Flat Stanley Goes to Bridger

Flat Stanley is this kid who was smushed by a bulletin board, and he wanted to go on a trip so his family folded him up and mailed him places.

Which sounds rather abusive. I received Flat Stanley in the mail from my 7-year-old nephew James, although I don't know how James got him. Found him on the street, squeaking for help? Anyway, James sent him to me to have some adventures with, and that's something we're never short of around here.

Housemate Ross and I decided to head up to Bridger Bowl today for the last official day of the ski season - and why not take ol' Flat Stanley with us? He seems like a good sport. Probably not dressed properly with the tie and all, but hey, no one up there really cares.

So away we go! Might as well pose at the entrance sign:



And, of course, if you're going to ski, you're going to need a lift ticket. We don't want any embarrassing incidents! Fortunately, I work at Bridger Bowl, and I'm entitled to a few freebie passes for my friends. Kitchen manager Tina was more than happy to help us out with a voucher...



...and then ticket-man Jeff got us all set up:



Not only did we get an all-day lift ticket, we got Stanley a Bridger Bowl tattoo for his leg. That should loosen him up a bit! The lift line ticket puncher couldn't help but admire it:



And then we were off. I'm not sure if Flat Stanley has ever ridden on a chairlift before, but Ross and I didn't hear any complaints from him:





We put Flat Stanley in Ross' backpack for safekeeping. After all, we were headed to the steep and dangerous "Fingers" area, and Flat Stanley doesn't need to be any flatter.



At Bridger Bowl, the chairlifts don't go all the way to the top of the mountain, so if you want some really nice, steep, untracked powder, you're going to have to carry your skis to the top. Ross was nice enough to carry ol' Flat Stanley, too:



And then it's go, Flat Stanley, go!






Flat Stanley made several runs on the mountain... and he even made a bunch of new friends!



Ah, yes, after a hard day on the slopes, there's nothing like a nice, frosty apres-ski beverage. Yum! It looks like Flat Stanley's getting the hang of life out here after all.

Climb every mountain... ?

(Photo: The Tetons, with Jackson Lake Lodge in the foreground)



It's that time of year again: the time when I have to figure out what I'm gonna do when the ski season's over.

As many of you know, I returned to Bozeman fully intent on making it as a freelance writer. While I am working and getting paid for that to a certain extent, it hasn't been the flag-waving success I'd been hoping for. So, in January I took up my old job waiting tables at Jimmy B's Bar and Grill at the Bridger Bowl Ski Area.

Which has been great. I'm really happy to be back at work there; I had forgotten what an integral part of my social life it was, much like working at Murphy's Irish Pub was for me in Sonoma. Plus, I come home with my pockets filled with cash, and I get to ski for free on a regular basis.

But the ski season doesn't last forever. It lasts until mid-April. After that, they boot us off the hill and we're made to fend for ourselves.

In the past Bridger Bowl has had a Thursday-Sunday summer season in which the mid-mountain lodge is opened to the public as a restaurant and for weddings, but that plan has already been downsized to weddings only for this summer.

That leaves the following choices: a) Crank up the querying a notch and get more freelancing gigs. Which I should be doing anyway, but I'm having way too much fun with skiing and ice climbing. In the summer I'll be having way too much fun with hiking, rock climbing, mountain biking, and kayaking.

So then there's b) Go back to my old summer job at the Pioneer Grill in Grand Teton National Park. There I'll be able to play in the mountains to my heart's content and then some, and make tons of dough for possible international travel after season's end.

It's tempting, isn't it? But what will happen to the fledgling freelance career I've put so much time into building? Will it fly straight out the window? Will I return to Bozeman starting at Square One again?

What to do, what to do...

I suppose I could work in a regular year-round restaurant in Bozeman... but that sounds too much like a real job. Lame!

If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it.

February Ray Update

My Stuart Smalley affirmations seem to have garnered some results, although not necessarily the ones I might have anticipated. For one thing, I'm now working three days a week back at my old job at Bridger Bowl, working at Jimmy B's Bar and Grill. And it's been great — it was like coming home all over again. I had forgotten how much working at a place like that — similar to Murphy's Irish Pub, where I worked in Sonoma — was integral not only as a job, but to my social life. Plus, free skiing!

I was a bit concerned that working at Bridger would distract me from pursuing my writing career, but so far I feel like I'm doing really well with both. The summer may pose a bigger question, when I have to decide if I should work back at Grand Teton. That place is like paradise to me, but I'd end up having to start my writing career pretty much from scratch again when I'd return to Bozeman.

In other news, the rail bike project is moving along like a coal train over Homestake Pass. Slow. It's been really warm lately so I should take advantage of it in our unheated garage, where the workshop is. I think I need old school skateboard wheels, instead of the ones I got for free from World Boards. I may have to go on eBay (scary!). Hopefully I'll be done by the time the snow melts.

Cold? Sorry, I hadn't noticed

There's nothing like a little brisk weather to make you stand up and say, "Isn't it great to be alive?" Either that, or stay under the covers all day and never come out. One or the other.

But you can't stay under the covers forever. There's stuff to do out here! Last Thursday, for example, I went skiing. It was 16 degrees below zero, which is pretty cold, but there was fresh snow and barely anyone was out there messing it up. I was getting freshies left and right... of course, I was probably also developing frostbite on my left and right earlobes, but that's really beside the point.

Here in Montana cold weather is nothing new, and most people barely seem to notice it. It was probably about -20 when I went to a party on Friday night, but that didn't seem to keep people away... although I think it was close to -30 when I left, which could have prevented me from going home if my car didn't start.



But it did, and the next morning Craig and I set out for a nice sub-zero day of ice climbing. I imagine some readers may never have experienced such frigid temperatures. Basically, think of a seven-layer cake — that's about the right number of layers to be wearing. Generally I went with a thin Duofold Coolmax thermal top, turtleneck, light fleece, heavier fleece, heaviest fleece (bought in extra-large size specifically for such circumstances), then my North Face Gore-Tex jacket. Toasty as a bun in the oven! On the bottoms, thermal long-johns, knit acrylic long-johns, and ski pants seem to do the trick. The face is probably the most vulnerable to frostbite, and my thin balaclava head-covering was essential. That, plus my pull-over neck warmer and ski hat. I also brought ski goggles, but they proved unnecessary. It was only like 10-below, after all.

That evening I went to an art opening in Willow Creek, about 40 miles west of Bozeman. Again, the place was packed; nobody was deterred by the weather. The thick icy rime that had built up on the inside of my windshield was more stubborn, however — all the way there and all the way back with the defroster blowing on high, and it still refused to melt to the edges.

Hardy Bozemanites proved their mettle again on Sunday, showing up in force (well, 50 or so, anyway) for the Martin Luther Kind Day march along Main Street. Ya just dress warm, is all. It's no biggie.



On Monday my friend Sam and I almost met our match. We went skiing at Bridger Bowl, and along with the cold we had to deal with 45-mile-per-hour winds. The skiing itself wasn't bad, but the chairlift rides were brutal... especially when they stopped for the wind, leaving us to be buffeted about 50 feet in the air.

We only took a couple of runs, and rewarded ourselves afterwards with a trip to Chico Hot Springs in Paradise Valley, along with an entourage that included Sam's wife Heather, their 5-year-old twins Ari and Olivia (shown), Heather's sister Mikelle (shown toasting with me below), and friend Suzie, who took the photos. Cold weather, hot water, tasty drinks... if this isn't living, I don't know what is.

Backcountry skiing: The first run of the year

Okay, I know I’m not going to win any photography awards for this one — aside from my inexplicably stunned expression and golden retriever Mona facing the wrong way, Peach (a yellow lab/golden mix) didn’t even care enough to pose. Heck, if either of them had opposable thumbs we might have got a better shot.

The important thing is that it was documented. After all, it was my first ski outing of the year, albeit an inauspicious one. As you can see, there’s not much snow at the old Bear Canyon ski hill. It’s second week of December, and Bridger Bowl’s still not opened.

When I was in Sonoma I bought a pair of really nice Volkl skis from the old Goodwill store for $17, having in mind moving my randonée (also known as alpine touring) bindings on to them. Which I did about a month ago, and I’ve been anxious to try them out ever since. Well, okay, not that anxious – there’s been snow on the hills for a while now, but I’m just getting around to it.

Anyway, I got my climbing skins (for the uninitiated, these are fabric sheaths affixed to the bottom of skis so that you can ski uphill – yes!) sized up with the shorter Volkl shaped skis, and I took them and Mary Anne and Craig’s dogs out to the Bear Canyon/New World Gulch trailhead. Going up wasn’t bad at all, although I was truly out of shape – huffing and puffing all the way up, and I didn’t even go up that far. Strangely, the snow seemed to be getting softer and more scarce the higher up I went, so I called it good about halfway up the hill, then bushwhacked (not easy to do with skis on!) across the hillside till I got to this, the main slope.

This is an old ski hill that isn’t really operational anymore, except for the occasional private chartering. There was only a few inches of soft snow on it, so getting down could hardly even be called skiing. It was ugly – I was paranoid about rocks, so I made big traverses, and then had barely enough speed to make a turn. Extremely inelegant, but somehow I made it down. The dogs had a great time chasing me down.

Hopefully we’ll get some real snow soon so I can do this sport properly!