Skiing Quadrant Mountain

Over Easter weekend Mike and I joined a few friends for a spring ski tour up Quadrant Mountain in Yellowstone National Park. 

Elements of mystery are inherent in many spring ski tours. Will there there be sufficient coverage? What will the weather do? Will the snow conditions hold up? What about the creek crossings?

As I began writing up this post I realized that our outing was very much like our tour up Sepulcher in 2021 where we asked the same questions, didn't know what to expect, and a web search that revealed nothing about skiing it. As with Sepulcher, we got very lucky and everything worked out perfectly. 

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Quadrant Mountain is in one of Yellowstone's bear management areas.The park aims to protect and manage its bear population and bear management areas are places "where bears seasonally concentrate and where there is a high density of elk or bison carcasses." To reduce encounters between bears and humans, recreational activities are limited at specific times of year. 

The area we explored prohibits off-trail travel from May 1 through November 10, so we were able to squeeze the ski in just before off-trail access closed. Interestingly, there are no trails up Quadrant so you can't visit it in the summer when it is free of snow. 

Off-trail travel prohibited most of the year + no trails in the area = a mountain summit visited by few. Our group was stoked to explore this area on skis.

The day started in our rented stone house in Gardiner. No one was up for an alpine start and one member of our party was motived to take on breakfast duty so we enjoyed waffles and coffee before taking off. While these were nice comforts, I wondered if we were taking it too leisurely. Were pushing out fate with the finicky spring weather?

At 8:15, under bluebird skies, we began our shuffle across the sagebrush flats. What was in store was TBD. As with many spring ski tours, would the day be epic or character building? Would we reach our goal or would we be content saying, “Well, any day in the mountains is a good day.” Either way, we were up for the adventure.

After traversing the flats we began wiggling a jagged path up a densely timbered hillside. Here stepped over downed trees as we looked for passage ways through the tangled forest. It wasn't too long before the trees opened up and we were faced with a section of steep, firm kick turns, which, thankfully, was short and did not require ski crampons. 

This section was followed by a mix of snow, rocks, dirt, and sagebrush. Here we boot packed up the steep slope and made it to the ridge. 

The plateau of Quadrant is magical landscape. The area is wide open and mellow, and there's a feeling of being surrounded by infinite sky and snow. It was just our posse in this still and unembellished area; the beauty stark yet powerful. We enjoyed the solitude along with the Tetons, the Beartooths, and other mountain ranges off in the distance. 

Onward we shuffled and at one point we came across a scattered pile of shed elk antlers, their pointy tips protruding from the snow. Near one set of antlers, a strange mount of dirt caught our eye. Perhaps a bear's stash? We envisioned the rest of the elk was buried below. This must be the "high density of elk or bison carcasses" the park services mentioned on it webpage. 

After snapping a few photos it was time to drop in. Our descent began as we made our first turns off of the ridge and navigated a bit of sastrugi, luckily not too steep or firm. We traversed right to avoid the cliffs and soon found ourselves at the top of our run - 1,400 feet of continuous, 35 degree, fall line skiing.

Our descent was a delight; a mix of delicate crust that crinkled like cellophane and broke easily under our skis, lumpy but pliable piles of snow that caused no problems, and stretches of buttery corn perfect for arcing efforts turns. It was really nice spring conditions but not the "best-ever" kind that make you want belt out John Denver tunes. 

At the bottom, we had snacks, admired our tracks, and enjoyed the sun and each others company. It was tempting to linger but we knew we had a long trudge ahead of us. 

After navigating a short downhill through the trees, we were back at the flats. Animal prints ran off in all directions, bison sat lump-like on a distant hillside, and a sandhill crane squawked as it flew overhead. Solid snow turned into navigable ribbons but in a few sections we were forced to take skis off and had to bushwhack through the sagebrush. It was a glorious Yellowstone terrain, but it soon got monotonous. 

Despite constant sun, the day was never too hot and temperature management was easy. There were few wisps of clouds throughout our tour and occasionally a short breeze. Skies clouded up the last 45 minutes of our tour, and we returned to the trailhead in cool, pleasant weather.

Done!

Triumphant

Tackling this 9.5 hour tour left me buoyant, my ego puffed up, but I was tired and ready for a rest at the same time. Everyone, even the fittest among us, was glad it was over. 

Once again, we managed to do another spring ski tour in Yellowstone where everything worked out perfectly. Ski conditions held up and the route-finding worked although we had moments of careful map reading and doubt that it would come together as well as it did. Overall, it was a stellar five-star day.

How I posed after the tour.

How I really felt after the tour

Some may question why I share this magical tour with others. Won't writing about it on a blog "ruin" it? Don't you want to keep "everyone" from going there? Valid questions for sure, but I'm not worried about this one. The Quadrant Mountain ski tour produces nowhere near the same number of turns you'd get in other similar length ski tours. It's a long tour for minimal turns, the weather can be hard to time, and it you don't want to strap skis to your bike (The road to the trailhead doesn't open until mid-April), there is a limited window to ski Quadrant. For many, it will be a "once and done" ski. Plus, I haven't given you an GPS coordinates so any one who tries it will have to figure it out like we did.

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Read more about long ski tours...

Here are a few stories about long ski tours in the Alps, on the Blaze, and on the Sphinx. 

If you read this blog you may be sensing a pattern - long tours with minimal turns. Here are posts about two others - the Ultimate Tootle, the Chestnut Traverse. 

The day after the tour...scouting out another objective.