Yurt For Sale

With the Bear Den complete Denison no longer needs the big yurt. He has put it up for sale for $1500. It is an all natural, hand made, Mongolian yurt. The yurt is big enough that he had three beds, a couch and a small stove inside. It is very comfortable living.

VFW 1st Annual Quad Run and Pig Roast

The VFW in Maxville will be hosting a quad adventure and pig roast on Saturday, September 26th, starting at 11am. Altoona Ridge Lodge will host quad riders on their way to explore basins beyond the lodge. There will be a one night stay at the lodge, for two, given away on the day of the ride. Quad riders will be treated to beer along side the road as they tour into the early afternoon. After the ride the VFW will host the pig roast and it will be wrapped up in time for participants to watch the evening Griz Football game. Should be a fun event, especially with some nice weather.

Racetrack Peak

This past weekend I took several friends from Missoula gear shops up to the lodge. I put them to work Saturday creating a massive bonfire stack to be burned this winter. On Sunday, I took the guys up Racetrack Peak which is about six miles from the lodge. The tour first takes you to Goat Mt., which at just over 9200' offers great view of the Flint Creek and Pintler Mountain ranges. The photo below looks toward Racetrack from Goat's summit.


From Goat we continued over a dramatic alpine ridge connecting Goat and Racetrack. The ridge stays at about 9000' between the summits, which all sit above 9200', with Racetrack at about 9500'. It is sort of surreal hiking in alpine environments like this with sprawling meadows and mountains all around you.

Once we reached Racetrack's north ridge we decided to climb the spine of the ridge which offered some mild exposure and very fun boulder scrambling. Below Nate and Brett descend the ridge.

At the summit we enjoyed lunch and looked at some great ski lines. Overall a fun day and I can't wait to tour this in the winter.

Get Pumped!

Rain unable to stop Bear Den progress

Denison and Jamie have been making some serious progress on the Bear Den, and it is really starting to take its final form. The trickiest part had to be getting the trusses in place way up on the roof, but everything seems to have gone smoothly. Although it has been nice to get the moisture the rain has been slowing the process. Once the roof is up there will be a nice dry place to work and we can do the inside work. It would be great to have this done as nature seems to be throwing fall at us early. I can't wait to go up this week! More on the progress after my trip.

The Bear Den is starting to look liveable

Jamie, wishing the roof guy would get to work

Roof Assembly

Denison is making serious progress on the new bunkhouse. The frame was up last week when I was last up there and it looks like he is starting to put up the trusses for the roof. Looks like he was able to lift the heavy trusses with the excavator, saving a big hassle as those things are preassembled and very heavy. Looking forward to seeing this building at completion, it's looking great.

Bunkhouse nearing completion

Few more days left with the big machine/toy

The area

When I talk to people around town about the lodge the first question that usually comes up is what kind of terrian the lodge accesses. Having hiked around I can safetly say there is an unbelievable amount of quality ski descents. Below is an image from Google Earth showing prominent peaks that are easily within a day tour from the lodge. Feel free to leave any questions about terrain offerings in the comment section and I can ellaborate on what is back there.