Jeff Schmerker
AKA, the Death Star
Now this is rare -- I've got free tickets to Snowbowl and the avalanche danger is low. I pick up Kevin at a leisurely hour and 25 minutes later we pull into the Snowbowl parking lot. I snag my free tickets and we take the Grizzly chair up, traverse a bit, and load on to the LaValle chair. From the top of LaVelle, it's a short schuss to the ski area boundary, where we gear up and start climbing. You can easily go around Point Six and save yourself a bit of effort, but the top has a great view of both the Rattlesnake Mountains and the Missoula Valley. Actually, it's not just those two you see, but on a clear day everything from the Great Burn to the Anaconda-Pintlars to the Swans and of course the Mission.
This peak bristles with radio equipment and the National Weather Service's dopler radar -- which some brilliant person dubbed the Death Star. We ski off the north face, into the wilderness.
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