Yellowstone - Day 3

Today, as the guide said was "all about the powder". We rode our sleds to 2 different Mountains. I found a map that shows where we went today click here to see it. We started in the town of West Yellowstone, and rode to Two Top Mountain. From it's summit you can see 7 different mountain ranges. Our guide said that they were all probably connected at one point, but the last time the Yellowstone volcano erupted, the middle of the range was blown sky high resulting in multiple ranges.
This is the view as seen from Two Tops:

Here are some more pictures of the view... I'm sorry that I forgot to ask which mountain range was which, But I think this was the Bitterroot range:

The guide told us that we were standing on 20 feet of snow on Mt. Two Top. I was amazed, but I got a bigger surprise when he told me that that's about half of the ammount that falls there on an average year. This picture shows the branches that are 20 feet up during the summer:


Normally, the guide said that these trees only stick 3 to 4 feet out of the snow!

After Two Top, we ate lunch and headed for Lion Head Mountain. Along the way, we stopped and "played" in the snow. The snow in the meadows is 3 to 5 feet deep, and if you find some unspoiled powder, you can have a lot of fun. If you drive the machine into the wrong place, or stop in the wrong place, you get stuck, and have to be helped out of your predicament. The saying is "if you don't get stuck in the snow, your not doing it right". well, I guess I am doing it right. I was very adventurous and got stuck 5 or 6 times. Everyone else got stuck too - some more, some less. The guide was incredible - riding his sled right across the same area I was waist deep in and helping get us unstuck.

wading through the waist deep (or deeper) snow is incredibly tiring, then pushing or pulling a stuck sled out of it's predicament was really a lot of work (and my chest feels like a mule kicked me from my little spill yesterday). So, we are a very tired bunch indeed.

We did about 120 miles today, so our total for the three days is about 360 miles. No wonder I'm so tired and sore...

Tomorrow morning we head home. Fly out of Bozeman at 10:00 or so on a turboprop, connect in Denver for the flight home to ATL. I'll be sleeping for most of that!

Maybe a bit tomorrow about the flight if there is anything interesting to say...

satay safe and BE CAREFUL!
ME