Skiing Sheep Mountain to Lockwood
This Saturday, 1/25/26, I linked up with Megan and a crew of three others for a ski tour in the Lockwood Area near Missoula. The plan was to link up both Sheep Mountain and Lockwood, skiing the bowls along the way. It was nice.
We started out around eight AM, a little late after a boot snafu, and enjoyed good, clouded-in skinning up until around 1550 meters when we made it above the cloud layer. Tracks everywhere in the snow, lots of rabbit and coyote.
Sheep Mountain
summit
Alex broke trail more or less the whole way up to the Sheep Mountain summit, and we had some exciting down-skinning to the saddle where we transitioned and skiied some bad crust to the valley floor.
Super blurry
footage of the ridgeline before bailing
We wandered back up to the ridge and traversed to the next bowl over where we briefly considered a super-steep line on the north side of the first bowl, but backed off after we decided it was too technical. The ridge exposure was pretty cool.
Skiing pretty good
snow in the second bowl
We did ski the next bowl over, which was much more shaded (and wildly colder!) and had good snow. We put in a way-too-steep skin track right back up the face, after which Megan and I decided to head back. The other three stayed out skiing and knocked out the other few bowls.
We were back at the car by 5 after doing some low-angle, variable snow and road skiing, with a little bit of skating. Good weather and good people. 15 miles and 6k feet of gain is a good day.
Gear experiments today: Brynje mesh baselayer, Central Park Ski Club full-length grips and ND filters on the GoPro. All successes, but I would have added a darker filter for the full-light sections on the GoPro. Shaded aspects were great.
