I left Bozeman at 5am for an early start, and was skinning up the road by 6:45, under partial cloud cover (they seem to just hang over this range often) and light snow. Not a bad place to be, I dare say.
Despite our relative lack of snow, the first morning rays striking the mountains were still stunning.
Some nice prairie sunshine filtering through the trees, as I plod my way up the road.
Glancing back down the canyon through light snow and low clouds.
This place has an incredible variety of terrain; from tree skiing, to open faces, to the hundreds of couloirs that line each canyon.
Nice, easy access up some mellow ridgelines is unfortunately somewhat uncommon, but I still find some to poke around on.
With how great the snow was, it seemed almost criminal to spend all day climbing a mountain, so instead I proved to myself that I can ski a ton of powder in the sunshine.
The clouds slowly dissipated through the early morning, and I got some views! Here is Crazy Peak, with its perpetual nuclear wind up high.
After a couple misty laps through glades above Druckenmiller Lake, the clouds around Iddings Peak started to lift, and I dropped down to Pear Lake.
Smeller Lake, conspicuously un-smelly today. This place has coolers for days!
Looking up the East ridgeline of Iddings. I only went partway up this time, but this is a super fun climb in the summer.
The unnamed peak between Crazy and Iddings, with a few passing clouds in my beautiful sunshine.
Looking over toward the Absarokas from my little island sanctuary out in the middle of the prairie. I'd really like to do a single-day traverse of the range sometime, and I think this drainage could be a great route.
All that it takes to make me happy! Boot-top deep powder all the way down to the lake.
A bit out of focus, but you get the point...
I'm not much for doing laps on stuff, so I cruised down onto the lake ice of Pear Lake, and spent a while just checking out the scenery.
To avoid the terrain trap that runs between Pear and Granite Lakes, I climbed up another point to ski some more untouched powder through sparse trees. Tough life.
One last look back at the upper basin, as I start making my way back. Granite (right side) has some fantastic couloirs running down almost all aspects.
One more quick skin found me at the base of Crazy Peak's NE face, which has been extremely bare all season. It didn't look very worthwhile to boot up it, so I just skied more powder out the bottom instead.
Goodbye, Crazies!
