Hyalite to Blackmore Traverse (low tide edition)

After the cat skiing season wrapped up in the Eastern Sierra, I headed back to Bozeman with a little bit of winter left. Like the rest of the West, SW Montana has been hurting for snow. At this point Bridger Bowl has closed three weeks early for the season on March 22nd and the snowpack below about 7500' is practically non-existent. The current snowpack situation in the Western United States is downright dire going into the summer and is a concerning omen for the future as the climate continues to change and winters such as this could become less of an anomaly.

There's a lot of red on that map...

Despite the meager snowpack, I had the chance to get one good Hyalite ski tour in before the road closed for the season and with a good overnight freeze, forecasted sunny skies, and a recent skiff of new snow, it seemed to be about as good a chance as I'd get. Meara Norris and Sammie Nolan had the same idea and so we linked up at about 5 AM at the Blackmore trailhead, dropped a car, and carpooled up to the Hyalite Creek Trailhead. We slid on our boots, finished packing our gear and set off under a still dark sky. The first couple miles were largely spent skinning on about a half inch of snow sitting atop another half inch of ice but managed to sneak by relatively quickly.

By the time the sun began to rise, we made our way to a more consistent skinnable snowpack and were making good time. About 4.5 miles into our day, we finally broke into the alpine and Hyalite Peak came into view.

Once we reached the saddle dividing Hyalite Peak from the Evil Twin, we opted to pass up on the summit of Hyalite as the ski potential off the top was rather uninspiring. Another couple hundred vertical feet brought us to the drop in for Evil Twin. Looking down the barrel, the name tracked. Dropping in required a short down climb and about halfway down, it was pretty clear that another dry land moment would be required. Dry land skiing would quickly become the theme for the day. Despite some fairly unattractive snow, the skiing was surprisingly decent, and the mid-line scramble was engaging and not overly sketchy. I'd imagine in deeper years the couloir is ski through and quite a bit more aesthetic.

After contouring around Divide Basin, we transitioned back to skins and made our way to the top of Divide Peak. Our hope was to be able to easily ski down off the ridge from Divide before continuing our traverse to the Maids and The Pinner, but a wind hammered and sunbaked west ridge turned what should have been easy travel into a fairly time-consuming ordeal. In hindsight, it would have been far more efficient to drop off the Divide Basin ridge earlier and ski down to the bowl at the headwaters of Storm Castle Creek. With the slow travel, we opted to pass on skiing the Fat or Skinny Maid and continue traversing the ridge directly to The Pinner. This also cut out the techy climb over the unnamed peak to the east of The Pinner. Along the ridge, the recent heat had opened up some massive cornice cracks and made for fairly spicy travel.

Given the crusty conditions we were dealt, with minimal new snow, snow quality was never spectacular but frequently exceeded expectations on the day. The Pinner took the cake on the day in my opinion featuring a planar and not too refrozen surface with an inch or two of fresh. As far as couloir skiing goes, it was at least mid-pack for snow quality. To make things better, it's a consistently pitched tight couloir that isn't too hard on the eyes from afar. It also featured an exciting little drop in with an overhanging cornice to get the heart rate up. Sammie dropped in first, opening the line with style before pulling off halfway down. I followed, and Meara closed it down. Once regrouped, I led the second pitch to the apron (which skied even better in my opinion) and watched the rest of the crew descend.

Another contour around the base of Mt. Bole brought us to the top of a bonus pitch of legitimately fun skiing before we transitioned back to skins. Coming into the day, given the warming temperatures, we were most concerned about this next ascent of the South Twin Couloir given its solar aspect. It ended up being a non-issue and the snow was actually perfectly softened for easy skinning sans ski crampons. During the record heat the prior week that had domed over the West, the South Twin had filled with wet loose debris and our booter consisted of easy steps up the debris (no boot crampons required).

After a few hundred vertical feet of boot packing, we found our way to the top of the North Twin couloir. Par for the day the entrance once again required a down climb, and this one featured a perfect amount of snow to make things a little sketchy but still completely unskiable. After our down climb, we clipped in and made our way down the couloir, trading pitches. About mid-line on the skier's left I found my best turns on the day featuring about 3 inches of fresh! More quality skiing was found in the apron as we worked our way towards the uptrack for our final ascent of the day, Mt. Blackmore.

With the heat of the day at its peak, our skin track up the backside of the saddle that divides Elephant Peak from Blackmore featured a bit of glopping before we came to the ridge. The west side of the ridge was largely melted out, and the east side would entail an uninspiring sidehill to the summit, so we opted for the summer trail and slung our skis on our packs. About midway to the top of Blackmore, we were able to transition back to skins and quickly gained our final viewpoint. From the summit of Blackmore, we could look back across the terrain we had covered on the day as well as down towards town. It was a rewarding cap and a really nice moment to appreciate the mountains. Even in as tough of a winter as 25/26, it's still worth it to deal with a bit of schwack down low for the opportunity to travel through the range.

Our descent off the top of Blackmore was again surprisingly good, featuring some cool wind features off the ridge before we opted for the SE meadow trade route skirting the line with the traditional E face descent. Once we reached the tree line things slowly became spicier with dwindling snow coverage and a plethora of downed trees from windstorms over the past few months. The Blackmore luge was in full gauntlet mode. We battled our way to the lake before giving in and walking via foot the final two miles to the trailhead. This final two miles honestly felt about as tough as the rest of the tour combined. My feet don't enjoy summer trails in ski boots, especially in March.

Even though I've been in Bozeman for three or four winters depending on how you count, this marked my first time skiing the Hyalite to Blackmore traverse. The route is an excellent way to see some of the best terrain that the Hyalite area has to offer and there are a number of options to switch it up and ski additional lines or take a few out too. I'm looking forward to running it back down the road with hopefully a stouter snowpack and a bit more cold snow🤞.