Day One- Powder Play
When we arrived at the Bottle Creek parking area, we had a welcoming party consisting of our fearless guide, Ben Smith, guest rider and Klim clothing rep John Summers and SnoWest photographer Kort Duce.
We mounted up on our ponies and headed west on the Hwy. 70 trail for about five miles, then hooked a left onto an old mining road east of Battle Pass, where we headed south past Slaughterhouse Gulch toward Doane Peak. We were only about 100 yards off of the Hwy. 70 trail when it became rather apparent that the two feet of fresh February fluff we were cutting was going to be a challenge (read: sleds getting stuck already).
We continued our boondocking adventures toward the southwest as we pounded our way up an open ridge that wasn't a one-shot deal, over the Continental Divide toward Red Mountain and the north boundary of the Huston Park Wilderness. Scenery and vistas from up there would have been fantastic, but Ma Nature wasn't cooperating with socked-in skies and it was snowing hard. Duce was bumming as it was looking like picture taking opportunities were going to be next to nil and he was packing his high dollar equipment along for nothing.
And as long as we are on the subject of weather and photos, neither of our two days in the Sierra Madres offered conducive conditions for panoramic photos, as we had about a one-hour window of sunshine at the end of the second day. Other than that, the sun was a near-opaque image at best.
After a short break on top of the Divide, Smith led us off the mountains through an opening in the trees he calls the Back Door, down into the Battle Lake basin. This was a 500-foot-plus drop that was completed in about a heartbeat and a half. A nice little rush.