While you hope there’s always one more ride left in the season, sometimes we have to face reality and admit that, okay, this one might be the last one.
That was the case on Thursday—April 13—when we headed to Island Park to check out the snow conditions via snowmobile. The snow has been gone in the valley for some time now and when that happens, sometimes we forget that there’s still snow in the mountains.
Even when we unloaded the snowmobiles on Red Rock Road to shoot up one of our favorite canyons up to Mt. Jefferson, there was little snow in the area where we parked. In fact, there was just a sliver of snow that allowed us to gain access to deeper and more plentiful snow.
And there definitely was more plentiful snow—and much softer than our last ride a couple of weeks ago. That late March snow was rock hard and even our carbides barely scratched the surface.
This time, though, the snow was soft and while it was hero snow we had a great season-ending ride, hitting some areas we haven’t touched for a while, like in Hell Roaring Canyon and Hell Roaring Creek. We spent a fair amount of time in that little peninsula of Montana that “sticks” into Idaho, touching the Island Park area.
We had awesome climbs and descents, including up to the ridge to the west of Mt. Jefferson. Sitting on that ridge, we were at about 9,700 feet, which is about 2,900 feet higher than where we parked.
So while that was perhaps the final ride of the season, we ended it on a very natural high.