Big Sky Really Lives Up to Its Name

We enjoyed a long weekend hitting the slopes in Big Sky, Montana.  A friend of Jo's from work, Beth and Scott (Beth is the work connection), had invited us to stay with them at their get-away in Big Sky.  So we scoured the calendar to find a long weekend where we could make it squeezed between Jo's early year travel and headed there last weekend.  We started out on Wednesday but hit a snag in getting out of Milwaukee to Minneapolis to Bozeman - our plane had maintenance issues coming in to Milwaukee and didn't make it until well after our connection left for Bozeman.  So after 3 hours at the airport we headed home to try it all again the following day.  We did get to enjoy an extra day at the gym and Jo decided to take the day of vacation anyway so we had a nice morning together before heading back to the airport for round two.  Fortunately, this time worked and we made into Big Sky around 11:30 at night.


We woke to beautiful, sunny skies although temperatures hovering around five to ten degrees.  Regardless, we bundled on the layers (and I'm talking layers - I started with four and landed up with five on later days) and headed out with Beth and Scott to ski a new mountain - at least for us.  We had a great day skiing and Jo and I were both amazed at how fast we remembered how to ski since it had been almost 10 years since we last hit the slope.  Big Sky is a really large ski area and there were lots of nice intermediate runs for us to wear our legs out on.  On the following days we explored the various runs on our own so Beth and Scott could tackle some of the more challenging Big Sky terrain - and there is some really challenging terrain there.  We found a few runs that Jo fell in love with since they mixed a few challenging parts with some wide open, flatter areas that she felt perfectly matched her skiing skill level.  By the end, we felt we had covered the mountain fairly well, but there wasn't anyway in three days that we could have hit just all the easy and intermediate runs - not to mention the hard and really hard areas that we avoid like the plague.

On the keeping warm front, I never managed to find a solution to my cold fingers.  Glove warmers kept my hands warm, but my fingers still froze.  So I spent most of the time on the lifts with my fingers pulled inside of my gloves while trying to manage not to have my gloves go flying off into some inhospitable terrain below the lift.  My toes were always cold in the morning, but fine in the afternoon - never figured out what happens after lunch that suddenly starts blood flowing to my feet.  I finally broke down and put in foot warmers which kept my lower digits nice and toasty.  Fortunately, Jo doesn't suffer from poor extremity circulation - yet.

Each evening after coming in from the mountain we hit the hot tub to restore some feeling to our limbs and then enjoyed a wonderful home cooked meal that Beth graciously prepared - we offered to help, really.  All to soon, it was time to pack up and head home but it felt good to spend the days flying down the slopes under crystal blue skies and breathing fresh mountain air.