Sledboarding in the Bridger Range / Day 5 > Road Trip

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This day started out good as I was headed up north of Bridger Bowl with the snowmobile. The plan was to ride in the 5 or 6 miles to the mountains and check out the snow conditions and get in a snowboard run if avalanche conditions allow.

I pulled into the trailhead that I had used 2 years ago. It had 20 inches of new snow from the past 2 days. Well as I pulled into the lot I swung the truck to the right and hit a ridge of hard pack snow from a previous plowing that was covered with new snow. The front wheels popped over and started spinning so I hit the brakes. The solution was to drop the trailer and get the truck repositioned, hook the trailer back up and get it turned around and out of there. Got back on the county road and crossed over to another trailhead.

One always has to be ready to adjust to situations in the mountains, this made me very aware of the need to check my surroundings right from the get go. As I prepared the sled and my gear, a couple drove into the trailhead. It turned out that they were going up to check the snotel site at Brackets Creek. It was good to talk to these local people who knew the area. We discussed the avalanche conditions. They identified some of the areas I had explored on previous trips to that area, it is good to take advantage of any information I can garner from local people at the trailhead. Backcountry snowmobilers are very approachable and offer good info on snow conditions and area information.

The Polaris Dragon is loaded and ready to access the Bridger Mountains. I brought my Burton Fish for this trip, the relevant thing with the Fish is that I purchased it from World Boards, located in Bozeman, Montana.

We visited World Boards on Monday evening after a day at Bridger Bowl, they are right on Main Street in Bozeman. Great people to talk snowboarding with.

Some great up close views of the Bridger Range.

I was snowshoeing up a ridge with my snowboard and looked back down. With the avalanche rating at considerable, I checked out a couple of areas and decided on a ridge that rose out of this creek area. I decided that snowshoing up the ridge and snowboarding back down would be the best route. This was a ridge line that I had seen a few years back.

Looking across from the ridge, I could see the mountainside that I had snowboarded on 2 years ago.

This is a snowpit that I dug into the hillside that I was climbing to check for avalanche conditions. Note the 2 pronounced layers, also I probed the snowpack to check for hardness.

Snow saw.

This is the ridge I climbed up.

Snowshoes back on the pack and ready to drop in.

Played it safe and snowboarded along the route I climbed up along the ridge.

A view from the trail on the way back to the truck. It would be great to spend more time in the area. Every trip I learn a bit more about the Bridger Range.

Gota' have gear...the trailer packed.

The road down from Bridger, it was snowing as we left. I read that they received over a foot of new snow the day after we left. The Spring storms in Bozeman are the best.