At least we’re nothing if not flexible, which is not an uncommon trait in these parts. Numerous studies have pointed out that many residents, newcomers and natives alike, at least attempt to structure their lives so they’re poised to take advantage of situations that may come up, like say a 42" dump of powder at Bridger Bowl! Last Wednesday morning pretty much every snow sports enthusiast who could re-evaluated their priorities, and area businesses reported record levels of employee sickness. I don’t have to call in sick, but did call to excuse my son from school, or at least admit knowledge of his absence. Cody had been after me to go skiing with him (he snowboards, but I haven’t found a suitable substitute name for the combined activities). It’d been a couple of years, and he was anxious to show off his improved abilities, if not outright humiliate the Old Man. So we’d agreed the next time we got a powder dump, if at all possible everything else could wait a day, and Wednesday fit the criteria.

Bridger Bowl is sometimes blessed with a meteorological anomaly known as BBC, the Bridger Bowl Cloud. A moist northwest flow, combined with just the right combination of surrounding high and low pressure areas will park a cloud right over the east-central Bridger Range, where it will dump prodigious amounts of the lightest, fluffiest powder snow known. We live right across the range from Bridger Bowl, didn’t get much more than a dusting, and on our drive up Bridger Canyon didn’t encounter much fresh snow to speak of until we hit the ski area. Other area mountain ranges only got a few inches, and so you see the BBC is a very localized phenomenon, a fact obviously not lost on the pioneer skiers who founded the area (it remains one of the very few non-profit, community run ski areas in the country).

It’s not like one can plan on the BBC occurring with any regularity, unfortunately, which again reminds us of the importance of flexibility. Prior to last week’s dump, we’d had a noticeable amount of warmish temperatures with not much fresh snow at all. This can be good or bad, depending on how you utilize it. One recreational/fitness habit I’ve resurrected this winter is cross-country skiing. Alas, no backcountry trips, just going on a quick after-work loop of a couple miles right here on the farm. As mentioned in my November column, winter arrived overnight here and that dump of snow was preceded by rain, which set up a glacial base that only recently shows signs of melting. Subsequent freezes and thaws settled it down into a near-bulletproof base of about eight inches, with just the nicest dusting of loose snow on the top half inch or so… This makes for great X-C skiing conditions, as it doesn’t matter if you’re in a previously established track or not, you can kick and glide across the landscape with near-zero friction. Oh, yes, it’s great fun (and the pup wholeheartedly concurs).

Those same snow conditions aren’t worth a darn for Alpine skiing, though. In the Avalanche Center report linked in the BBC comment above, Doug Chabot characterized the previous day’s skiing on Saddle Peak (just south of Bridger Bowl) as "the worst skiing of the year on breakable wind crust." How quickly things change….

It’d been a long time since I’d been in thigh-deep powder, and for that matter quite a while since I’d been on alpine skis, period, but I could expect no mercy from the teenager, and so when he headed off down Flippers for the first run (a steep face right under the Pierre’s Knob lift), I veered east just a little into a favorite chute that’s not quite as exposed. Fortunately I did lots of skiing back in the day, enough that it no longer really requires conscious thought.

This leaves one’s mind free to wander, which isn’t a bad thing since you’ve skipped work or school anyway. But in my case by the end of the day I was gradually struck with the realization I’d just about rather stay home and work! Running a multi-faceted enterprise (hmmm, perhaps I should "venture". I’m not sure we’re enterprise class yet!) is pretty entertaining in its own right. Oh, the skiing was fun, too, especially spending the day with my son. All the same, maybe it’s a peculiarity of folks in their late 40’s, a biological realization that it’s "time to make it count", but I find the day-to-day routine (or lack thereof) as gratifying as blasting down Avalanche Gulch. Must mean I like my work…

Enough of that already though, you want to know about the black helicopters! Well, yeah, that was also part of a multi-tasking venture, as most are. I mean, most ventures of mine are multi-tasking, not that most black helicopter episodes are part of… never mind.

This particular road trip involved hauling a horse trailer load of buffalo hides to a tannery in Great Falls, picking up some flax seed in Conrad, checking on a house my mother-in-law sold in Valier, and visiting with a friend who accompanied me on the Great Falls and points north part of the trip. We’d unloaded the buffalo hides and were heading north on I-15. It had snowed a bit the night before, just enough to render the roads a sheet of ice. Lo and behold, along about the little burg of Power we came up behind a military convoy, apparently hauling a missile to one of the launch sites that dot north central Montana. This is no low-budget affair, with probably ten Humvees complete with machine guns atop, the truck pulling the missile trailer, and as we soon noticed a couple of helicopters circling above. As mentioned, the road conditions were less than optimal, and they were motoring along about 50 mph. I’d left the horse trailer behind in Great Falls, and was comfortable moving along about 60, which meant that we had to slowly pass the entire contingent. It was about then that we noticed one of the choppers hanging pretty much in our vicinity. A short way north of Brady, our interest was piqued by a quite intense column of smoke coming up out of a field along the Interstate, which seemed very odd given the brisk temperatures that morning, not to mention recent dusting of snow. We were thinking one of the helicopters must have dropped a flare or something, and were thinking the whole situation was getting a little peculiar, but as we drew near finally saw a pickup truck sitting near by, so apparently some farmer had decided it was time to burn some stuff that morning. I bet he got checked out pretty closely, as did we! It was about then one of the helicopters passed right over the top of us at not very much elevation at all. He came up behind, and pretty plainly must have been checking my license plate number. Given my bison activism, and Homeland Security’s attention to brucellosis as a "potential weapon of mass destruction", I’d be real curious to see just what sort of info they turned up.

In any case, they let us live. After we left Valier, we saw the contingent going about their business at a missile silo just east of town, and they’d apparently decided we posed no threat at that point as we didn’t merit another fly-by. I mentioned this episode to my mother-in-law, who topped my story with an account of some bar-hopping Valier-ians who wound up interrogated by military police under similar circumstances.

I would hope theirs took place later in the day, as it involved alcohol consumption and perhaps even impaired driving, but anyway… disregarding our clean and sober state there are similarities. They passed a missile contingent north of Great Falls, but then stopped at a bar in Dutton to slake their thirst. That is dry country… They didn’t linger, must have just slammed a couple of quick ones and back on the road as they passed the missile caravan again before they reached Valier. No doubt celebrating their safe arrival at Harold’s, they were taken aback when several heavily armed military police types stormed the door. Well, OK, they walked into the bar inquiring about who owned such and such vehicle… and were actually joking around about it, but protocols dictate investigation when a vehicle passes one of those convoys more than once.

You can’t be too careful… at least when you’re presumably transporting nuclear warheads around the middle of nowhere. We surmised it not at all unrealistic that little episode would run a million or so. Of course, you wouldn’t want that equipment falling into disrepair, but it can be argued the threat those missiles were put in place to address no longer exists, and what has replaced it is not as cleanly defined, as say, the Soviet Union. I wonder where those missiles are pointed now?

There’s quite a bit of other gossip, news, and hot tips to report, but somehow their interest level kind of fades in comparison to that last statement. At least for me… The collapsed state of the Bozeman horse market, ongoing bison and other wildlife issues, the FWP Commission approval of the 5-week season, investigations into alternative crop seed sources, biodiesel and Omega 3 oilseed supplements and buffalo meat and the myriad other opportunities we’re pursuing will have to be reported on another day, as we’re nearing the statistically verifiable word count where I start to lose people…

You’re right, I need to pass along these reports more frequently, but we’re too dang busy living it to write about it as it occurs, and so remain abject failures as bloggers.

So it’s a lucky thing that’s not what we’re trying to be. Nosiree… at least not that!