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Folks for those of you adventurers I'm going to give you a photo chronicle of one of the hippest, coolest places to car accessibly ski anywhere on the planet. That place is the Beartooth Pass in Red Lodge, Montana. It opens on Memorial Day but check with MDOT at (800) 226-7623 because two feet of powder have been known to grace this area even in June. About a 10 minute drive south of town the road bends upward finally cresting at just less than 11,000 feet of altitude at the West summit. It is real big vertical considering that you get to climb most of it in a car and access dozens of different big mountain lines (check out the photos). There are even places like the saddle approach down in to Gardiner head wall that are easily skiable by a skier of intermediate ability but make no mistake, most of this is big mountain expert terrain. If you can't ski Corbett's at Jackson, the Couloir at Big Sky, or Great Scott at Snowbird then you probably should not be skiing most of this terrain.The night before I big adventure friends from Bozeman stayed with us at The Spires at Red Lodge. By the time they left following our day of skiing I think they all wished that they owned some Red Lodge, Montana real estate.The sky was crystal blue as we headed out for Glacier Lake Road where we would drop off our first vehicle at the base of the famous Reefer Ridge. You need two rigs for this trip if you want to have a chance to ski the good stuff. Just drop the car at the monster-sized boulder at the 4 to 5 mile point up Glacier Lake Road. It's not a bad idea to gain some bearing on your surroundings and the various reference points. They will come in handy later on as you ski off the ridge.Our pick-up taken care of we headed off in to the heavens and the jaw dropping scenery that is the Pass. Just the car ride alone makes this whole trip worth it and the skiing is a bonus.Between the east and west summits we check out our first conquest of the day which is called the Gardiner headwall. It is looking like good corn snow and we are psyched with anticipation of a great run. A few little slides on either flank tell us that there is a need to pay attention - ACHTUNG BABY!It is so good that we are all hooting it up half way down like a bunch of owls. After a brief hike we are back at the road and decide to have lunch on the exposed rocks. This had nothing to do with the scantily clad young women who were soaking it up there, honest. It's about a mile drive over to the ridge and then we are looking down at all kinds of sweet big mountain drops that would make the Warren Miller boys salivate.After a few misfires we found a great line that took us almost to our drop point. I'll let the photo of this line speak the thousand words, but in a word it was AWESOME. Back into the rig we head up to pick-up the rig on the summit so we can set ourselves up to ski yet another big line called the Rock Creek headwall. We then drove back up the Pass to get the other car and on the way back down dropped in to ski the Rock Creek headwall which is another 2,000 vertical feet of expert fun. Cold beers were awaiting in the car and on the way back in to town we all marveled at our good fortune getting to live in such a special place that has virtually no competition for the wide open spaces.
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If you go ski the Beartooth Pass Pass stop by Red Lodge, Montana and check out the Spires at Red Lodge and have dinner at the Bridge Creek. You can't beat the small town hospitality in Red Lodge, so make a weekend out of it.
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