Backcountry skiing near Bozeman

Submitted by lefsaeater on Thu, 01/15/2009 - 21:52

Howdy folks.  I'm just getting into backcountry skiing and wondering if anyone can suggest some good areas to check out in the Bozeman area.  Not asking you to give up your super-secret hideout, but just some general ideas would be great.  Like trailheads, how to get there, how long it takes to skin in different places.  If anyone has any thoughts please let me know.

Btw, great to see there is a place here to discuss MT skiing now.  I looked around for other websites but haven't found much.  Thanks!

With the road being plowed Hyalite is quickly becoming a very good backcountry skiing resource around Bozeman.  The Blackmore and Grotto Falls trailheads will lead you to great skiing.  Another option is the History Rock trailhead.  The short approach and smallish open meadows means it may get tracked out faster but it's great for a few quick runs.

Thanks for the tips.  We did hit up Hyalite this past weekend.  First attempt was to head towards Grotto, but a well packed path didn't make skiing too much fun.  So we cut our losses and went over near History Rock.  Had much better luckw the snow over there, although we didn't find much for nice pitches in open areas.  But we were running short on time and didn't go that far either.  The snow was really nice in that area though.  We'll be trying it again.  We also went up Bracket Creek this weekend.  There was a thin layer of new snow on some crust.