Afternoon Delight

One thing about spring in MT is that when the sun shines, you’ve gotta make hay!  In my attempt to do so, I convinced Jen to be my partner in crime for an afternoon assault on Mt. Brown (8,565′) for a sweet alpine-skiing bowl that funnels 3500′ down into the Snyder Lakes basin.  With a solid alpine-style 1:30 p.m. start we motored up the trail with skis in the classic ‘bro-A-frame’ and made it a couple thousand feet off the valley floor before switching to skinning.  This proved nice til about a 1000′ shy of the lookout (~6500′) where the sun had taken its toll on new snow that had fallen the night before.  Skinning became a little gloppy, but we still made good time crossing just below the lookout to the south ridge that cleaves the southeast and northwest faces of Mt. Brown.  We hit the ridge where a fun little 500′ couloir funnels down to the massive south face and booted directly up the face to the summit.  The conditions were more or less descent with about half a foot of fresh snow that had fallen the night before on top of well groomed corn.  The sun was brilliant but not too intense and it was really inspiring to look back down the steep face and see my wife booting her way up towards the ridge.  All told we summited the 6000′ climb in three in a half hours and enjoyed a delicious peanutbutter and banana sandwich for dinner before strapping the skis on for what would become a “challenging ski”.  The sun was starting to dip below the ridge as we were making our first turns down the face and I became a bit concerned that our window of snow snow was closing and dawning a shade of crusty breakable snow on top of firm base.  Sure enough it did up top and Jen found herself buckled into my sketchy race skis and boots (trying to save time on the uphill which compounded into much more time loss in the descent) and fighting to keep control on a harrowing alpine descent with a husband who was not exercising good patience.  Though I managed to enjoy many thousand feet of good soft skiing and the aesthetics of the line off of Brown is more than enough to make up for whatever conditions may be lacking in, I did wish I had listened to Jen and brought her the better skis so her descent could have been enjoyable as well.  We shuffled down the Snyder Lakes summer trail back to the switchbacks of doom that take you back to Lake McDonald lodge and made it back to the car to enjoy a bag of deliciously salty chips and a couple IPA’s while the sun set.   Awesome adventure, great ski, and hopefully Jen’ll let me drag her out on another alpine ski soon.  The coverage is still thick in Glacier so get up and get after it while ya can!!!