper snow. Whitefish is a resort up in Northern Montana, they had quite a bit of snow in the last few days and expecting much more but Targhee looked like it was in the sweet spot. 
Grand Targhee was a shorter drive and Casey had been there before so it was a little more familiar. Certainly the thought of skiing the Tetons was pretty attractive as well, we promptly got on the road to the ‘Ghee. We knew significant snow was coming but wasn’t quite sure how bad the roads would be. I will say I have never experienced a drive such as the one we took yesterday afternoon. Most of the 4 hour drive was in daylight but it was still tremendously rough cruise through some eye opening terrain. We made it safe and checked into the resort, Targhee has 250″ of snow this season, and up until the Mammoth storms it had the most snow in the country thus far. 
We had a few drinks at the local pub and hit the sack, expecting there would be some snowfall overnight and things would be epic in the morning. Well it snowed 2″ overnight, which was sick but apparently Targhee has a reputation for being foggy, thus dubbed “Grand Foghee” (as a local told me on the lift). It took a little trail map studying to find the goods but we found some. Enjoy the edit, back to Bridger on Monday — BRING THE POW!
alpine-live.com 