Fun in the Snow

I had an awesome time in West Yellowstone this weekend. The snow was fresh, deep and fluffy. In fact I think that it was snowing the entire time that we were there. Unfortunately, none of us got a ton of photos. We were all too busy riding. The ones that we did get are posted here.

Rough Start
Things got off to a bit of a rough start on Friday morning. As we pulled over to the side of the trail to rest I spotted a big park down below us in a valley. It was inaccessible from our current location but I figured that there would be an opening further up the trail. While the other guys were resting, I told them that I was going to scout ahead to look for a place to get down into the valley.

I found a makeshift trail that led into the valley less than half a mile from where the group had stopped. I pulled off of the trail so that I could swing the sled around and rejoin the group but managed instead to get stuck in the snow. Ironically I was less than 50 yards off the trail, but was obscured from plain sight behind some pine trees. By the time that it occurred to me that I should go wait for the group on the trail it was already too late; they had sped by hoping to "catch up" with me further up the trail.

In the meantime, I was stuck in snow that was chest deep. After spending about half an hour trying to dig myself out, I finally gave up and flagged down a guy on Ski-Doo that had a tow rope. We busted his nylon strap twice before we were able to finally successfuly exhume my sled from it's snowy grave.

The whole time that I was stuck, I felt horrible for being so stupid as to go off on my own. I imagined that everyone else was worried sick and had spent the last hour in search and rescue mode. I discovered when I met back up with them at the condo later that morning that they had never even stopped to look for me. They had just assumed that I was cruising ahead of them on the trail.

I was uncertain whether or not I should be flattered that they were so convinced of my competency that they couldn't possibly have imagined that I had run into trouble or if should be offended by the fact that they were essentially indifferent to the fact that I had gone missing. I'm going to go with flattered :)

Slow Learners
We apparently didn't learn our lesson from my little expedition in the morning. History managed to repeat itself on our afternoon ride. We weren't half an hour into the ride when we came upon a clearing in the snow off the trail. Rand was in the lead at the time and questioned me via hand signals (we couldn't hear very well over the sound of the sleds and with helmets on) which way we should go. I signaled back to him that we should stop and play for a while.

Apparently, either Rand or I were not fluent in snowmobile hand signals (Oh, who am I kidding, I was making the shit up as we went) and Rand mistook, "Let's stop and play here", for, "Let's forge our own trail through the woods instead of following the main trail". So, as the rest of us began to play in the deep snow off the trail Rand vanished into the distance. Fifteen minutes later, when the rest of us were tired of playing, we finally noticed that there was one less person in our group.

This time we were a little more coordinated in our search effort. We split up into pairs so we didn't get further separated. One group tried to follow the trail through the woods and the other group waited back on the original trail. When that plan didn't produce any results, we switched up and sent one group up the official trail while the other stayed back and waited. Just when I was convinced that we were going to have to admit defeat, Rand came buzzing around the corner on his sled.

It didn't take a third incident to teach us to always ride in pairs.

Trying to Kill Ourselves
We all managed to survive the weekend despite our best efforts to kill ourselves. There were a number of "accidents" but fortunately no injuries. I think that I won the prize for the most violent spill. It was on our second day of riding and we were off the trail in a little park. The park was separated into a higher and lower area by a medium sized hill.

I was acting more on impulse than forethought as I decided to go cruising up the hill at high speed. I mean, if there's a hill you have to go gunning up it, don't you? The only problem was that my faceshield was starting to fog up a little bit and I really couldn't make out the terrain in the snow. I knew where the hill was and I figured that as long as I knew that I would be OK. What I missed, however, was the little 2 foot dip right before the incline of the hill.

I hit that dip at about 40 mph and was sent tumbling over the handlebars. I wish somebody had captured it all on video because I imagine that I must have looked pretty funny doing somersaults through mid-air. Fortunately I landed pretty clean and didn't hurt anything. My snowmobile was undeterred by the lack of a rider and continued it's way up the rest of the hill without me.

Gunning For Free Gas
It turns out that our snowmobiles came with a free tank of gas for every day that we rented them. The only hitch was that you had to have them back to the rental place by 5PM in order to get them refueled. At 4:30 on Friday afternoon we were on our way back from the Lionhead Loop and about 30 minutes away from town. As we pulled over to rest, Dale informed me about the free gas rule and taunted me that if I could get us back by 5PM that we would all get free gas in our sleds.

I think Dale came to regret saying that, because no sooner had the words left his mouth then I hopped back on my sled, fired up the engine and went tearing off down the trail. I was hauling ass. I was taking corners so fast that I had to hang my entire body off to one side to keep the tracks on the ground. It's not so much that I cared about free gas, but I wasn't going to back down from a challenge :) 15 minutes later the entire group pulled into the rental place with plenty of time to spare.

Home Sweet Condo
The second best part of the trip (second only to the snowmobiling itself) was the place that we were staying at. I had managed to find a condo to rent for the weekend. I had pretty high expectations just based on the photos on the website, but the actual unit far exceeded my expectations. It's not that it was very fancy or extravagant but it was just very homey and comfortable.

There were beds for 8 people, a full kitchen stocked with dishes and cooking utensils, a pantry partially full of food left by previous occupants, a comfortable living room with an awesome leather sofa and even a washer and dryer. We didn't really use the washer, but the dryer was certainly handy for drying out and warming up all of our snowgear at the end of the day.

The biggest benefit of the condo was having the kitchen. We had originally planned on eating out for most of our meals, but the kitchen was so convenient that we ended up eating nearly every meal in. I became the unofficial cook (a title that I usually welcome) and prepared both breakfast and dinner for both of the days (Dale helped on the second night) that we were there. The best part about accepting the unofficial title of cook is that it left the official title of dishwasher open for someone else :) Fortunately, both Jay and Dale were pretty good about accepting that title.

Given my recent trend of healthy eating, meals were prepared with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. Although noone really complained, several of the guys found it rather amusing that a bunch of guys on a snowmobile trip in West Yellowstone were eating things like steamed sugar snap peas, fresh broccoli, fresh cut cantaloupe and red grapes. It may very well have been the most healthy guy's weekend in the history of guy's weekends :)