Thursday, February 11, 2016

Snowmobiling Greys River, Alpine, Wyoming

At length we departed Missoula, over-nighting in the Bozone, and enjoying the Broncos' very satisfying Super Bowl win over the Panthers. I am no fan of passball, as American professional football has become. My favorite team, historically, threw six passes in its third consecutive Super Bowl appearance, completing five, and still routing its NFC opponent, the hapless Vikings. So I particularly enjoyed seeing Sunday's Hall of Fame and MVP quarterbacks both harassed, hit, sacked, stripped, and intercepted, throughout the game. And the right team won. The Broncos' defense certainly rivals the nearly-undefeated 1986 Bears. But I digress.

From Bozeman we drove on to West Yellowstone, cold and snowy, but covered in dense fog that was supposed to last three more days. Island Park, across the border, was no better, so we decided to keep on driving (hard to appreciate the scenery in a mountain fog), all the way to Alpine, WY, and its great Greys River trails. We camped three nights in the giant snowmobile parking lot there and got out for two 100+ mile days on some of our favorite rides.
Passing by Big Sky, Montana, The Lonely Mountain
















Wyoming is the best! Riding an unspoiled groomed trail, variant C, on the way to
Box Y Lodge

















Ditto; we did Variant C last year, but we were low on fuel and I wasn't able to
enjoy it fully

















We did it three times on this visit, coming and going
















Ditto, again
















Box Y Lodge; staff actually remembered us from last year
















Snow plane at the Box Y (airplane-propeller driven, four large skis)
















The river at Box Y
















Elk feeding range, some miles south, towards Utah
















Riding back on C




















Next day, riding east toward the Sherman guard station
















50 miles down the trail, great views of the Winds
















Looking southeast, toward the south end of the Winds, you can make out the
Cirque of Towers, to the left...

















Our style of riding--groomed trails only--depends entirely on grooming; here is a
groomer at the Sherman parking lot

















Hill-climbing and high-marking are what we and the groomers don't do

1 comment:

Tawana said...

Your pictures are beautiful. Love those blue skies. We have had them here in Arkansas for a couple of days, and had them only one day during our stay in Chicago last week. It was snowy up there, but somehow the scenery is not the same!