Family Returns to Big Sky

After returning from the California/Mexican Riviera cruise, Julie and I didn't have too much time to settle in before she flew east to join Amy's wedding dress shopping trip.

Gina and Emma drove over to Jersey City to meet up, and the girls along with Amy's close friend Rachel enjoyed searching bridal shops and sharing meals.

Amy found the perfect dress, though I have to say all the photos of her in wedding dresses that I saw from the trip looked beautiful.  Of course, I won't include a photo of the perfect dress here, as that is for the wedding day reveal.

Julie took the opportunity of being on the east coast to go check on our house in Ardmore, hitching a ride with Gina and Emma, who live in nearby Merion Station with Laszlo, who like me let the ladies enjoy their New York City shopping spree...if buying a wedding dress for Amy and some Japanese study guides for Emma can be called a spree.

Emma, incidentally, has taken up skateboarding.  

While Julie was away, I took advantage of my senior weekdays ski pass for Big Sky, where the snow coverage was sufficient on blue bird days.  I would walk over to the nearby shuttle stop wearing my ski boots, with skis and poles over my shoulder, and let the bus driver negotiate the roads up the mountain.

Hiking gave me exercise on non-ski days.  One memorable hike was to the top of the Uplands trail in heavy snow where at one point I wasn't sure exactly where the trail was and felt my legs sink deep into powder when I stepped in the wrong place.

I missed Julie, but I also had a fun time watching free Amazon Prime movies as well as skiing.  Among the movies I enjoyed were "My Spy" and "Killers," neither of which was spectacular both which kept me entertained.  I also watched quite a few episodes from the first season of "Rockford Files" on the Roku Channel.

As for meals, on the first day Julie left, I made a huge tuna and brown rice casserole, which my Mom used to make and I always loved.  I ate that for several meals, and eventually made another huge Italian casserole that had too many noodles for the amount of chicken in my test batch, and I had that leftover for Julie's comfort meal upon returning home...plus a few more lunches for me after that.

On the same day that Julie returned from the East Coast, my sister Darlene, her husband Brooks and their Pomeranian Teddy arrived in town, followed soon by their son,BG3, and his chihuahua-wiener dog mutt Chorizo drove up shortly thereafter.  They had visiting guests scheduled non-stop for a few weeks, so we decided to not add to the stress by showing up.

Crail Ranch Trail

Instead, we split time skiing at Big Sky with hiking our favorite trails like Ousel Falls and Crail Ranch  until Amy and Lukas arrived for a few days. 

Amy, Lukas, Julie and I were all warmly welcomed to amazing skiing and wonderful apres-ski happy hours at their YC condo.  What an amazing time we had!

The four days of skiing provided totally unique skiing experiences.  The first day was the perfect bluebird day with enough of a base and light fresh powder.  The second day was warm again and showing need for snow but still great.  Snow began that evening and went all through the next day, when we had a challenging day of deep powder that worked our leg muscles hard.

Appropriately, blue skies and sunshine returned for the last day of skiing, where we found all that deep powder perfectly groomed to make us all feel like we must be expert skiers on even black diamond faces.

In addition to all the fun times at YC, we also enjoyed going to Tips Up for Totchos, Outlaw Amber Ale and such.  Amy and I played several games of Cribbage.  We watched the lavish-lifestyle inspired "House of Gucci" and a period mystery, "An Inspector Calls," on Amazon.

The former was recommended by Darlene and Brooks.  Because Amy and Lukas were on east coast time, we split the movie over a couple of nights.  We all enjoyed it.  The other movie was very different, and also held our interest.  It is always fun sharing a movie experience and then talking about it.

One afternoon, we learned that on his last ski run of the day down some double black diamond run, BG3 had come across what looked to be a helmet sitting in snow and only skied close out of curiosity.  It turned out to be a on the head of a man and with a boy in his arms, who were trapped at the bottom of a cliff almost buried in snow.  

BG3 said that it looked like who he thought was the the dad had taken off his skis to try to help the boy climb out and then sunk lower.  Even the motion of the dad reaching for a cell phone seemed like it resulted in them sinking deeper into the snow.  I would guess from experience in my shallower foot-holes off the Uplands Trail that the snow felt like quicksand.

BG3 told them to hold still and he would go get ski patrol, as having three down in a pit is no better than two, especially if no one else went down that run until it was too late.

The next day, BG3 asked someone from ski patrol if the father and son were okay and was told that the boy was doing better and getting good care at a hospital.  

BG3 revealed that and more details over a delicious Mexican food dinner dinner at Alberto's in Big Sky Town Center.

Fast forward to a few days later, and I opened youtube to see the video below. Something instinctively told me that this was about the boy whose life BG3 had saved, and it was!  Megyn doesn't mention him, and in fact I think she should have reached out to learn his name to thank him, but nonetheless it is an interesting finish to the story.