Parker Norvell Checks In From Montana

Tuesday, December 18th, 2018

What's up everyone! Parker here checking in from up north in Montana. Winter is starting to ramp up everywhere and the snowpack is starting to form up! This past weekend, I went on a scouting mission trip with my friends Nick Hall and Ethan Swadburg to Cooke City. As some of you may know, last season we travelled around filming with Andrew Mildenberger for a movie that recently came out, "Strictly Business." We are doing the same this season for another film, so the point of our trip was to scope out potential spots and see how the snowpack was setting up.

Nick Hall works for the company Beartooth Vanworks in the off-season, and they let us bring their company van to stay in. It's a sweet rig, fully insulated and powered by solar. It has a couch that folds into a bed that could fit the three of us, as well as a small kitchen space and a built in Yeti cooler. Hanging out at night wasn't too bad, split between drinking beer and watching movies in the van, as well as playing pool and watching football at the bar (Go Broncos!).

As for the snow, per usual, Cooke did not disappoint. 9 inches were in the forecast for the 24-hours before we got there, and we showed up to more than 2 feet of fresh snow. The snowpack was actually surprisingly stable considering the new snow. The base under the new layer had all bonded together nicely, with not much of a facet on top. There wan't any cracking in the new snow either on any slope until we encountered a small fracture in some wind effected snow on our third day.

We ended up not skiing much at all and snowmobiling a lot. Although we had been there the year before, we found a lot of new potential terrain to film in once there is some more snow, and even found some new features in places we had already been.

It was refreshing to be back in what felt like the middle of winter, not having to worry about hitting rocks on skis or even the snowmobiles. Until we start filming in January, we'll keep doing more small trips like this to find the best terrain to ski, film, and have the best damn time in.