Alex Applegate and I had been long overdue for a ski trip together. With my recent purchase of a new snowmobile, and with Alex buying my old one we were geared up and ready for some sled skiing. I loaded up my sled and drove to Jackson, WY to meet with Al and some friends.

We rented a forest service cabin 23 miles in the back country for 3 days, the closest town being Alpine. After stocking up on food, beer, whiskey, gas, and oil, we loaded the sleds up and begin trucking our way to the cabin.

Busch, cold as a mountain stream, smooth as it's name. I couldn't agree more.

Even with the skiing not being ideal, we still managed to have a great time. Give me a 150 horsepower machine and I can put a smile on my face pretty easily.

After 2 days of exploring and discovering the snow wasn't exactly ideal, we decided to get black out drunk and ride our sleds 23 miles into town at 11pm to hit up the strip club. 2 of us (including myself) ran out of gas but that barely slowed us down.

After arriving in town, we listened to come live country music as we bought a 30 rack of Busch from the bar, yes the bar. I taught the boys to shotgun beers by putting your thumb through the can, and that's where the night really got interesting. 30 beers and 30 minutes later, we were signing karaoke, taking our shirts off, and dancing around the bar to the amazement of the locals.

We were soon asked to leave and made our way to the strip club where we were also soon asked to leave. Luckily our sleds were parked right outside the bar so we stumbled onto them for the 23 mile ride back to the cabin. I was having trouble remaining conscious so I quickly induced vomiting. We began with a pretty good pace, but unfortunately due to our incapacitated state we missed the first turn off to our cabin and went about 30 miles in the wrong direction. When we finally figured it out, we were hypothermic, shaking, hyperventilating, Alex had frost bite all over his face and feet, and Craig couldn't keep his sled on the path and kept driving into ditches. By this time, it was about 4:30 am and was negative 20 degrees or so. Our pace slowed to a 10 mph crawl.

We all got back to the cabin just before the sun came up, and ended up putting about 105 miles on our sleds that day. After spending the next day recovering in the cabin, we packed up and headed out.

Alex and I made the trip to his place in Bozeman, Montana for a few days to re coop and ski Bridger Bowl. I had never skied there, and was excited to check it out.

Alex mashes through the trees.

I was enjoying testing next year's First Drop prototype suit. Quite waterproof indeed.

Alex boosts

With Bridger being fully explored, Alex and I loaded up the sleds again and drove down through Yellowstone to Cooke City, Montana. I had never been there before and was excited to check out all it had to offer.

I traded in my 800 for this 120, sick!

Cooke City was getting some decent snow and there was plenty of good grey bird skiing to be had. Alex is always ready for bedtime, and was just loungin' on some pillows.

I wasn't about to let Al have all the fun.

After 2 days of good shred, we packed up and made our way back through the herds of buffalo and elk to Bozeman. I said farewell to Al and drove through the night in an attempt to make it to Denver by the the afternoon the next day for a flight lesson. More on this in the next update...