Mt Blackmore, Gallatin County, Montana

Overview
A gorgeous day in Bozeman, Montana during a period in which the avalanche report reads like this…

“The snow keeps piling up in the northern ranges and… In the past 48 hours 7 inches of new snow has fallen… This gradual process of adding a few inches here and a few inches there is exactly the kind of loading the snowpack enjoys.

…calls for a gathering of friends to grab their skis and splitboards to enjoy the freedom of the hills. For a select few it also calls for us to throw a couple cheeseburgers into our food sacks for consumption atop our destination peak.

Participants
Cheeseburger consumers this time around were samh and wotboy (known in other posts as MikeMike). Dr. Liz, Roderigo, and Melanie were also along for the skiing but did not have cheeseburgers in hand on this go – perhaps next time though!

Statistics

Length: 9.2 miles

Vertical ascent: 4626 ft

Vertical descent: 4623 ft

More Info
For the full photo set, see:

Mt. Blackmore – Backcountry Splitboarding/Skiing on Flickr.

For GPS track and map view, see:

Mt Blackmore, Bozeman, MT – Backcountry Skiing on EveryTrail.

I ***LOVE*** Summit Cheeseburgers!

Valentines Day weekend. Humbug. With a name like Krusty Bunz, it’s no wonder I’m single, so I figured I may as well spend the weekend playing tourist around my new home and check out more of the local scenery.

My last post was about The Great Orme, an impressive (and somewhat famous) feature on the north shore of Wales. Saturday’s hike took me up the Little Orme (141m, 463ft) which sits south of the Great Orme and forms the southern boundary of a waterfront promenade, which is a feature attraction in the resort town of Llandudno in north Wales. Views of the Great Orme and Little Orme from the promenade:

The Great Orme from the promenade

Little Orme from the promenade

With a mere three miles between the base of each Orme, it would probably be a morning well spent for a visitor to Wales to do a two cheeseburger summit-to-summit walk, with a pint of ale from the Great Orme Brewery to toast one’s accomplishment.

The hike up the Little Orme follows a well marked public footpath that ascends at an easy grade over pastures shared with sheep (which is true of pretty much any hike in Wales it seems). The views from the summit are quite excellent:

View of Great Orme from Little Orme

Looking west along the north shore of Wales from the Little Orme

For Sunday’s hike, I drove a short distance west along the north shore to Penmaenmawr for an ascent of Foel Lûs (362m), which is within the northern boundary of Snowdonia National Park. It’s a relatively easy hike, with several trail options to get you to the summit, but you eventually have to give up trying avoid stepping in sheep droppings if you want to make any progress at all.

At the summit is a ring of stones, which I suppose could provide a bit of shelter in bad weather for small children or badgers, or in my case, a cheeseburger.

Foel Lûs summit

The views from the summit look out at Snowdonia to the south and southwest, the Isle of Anglesey to the northwest, and the Great Orme and Little Orme to the north east.

Great Orme and Little Orme from the summit of Foel Lûs

On my return to the car, I came across a street sign pointing me towards the next town over. Despite standing there reading and photographing the sign, I still have no idea what the name of the town is. On a related note, the Star Trek writers that came up with the Klingon language leaned heavily on the Welsh language as a basis for Klingon. Any guesses on how to pronounce this…?

I'm sorry... were saying the name of a town or coughing up phlegm?

Krusty Bunz