POWDER SKIING WITH DALE

I did something that I normally don't do and that is go skiing on Saturday at our local resort Lost Trail.  It is usually only open Thursday through Sunday and I ski "Powder Thursday" and then Friday or Sunday if they have new powder.  Well, our powder has been a little slim lately and there was a lot of snow forecast for Friday night so my powder skiing friend Dale and I decided to go.  Well the powder skiing was great, BUT there was only 2 inches of new snow at the resort near Missoula so that town came down here.  Saturdays are always crowded as lots of local folks come out to ski on that day and with the increase of the Missoula powder hounds it was crowded.  We know of some tree skiing that a lot of folks don't so we had a good time, but the lift lines were crazy.

These three pictures (kind of like a panoramic) show just how crowded Chair 4 was.  Click any picture to enlarge.

     

Dale at the bottom of some tree skiing.

UPDATE 29 JANUARY 2016

It has bee a little while since I have updated this blog so thought I would give it a try.  Been doing some skiing but have not taken very many pictures.  Skiing by myself doesn't lend itself to picture taking.  And most of the time when skiing with others, we just don't stop while doing powder runs.  And the rest of the pictures are ones that I scanned while working on another project.

The only picture taken in 4 times skiing.  This is when we are all done and having a bite to eat before we head home.  It was a cold powder day with the wind really blowing.

 Back in 1975 I was one of the pilots flying this helicopter down to Hollywood for the interior shots and some sound things they could only do down there for the movie Airport 75.  From left to right: the stunt man, Scotty one of the PJs, George Kennedy, Ralf (flight engineer) Charlton Heston, Don(PJ#2), Bob Smith (pilot), and myself (pilot).  Really enjoyed talking to George Kennedy as he was just a great person and liked to hang out with our crew.  Most of the filming was done in Utah and most of us instructor pilots participated.  Since I was the scheduler, I saved my flying for going down to Hollywood!

Kennedy signing an autograph for our admin officer standing behind him.

Pictures of the movie folks working around the aircraft. 

My official retirement ceremony at the Air Force Base.

And the REAL retirement ceremony at the cabin.

Zeke and I sharing a little champagne.

And him congratulating me on my retirement and joining the Pro Leisure Circuit.  It is coming up on 25 years that Connie and I have been on the circuit.  That is 5 years longer than I was in the Air Force.

Me and another of the 71st pilots down at Deep Creek catching our limit of king salmon.  This is probably 1978.

This picture should be the last in this sequence as this is when Gary, Connie, and I got back from a pack trip along the Ravalli and Granite county divide trail.  We started up the east fork of the Bitterroot  and rode to the top and along the ridge line that divides the two counties in the Saffire Mountains to the head of Willow Creek and then rode on down to Gary's place.  It was over 60 miles and we spent 6 days doing it.

The horses with feed bags on.  We tie them to an overhead picket line during the night and when feeding them their grain or saddling and unsaddling.

This place is called the Rooster Comb and  was one of the hardest parts of the trail to get the horses down this rock slide.

At the bottom of the comb.

Over at the ranch milking one of the red cows to get colostrum for her weak calf.

Suckling a calf whose mother was not a good mother.  This is the squeeze chute at the board shed calving lot as is the one above.

OLD ALASKA MILITARY PICTURES

As most of you know, Connie and I were stationed in Alaska for 12 of our 20 years in the military.  Some of the best flying in the world.  I was lucky to fly the HC-130 in Elmendorf and the HH-3 and the CH-3 helicopter at Eielson. All were Air Force Rescue aircraft although the CH-3 did mostly range support for the gunnery/bombing ranges, Poker Flat Research Facility, Arctic Survival School, and Air Force Technical Application Center (AFTAC).  I got to see a lot of that state from the air as well as the ground and sea.

The tradition of getting hosed down by the fire department when you had your last flight in an aircraft is what you are looking at here.  This is the HC-130 and was a great airplane.  I landed on many dirt runways with it as well as hard surfaced ones.  I loved the original paint job of the Alaskan Air Command aircraft.

These are a couple of pictures when they closed my helicopter unit at Eielson AFB.  A bunch of the pilots gave me some funny awards and we topped it off with a volleyball game.

Here we are supporting the AFTAC,s remote seismic monitoring station up by Ft. Yukon.

This was our hanger with the official name of Nose Dock 2.

And this was one of my favorite missions.  Taking Christmas presents to some of the remote native villages along with a Santa Clause always brought some smiles to your face.

These two pictures are when we were supporting Poker Flat by recovering rockets that they had launched out of the facility near Fairbanks.  The one above is me talking with one of their folks figuring out how we were going to get the rocket that is over the hill from where we are talking.  Below we had managed to land close and they were out picking up the payload while we pilots were having tea and coffee.

And below are a few pictures of other aircraft.

This is the T-38 and in the front seat is Bob Stroup who was the best man at our wedding.  Bob was one of the best pilots I ever flew with.  He also flew helicopters and fixed wing.  His last aircraft was the F-15.

This is the first aircraft I ever flew.  The Th-55 was an Army trainer that was pretty fun to fly.  I am on the left and that is John Sfier who was killed in a rescue mission off the coast of New York in the late 1970's.

And this is a picture of Connie in front of an A-10. 

SOME MORE OLD PICTURES

Thought I would post a few pictures that I scanned from some albums we have.  Had to do it for another project so thought I would include some of them on the blog.

We had some cold nights in North Pole, AK, but this I think was the coldest.

And we had a lot of snow some years, but this is the most we had at our little cabin in the woods.

Nephew Carl with a nice halibut.

This is how we got many of our salmon for eating in the winters.  Went down to the Copper River near Chitna and dip netted them.  At that time we were allowed 25 per family in the subsistence program.  The other guys are military folks in my unit up there. One person would drive the boat and the other two would man the dip nets.

Connie and I in front of the Mayberry Boxcar - one of the boxcars we lived in.

Connie with a couple of nice halibuts.  Zeke is saying "I know what we are having for supper tonight".

This picture was taken down at Deep Creek in early May as I said I was going to meet the first King Salmon coming up the Cook Inlet on their way to the spawning grounds right after I retired.  There was no one else fishing there for the first few days and we caught quite a few.

Ethan and Tom William's daughter Jennifer on Tom's boat out in the Seward area.

Ethan catching a red salmon on the Russian River.

POWDER SKIING IN THE TREES

We went skiing at Lost Trail yesterday and met up with our friend Dale Stovall who I was in the Air Force with.  We had one of the best powder days so far this year skiing the thinned trees over on Chair 4.  The powder was not that deep, but it was consistent and fluffy.  Just up the chairlift, then down the runs and repeat as fast as we could.  Did stop for a coffee at the yurt once and that was it.  We could have skied longer than the 2 pm we had to call it quits because Connie had a physical therapy appointment and Dale had a meeting in Missoula.  But it was really a great day.  Only stopped once to take two pictures which are below.

SKIING WHITEFISH MOUNTAIN

We went up to Whitefish, MT for a little skiing and to attend a Special Forces function.  We were the guests of Ike and Brenda at a function where the Montana Chapter sponsored young Special Forces personnel and their families on a week vacation of skiing or dog sledding all paid for by the chapter. What a great thing it was to see the smiles on these families faces in anticipation of learning to ski or riding in a sled pulled by dogs.  We went up a few days early to do some skiing before they got there.  The day they arrived, there was a great buffet where they met with many of the Chapter's members.  It was very nice and Connie and I had a great time.    And we really enjoyed skiing Whitefish Mountain as it is now called.  For years it was called "Big Mountain" and it lives up to that old name.  Lots of runs all over the place and lots of fast chair lifts.  I  would love to have been able to ski powder but there was none.  I WILL be back to do it one of theses days.

On our first day of skiing, we spent the morning just looking around and skiing a few runs.

Had a little lunch and refreshments while waiting for some of the Special Ops guys to show up at noon and take us around to some of their favorite runs. 

Here we are stopped at the famous statue of Jesus at the top of one of the runs.

These are some of the members of the MT Chapter.  And let me tell you most of these guys can really ski.

Connie, Brenda, and a daughter of one of the guys.

 

The statue of Jesus.

In the late afternoon we stopped in at the summit lodge and watched the end of the Seahawk - Vikings game.  The lodge was full of folks supporting their favorite team.  

A panorama of the summit.

The next day we skied with Kelly (wife of one of the guys we skied with the day before), Annette and Shawn from Missoula, Ike, Connie, and Brenda.

Connie coming through the trees.

Headed to the bottom at the end of the second day.  In the background you can see some of the lower ski area runs.  It is a big ski area.