We left for Cooke City on Feb. 8 with clear roads all the way to Gardiner. It began dumping as we entered Yellowstone. While it was exciting to know we would be skiing in fresh powder for the weekend, the new snow would also elevate the avalanche risk which was already at moderate. As we exited the park and reached Cooke City, a winter wonderland awaited. Suzy, our friend and owner of Elkhorn Lodge, had to shovel 3 times that day. There was 2 feet of fresh snow in town with more in the surrounding mountains! After some beers with Suzy at the Miner's Saloon we went to bed around 11 p.m. with dreams of an epic powder day.

Saturday: We met Bill Blackford, who would run our snowmobile shuttle, Saturday morning at 9 a.m. and looked over the map. He would take us to Daisy Pass and then we would skin up Henderson Mountain.

We began skinning up the south side of Henderson and once we got to a slope of about 30 degrees we dug a pit to look at the snow. There was a layer of small-grained facets about 3-4 feet down. Sara got above and tried to make it slide but it would not. We continued our ascent, about 100 feet from the summit, the mountain was wind-blown so we took our skis off and hiked to the top. We looked east into the immense Beartooth Wilderness.

After a little lunch, we put our skis on and took our first run. It was sweet pow through the trees all the way down. Cosley would sometimes sink as she ran to keep up.

We skinned up again, took another run, and then took the road back to town. The road was like a groomer with the snowmobile tracks. We passed some bilers who all slowed down and waved. They were enjoying their powder day too!

Sunday: We met Bill at 8:30 a.m. for our shuttle. This time he dropped us off east of Henderson Mountain with a wide variety of terrain to choose from. We found a nice 30-degree bowl and then skinned up to the southeast side of Henderson. On the leeward side of the mountain, we saw evidence of a slide that was about 200 feet wide. We had a nice, long run back to town with fresh turns all the way down.