Ross Peak – Banana Couloir

My car limped into Bozeman Sunday afternoon, giving up on power steering and most general motor function just as I pulled onto the street of my new house. I had just enough speed to roll it into a parking spot on the side of the street.

The following day was my first day in Montana, and Zach & Kyle had decided that we head up Ross Peak to ski the Banana Couloir. This would be my first ski run ever in Montana, and a warm welcome to the beauty of the Bridger Range.

I barely snagged a couple Iphone photos during our day, as trying to keep up with Kyle & Zach proved to be a challenge. We totaled over 12 miles round trip and just over +3k vert to the top.

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A few miles in and we get a good look at the craggy Ross Peak. The Banana is the fairly obvious curved line down the center.

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Kyle dropping in first. We had some weather roll in as we got to the top. The snow was overall great, although a tad punchy in spots:

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Zach:

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Red: Skin Track, Yellow: Descent route (These are rough estimates)

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A rough overview of our route, the lower line is our approach. Looking at this now, I think we traversed under the couloir earlier than I drew it below. On the way back we were lured into the other drainage with hopes of delaying skinning for longer. It didn’t delay it much though, and we soon found ourselves skinning out of a river gulley and searching for old skin tracks that might lead us back to the road.

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