Winter 2001-02

Best skiing of the year. A big Nordic party for hearty outdoorsy types, the Yellowstone Rendezvous, held each March in West Yellowstone, lures over six hundred competitors from all over the world. Racers often stay a night…

As if in a dream, I’m gliding down a snowfield, the silence caressed by the gentle sound of the powder snow moving beneath my feet. The slope is so steep that, in reality, I’m falling, but the pillow of snow on which I’m…

For a moment, a brief, dark, terrifying moment, I am trapped under ice. My breathing accelerates, my heart pounds, every muscle in my body goes rigid. The blood roars through my veins like a river undammed. I’m looking…

As you hike slowly up through the deep snow, the cold air stinging your face, you hear a CRRRAAACK so loud and deep it echoes down the canyon and shakes the new snow off the trees. You turn to move, but, before you can, you…

Backcountry gold diggin'. A ticket at the local ski hills will get you many things: cold smoke face shots, miles of vertical, a nice moving chair to sit on—but one thing you will not get is access to the backcountry. It’s…

Bozeman's original extreme skiers.Bozeman’s original ski pioneers invented extreme, just by the fact that they skied.Imagine strapping on six-foot-long pine or hickory boards—“shaped” skis of the 1930s and 1940s—using…

For the third year, assigning closure to several local extreme sports and introducing many others, The Best of Bozeman Slideshow will be visiting a “to be determined at a later date” theater in the Bozeman area come the…

A cold trickle of ice water runs down my cheek, freezing me back into reality. I look upward into blue overhanging gobs of frozen water. Stupid. The ice water runs smack between my eyes and fills my right ear. I take a few…

I don’t remember when we first met, but it was sometime in the early ‘90s, after Hans graduated from Yale and returned to Bozeman. We first crossed paths at a friend’s house and eventually wound up working the night shift…

Eastern Montana has its lengthy cold spells, Livingston its winds, Great Falls its temperate weather-but the Gallatin area has a little bit of everything. Part of a semiarid weather zone that experiences the greatest…

It’s happened a countless number of times. Two guys will head past the north boundary of Bridger Bowl to Hardscrabble, anxious to do some backcountry skiing. Wanting to ski light, they leave everything but a beacon and a…

The winer things in life. Think of Montana. Get the image in your mind: steepled mountains high enough to hold skiable snow even in summer, meandering rivers chock full of crafty trout, and hundred-mile vistas in every…

A great way to visit the Park.It's wintertime in Yellowstone, and few places in the world are as uniquely beautiful. Bison gather around steaming springs, their coats drenched in snow and frost; condensation billows from a…

Two-stroke, four-stroke, what's the difference? I found out on my two-day adventure on snowmobiles through Yellowstone National Park. It was a cold winter day when a couple of friends and my boyfriend and I began our trek.…

A day at Mountain Meadows Guest Ranch. Resting on my ski poles atop a small knoll, I survey the white-and-green landscape below, with its broad ravines and gentle, pine-flecked slopes. Between the trees, the layer of snow…

There’s something about a new tent that makes a guy giddy. Maybe it’s that first whiff of brand-new nylon, or the big-mountain fantasies that fill his head upon such a significant gear acquisition. Or maybe it’s simply the…

When it comes to local controversies, last year’s announcement of the Yellowstone Park snowmobile phase-out is hard to beat for right-wing rancor, left-wing quixotism, and just about every reaction and viewpoint in between…

Founded in 1990 to “provide the public with current snowpack and mountain weather information and avalanche education,” the GNFAC is a tremendous resource for any backcountry visitor. Based in Bozeman, Montana, the GNFAC…

Few things in Montana have the power to get an adventure lover’s blood pumping and adrenaline racing as much as a field of fresh powder or an undiscovered frozen waterfall that begs to be climbed. But few things also have…

"One must have a mind of winter," the poet Wallace Stevens says, to “see the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” If you hike along the frosty water outside Bozeman this winter, you won't need much…

Whether you prowl the winter landscape in snowshoes, skis, or your favorite pack boots, look skyward whenever your adventures keep you outside at nightfall. You’ll find a fellow sportsman in the heavens in the glittering…

Wintertime catharsis.Scroll through your mind on a frigid January afternoon for something fun to do and chances are it won’t involve stripping down to a bathing suit and completely submerging yourself in the neighborhood…

Large ranches aren’t quite as common around Bozeman as they used to be; beyond the trophy-cabin fragmenting that’s visible roadside, the proliferation of “Cows not Condos” bumper stickers around the Gallatin Valley is…

Written by local Bozeman author and noted climber Ron Brunckhorst, Big Sky Ice: Montana Ice Climbs reads like a transcribed version of around-the-campfire stories, tips, and legends from local ice climbers. Eschewing…

With the recent release of his first novel, Last Year's River, Missoula-based Allen Morris Jones emerges into the novel writing scene with absolute luminosity. His extraordinary eye for detail and intuitive sense of old-…

Originally an article in Outside magazine, Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild was received rather contemptuously by many Alaskans. It is the true story about a young man from a well-to-do family who starved to death in the shadow…