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The Pinner - "somewhere in Hyalite". You shouldn't have shown your exiting line if you didn't want to give the location of that one away ; )

Nick, i think i may have seen your board walking through a parking lot on my way out of Hyalite on Sunday- good lookin if so!

That was my first tour up there - some pretty awesome terrain + snow! I'm rather jealous you guys have that a half hour from town...

Stuck to some mellower stuff all day as I was rolling solo (= pussy, for me!), but definitely spent a while drooling over some upper lines.

Blame it on the GNFAC forecast for bringing us outta-towners to Hyalite!

They have been painting a very positive picture of that region for the past month + that's for sure.

Nice, finally some life on this thread! Welcome acopa! You wouldn't happen to know Kelby Fisher would you? He's an old friend of mine living in Helena now. I was riding a green Helix and would have been at the parking lot next to the reservoir.
Samh, I don't necessarily mind giving my location away to those who are willing to piece things together (as you apparently did ). I just don't want to be super explicit about it w/ names of specific peaks, subdrainages, GPS coordinates, whatever. IMO, saying Hyalite Creek alone gives you a small lifetime's worth of exploring to do. Get a map, look at some photos, and go for it!
On a related tangent, one of the coolest things about the proliferation of people's blogs, photos, videos, etc... is that you get a general idea of a spot that encourages to do more of your own research via word of mouth, maps, google earth, old mag articles/books, etc... I guess that makes me somewhat un-Montanan.
I can corroborate everything the avy guys have been saying about Hyalite. I always dig at least one big representative pit on every tour, more if we're riding a variety of aspects. Since mid January, I have gotten nothing but truly inspiring results. In the Ribbon, things were so consolidated below 35 cm or so that it was difficult to dig through.
Hope you made it out yesterday. Surprise powder day! Hooray!

Ha, definitely saw the green helix near the dam!
Do not know a Kelby, although i prob wish i did... I don't know a single fellow splitter in the area- just a few ski friends.



I agree! As i said, i don't know many locals that are out touring... the ideas for many of my tours this past year have been directly gathered from your and samh's posts. So keep it up guys haha!

Things got a bit raw in Hyalite over the weekend, but were manageable with good terrain selection. Activity was limited to sluffs and a couple of soft slab releases that didn't propagate far or step down. Lots of 1-2' deep windslabs triggered on Blackmore yesterday but didn't run very far. Overall the new snow (and windslabs) seem to be bonding pretty well.



Great riding conditions!

Blackmore windslab:

That pinner was super sick, ^^^^^ cool pics as well. So I promise I will not be heading to MT anytime soon, but quick question I pretty much grew up in bozeman but that was when I was younger so I don't know the mountains out there too well. I'm wondering is Hylite canyon where the fairy lakes reside? Thanks in advance.

Thanks UTAH! That pinner is one of the nicest couloirs I've been in for quite some time. The only Fairy Lake(s) I know of is singular, and it's in the northern Bridgers, which are north of Bozeman. Hyalite is in the northern Gallatin range just south of Bozeman. Both are super popular and about equal distance from town, and both areas offer sick riding terrain, though the Bridgers have a much weaker snowpack this year. You ever make it back up here?

I beleive it was just past the Bridger resort up a dirt road. It was August, I just remember the zone looked to have a lot of different features, aspects, and angles looked like a cool place. All my family is in Bozeman so I would love to get up there soon and shred. What's the Mtn range outside Missoula heading towards Idaho? That place looked amazing! Take care.

That would be Fairy Lake! Rad terrain up there.
Sick mtns between Missoula & ID... perhaps you are thinking of the Lost River Range, or maybe just the Bitterroots? Maybe someone else can answer.

I was riding in the vicinity of the Bacon Rind area this weekend. Totally different snowpack than around Bozeman. The conditions and aspects we encountered were too variable to waste time digging pits but...

- Lots of collapsing along and near ridge tops.
- South and westerly facing aspects had crusts of exremely variable thickness and density depending on how much sun they were exposed to.
- North facing aspects consisted completely of facets up to knee deep (our skin track was our observation "pit")

We had fun riding sub 30 deg slopes but fat gear would be a big plus for any skiers (lots of faceplants by the tele skiers in the group). I'd be fearful of anything steeper, especially if they got loaded from this last storm. In fact, I'm staying out of the BC for a while now.

Splitlips, thanks for posting and joining the 3 or 4 person party! Do you live around here? Sounds scary. Glad you found some stuff to ride. I've found a couple of fun things down in Bacon Rind but it seems to mostly be really short slopes or long (2k') gullies that I wouldn't get anywhere near during touchy avy conditions.

Yeah, pretty short runs in this area (probably 500 to 800 max vert) but the advantage is you don't have to commit to one slope or aspect if the one you first had in mind turns out to suck. It may be a longer drive than Hyalite (I live in Bzn) but you also don't have to skin as far. Sorry, I'll post the photo but have otherwise been sworn to secrecy about the exact location You might be able to figure it out though.