Holiday 2010 vacation, part3: Missoula

After three nights in Marquette, woke up early on 12/29 and caught my flight to Detroit for the journey to Missoula, the first leg of three flights.  A big thanks to Carmen for using her miles to get the ticket... Despite a delay in Detroit and a waning snowstorm in Missoula, my trip was uneventful, and I arrived in town about on time.  Craig was a bit late picking me up, understandable with 15" of fresh snow at Snowbowl.  It continued to snow as we made our way to Craig's house, with a few detours along the way (beer, REI, a rack store in town, pizza and beer, then one more beer at the Kettlehouse brewery). 

Observation Deck at Minneapolis airport

At Craig's house, waiting for Will, we shoveled the foot of snow off of the driveway, kept snowing the entire time.  Things were looking good for Thursday.  Will arrived and helped finish up the shoveling, we took a short soak in the hot tub and then off to bed.

Snowbowl was reporting 11" of snow, and we got up there reasonably early, but was still a 45 minute wait to get on the lift.  Snowbowl had as good of conditions as I've ever seen it... cold day with temp at the top of -3.  I had a decent day of skiing, with a finisher run through the trees of the parking lot run.  But with my leg injury limiting my activity, I was not in as good of shape as I would have liked, and my feet and calves were definitely not used to wearing the ski boots.  The Atomic boards were a big help though, and was still a great day to get out.

Next day was bitterly cold, along with no fresh snow... we decided on a day of hot springing and a new years evening buffet dinner at the Lochsa Lodge.  More in the next installment.