Flew in to Bozeman Friday afternoon to temperatures that Dewce could only describe as “bitch tit cold.”  Crass you say?  True I say.  There is seriously no funnier way to describe arriving home to -15 degree weather which according to facebook (so credible!) made Montana the coldest place on the planet that day, just nudging out the South Pole.  So what did we do to celebrate these frigid temps?  Went skiing of course!  After a little cat nap we assembled our ski gear on Friday evening and forged out for Bozeman Creek to do a little skinning.  That’s right.  Skinning.  Not so much skiing.  Just moving across the landscape.  This was in an effort to exercise those muscles we’ll be using for the Grand Traverse.  We headed out around 8pm, making the ETD temp somewhere near  -20 degrees.  And exercise the skinning muscles we did, because it was so cold that the snow was highly sticky, mandating that we skin not only uphill but downhill as well.  My hair (which I should mention was completely dry) froze into a formation resembling a fur-collared coat.  (See photo below)  Joe, unpictured, also had some freezing of his beard, making him look a lot like Old Man Winter.  The travails of the cold mountain skiiers!

The next morning we headed up to Big Sky to put to use our Bronze Season Passes.  I did my hair real nice in an attempt to for once have a pass photo that does right by me.  But no.  In a dimly lit room a photograph was taken from about 8″ away, leaving me to feel like the ugly duckling on the hill for yet another season.  On the bright side, after having seeing Joe’s photo, I can handily say that my picture might not be the worst the mountain has seen….!  We skiied for two days, alternating runs with hot-cocoa and cold-beer breaks.

And the highlight of the weekend– my new skis!  The MegaHwatts!  God Love Them.  I have been excited (and downright scared) to ski these fatties for some time now.  I prepared mentally to be disappointed in their performance on groomers or to have inadequate thigh muscle prowess to manhandle them and manage their speed in soft snow.  What I found was that I love them.  I love them so much it hurts.  My heart is literally breaking knowing that I will not ski them again for 9 days (but who’s counting?).  Okay, I exaggerate.  But the take home message here is that when it comes to the BD Megawatts, Mama Like!

Oh yeah, and the StormQueen and I had a pretty nice jaunt in the woods as well.