Jay Richards

Yesterday has to rank as one of the best days of lift service skiing in a long time. In the morning Jonell and I skied with Jake, Jon and Jack while Jens was at ski school. It froze down hard the night before so conditions were a bit fast, a bit too fast for Jonell, but once we hit the groomed, it as all good. The boys were tearing it up and Jack was a riot. He would go off the groomed and ski through the trees. At one point he piled it up pretty good and got tangled up in a small tree. Anyways, super fun to ski all together and look forward to the day when Jens can join us. In the afternoon, Jake and I put the jibskates on and Jon came along as well while Jonell and Jack stayed back at the cabin to pack. We were a bit disappointed with the "terrain park" at Rendezvous so we went over to one of the terrain parks on the Big Sky side of things. On the way over there, I was cranking the turns tele style and was really pleased how well a 161cm nordic ski was carving it up. Pretty stable and I only felt totally out of control a couple of times. HA! Anyways, we hit the park and Jake cut it loose. It was a nice run with about 10 good jumps ranked blue and green with some rails, table tops etc. We rode back up for one last run. I told them to let me go down first so I could take some pics but they were too excited and went off hitting all the jumps. I stopped and watched them and the guys up in the chair lift were going nuts. "Skinny skis" "Nords"..they were yelling out and everyone was looking back down on Jake while he was pulling out his tricks from the Nord bag. It was pretty sweet. At the end of our ski it started dumping big time. Pretty crazy the last day and I think they ended up with 6. I am glad I rode early in the morning! Anyways, we left around 5pm and drove to Miles City. Drove home today and had a stop at the painted canyon visitor centor for a hike in the badlands and some buffalo watching. The kids were pretty decent in the car. Just a meltdown at Dickinson but once we got on the road, Jens fell asleep and everyone else got kinda numb.
All in all a great trip and a nice break. I talked to some guys at one of the bike shops out there and they said it will probably be two months before they can hit the mtb trails at Big Sky. Thats the bummer thing about a bumper snow year in the mountains, you can't ride until June. When we lived out in Essex, it drove me nuts not being able to ride until the summer was really going and sometimes later (July) in the high country. A few things still the same out west. Couples our age don't have kids. Everyone drives around with their dogs and has to do everything with thier dog. Montanans drive fast and the road riding is gritty, dirty and too many cars. But the mountains are beautiful and skiing in April is the best!