Skiing St. Mary's in June

St. Mary's is one of the most recognizable peaks on the Bitterroot skyline.  I've been staring up at it all winter, watching the snowfields grow and shrink.  Ryan and I finally skied out one glorious ridge of corn snow this weekend.

The very long and windy road to the trailhead at almost 7,000' was dry, as was the beginning of the hike.  It was one of those spectacular days when the sky is clear enough to see the Bitterroot Mountains stretching out to the horizon.  Just a bit of brown haze in the distance, probably due to smoke from prescribed burns.

After the first mile we encountered patches of snow on the trail ranging from a couple feet wide to almost long enough to tempt us to put on skis and skins, but the top was mostly bare scree. 

The fire lookout near the summit is still closed up for the season, but provided an excellent wind break for our lunch stop.

We shared the summit with a multitude of ladybugs swarming in crevices in the rocks.  Do you think these same ladybugs will visit my garden later in the season or are these of a heartier alpine stock?

We traversed out the Southeast ridge to ski an unbroken field of snow that we scouted from the summit.  The Northish facing slopes still hold enough snow to make it worth the trouble of lugging skis and boots up the scree. The photo at the top of this post shows a couple of descent options.

We skied about 800 feet down to a beautiful alpine lake that is seen by many on the trail to St. Mary's, but I bet it is rarely visited due to bushwhacky forest and steep rock.  I was glad to be able to skin back up a snowfield rather than bushwhack with skis.

The snow was good corn, fast and sticky.  

The map below shows our approximate path.

More photos from this and a trip to baker lake the day before can be found on flickr.

Create a ski trip map: Bitterroot ski traverse

Ski season is so close I can taste it, but until a couple more inches of snow sticks to the rocks, I’ll get my fill through ski trip reports from last season.   

If you ever might go backcountry skiing in Montana, check out Greg Seitz’s video of a trip he and friends Ian and Matt took traversing the backbone of the Bitterroot Mountains.  It’s an incredible twenty five minutes of powdery slopes, interspersed with glimpses into the “glamorous” reality of a multi-day ski trip.



This video makes me aspire to follow their tracks someday. 



The map in the video does a great job of showing the extent of the trip, but it doesn’t include a topo for others to follow.  I made my own topo map of a potential ski trip through the Bitterroots using hillmap.com tools so that I could see if the trip would be fun for me this year.  And to daydream about skiing.

The Bitterroot traverse in Greg’s video started at Lost Horse Canyon and ended after skiing Lolo Peak to Highway 12.  I find that the best tools for plotting a route in a new area are in the Data & Analysis tab: the hillmap.com slope analysis tool allows you to highlight slopes greater than the angle of your choice (for example, highlight slopes greater than 30 degrees), while the CalTopoSlope layer highlights slopes of pre-designated angles.  



I chose to use the CalTopoSlope layer for this project because it highlights slopes on the entire map, while the hillmap.com slope layers analyze one region at a time.  

I plotted a route from Lost Horse Canyon to Lolo Peak that looked like the best skiing for my abilities, sticking to slopes of less than 34 degrees when possible.  Also, I tried to avoid skiing on slopes that could turn out to be cliffs or are most likely to be avalanche prone, or under slopes that looked like they had a high probability of avalanches.  Avalanches are most common on slopes between 30 and 45 degrees.  On the CalTopoSlope layer, that means avoiding slopes highlighted in red or purple.

Picking an avalanche safe route is more complicated than staying off slopes of a certain steepness, however, knowing the topography of your trip is one important step in choosing your route.  

My route did include what looks like avalanche prone slopes, which means that I would attempt this trip when the snow layers had consolidated, and risk of slides decreases - probably in the Spring.  Greg’s trip was in mid-May.

Another important factor that I did not take into account in my route is bushwhacking.  I am new to the Bitterroots, and so I don’t know how much bushwhacking is entailed in traversing the valleys in snow.  

I can check for tree coverage by using the satellite layer in hillmap.com.  I overlaid the satellite image on my route on the Data & Analysis page.  Below is a section of the route with the satellite overlay.



Looks like there will be sections of trees on this route.  

I’ll need to take a couple of scouting trips this winter to determine if treed sections of the map translate into epic bushwhacking or fun tree skiing, and adjust my route accordingly.

Here’s a link to my topo map for you to view, print and play with.  Make sure to zoom in to see route detail. You can change sections of the route on the Paths page at hillmap.com.

- Jen