Recent Ride Report - Independence

Wow, its been almost two months. I see I have a few visitors so for them I'll keep posting.

Bret and I took a trip south of Big Timber Montana for my 4th ride of the year. This is down near the old Independence mine and Monument Peak. There is a ungroomed trail that leads us to our destination, but at 15 miles its a little trek in.

We were greeted by fresh snow everywhere! Even experienced our first in person Avalanche. Not so great! So lets start with that.

We were doing some high-marking on this North Facing peak with some decent powder on top of it. I had just gotten down from getting stuck about half way up, and was sitting on my sled cleaning out my goggles and helmet from snow when Bret took another run at it. He reached his high mark and began coming down. I then heard a loud "thud" and looked up and saw the slide coming down the left part of the grade. (We had been climbing the right) I pointed and yelled at Bret, "Avalanche!" I held all of my stuff (gloves, goggles, helmet) and started up my sled. (Thank you Yamaha for eclectic start!) And started my way away from the slide. I saw Bret slow and point that the slide had stopped.

Talk about heart stopping. At this point in the day I was ready to call it. The weather was great, a storm had been moving in, reducing visibility. With that and the slide I felt ok with leaving at that point. Luckily Bret wanted to show me another spot just up the hill to the west of our location.

We hit this great area with consistence deep powder and a decent hill to climb. We played in this spot for easily over a few hours. Its was the most fun I've had on my sled all year long. Bret and I really started to see how much we've improved since we started sledding 3 years ago. (I've been sledding since I could barely walk)

We are doing things most people wouldn't try. Not extreme things like jumping off cliffs or things like that. Just certain climbs thru the trees that are semi difficult. We are getting a lot more skilled with our machines and with ourselves.

Anywho, attached is the Google Earth view of our trip. My path is in yellow. Gotta love my Rino GPS! BEST PRESENT EVER!

Next time, soon within a week I have some small mods I've done that I'll talk about, along with a few issues I'm having with my FX Nytro that appears to be a big problem on Totally Yamaha forums!