Adventures Of Captain Leonard Part 1
Mountain folk seem to be drawn to peaks, summiting, the physical accomplishment, the pinnacle views, and some sort of mental triumph as if the mountain had been taunting them and they had overcome the odds. In terms of skiing, often the biggest lines fall from a summit and feel like a center piece of a zone. The tendency to associate skiing the biggest lines with victory and the decision to not attempt them with failure hits on a common heuristic flaw. Skiing in the wild means venturing into the relatively unknown and often times diverting from preconceived notions of how the trip would go. Its the nature of the untrammeled.
On a two week road trip through western Montana, we encountered a couple different circumstances that tested our decision making skills as well as our creativity and ability to adapt. On our first stop, in the Anaconda-Pintler Area, we found ourselves at the base a summit ridge decorated with a half dozen pristine chutes and eight inches of powder on top of a seemingly sturdy base. Adrian Dingle, a young gun with a camera pointed at him and every reason to want to shred these lines, considered the aspect, dug a pit, found the top three feet of the snowpack to be cohesive, then took into account the faceted layer against the rocks and the thin and most likely shallow entrances of the proposed chutes, and made the decision to turn around.
Adrian’s decision marked a good start to the trip. There are plenty of great, young skiers out there, but for this project we need folks that can temper their excitement and energy with calculated decisions. Adrian completely fits this bill, and we’ve been stoked to have him on board.
After ruling out big lines for the time being, we stumbled upon a 19th century silver mine, and decided to start putting our creativity to work, building features from remnants.
This old mine and the excavation of the mountain it operated on predate the concepts of big W Wilderness and government protection of natural resources. How do we put events from over a century ago into context of what is happening now with the expansion of shale oil and gas drilling efforts in the Bakken formation and Rocky Mountain Front parts of Montana?
On our last stop of the trip, the Cabinet Mountains, the day time temperatures rose to 60 F, and wet slides thundered down from every aspect as we toured up a natural halfpipe of old debri, bowling ball chunks of snow and chopped up vegetation. Stopping every ten minutes or so to watch a new slide cascade over cliffs and pour through chutes, we made our way safely to the high lake for look at the peak that we obviously would not being be skiing that week.
Our options were very limited, and our prospects seemed dull. However, while skiing down that old bulldozer-like slide path, feeling a bit defeated, we realized the potential of what was right under our noses. The banked edges, the slanted trees, the curls and floating mulch, the waving knolls, it was a flood that had frozen in a moment of chaos and had begun peacefully melting away. It was a natural terrain park.
Some helmet cam action of our filmer, Henry, trying to hang . . .
Tune in for the next post about the portion of this trip when the conditions DID line up in the Bitterroots.
The dudes over at Land of No Use made a movie and it is awesome. See the trailer here.
