Idaho

We love Idaho. 
The first bit was crazy amounts of farm land, where we saw a hay explosion.  A tractor trailer truck that had been carrying hay lost it all over the off ramp, quite the impresive mess.  Into the foothills we traveled and by the time we fell asleep outside of Ketchem the snow had started to fall.  In the morning we crossed a river up to our knees to get some good soaking time in a hotsprings.  The river crossing was painful, especially when leaving the springs and the attempt to put our boots on and get to the car before freezing, but well worth it.  The springs came out of the riverbank into two pools that the forest service had built with river stones.  The spring was beautiful with green plants and lichens growing all around it, a great contrast with the new snow that was contining to fall. 
From there we headed north across Galena pass where we saw some great looking slopes and by now the snow was comming down like it does in a Nor Easter back home.  We pulled off and spoke to a local who told us about some lower angle slopes. We started up a slope called Avalanche Bowl, the name stirring the fear in us, as well as the short 30 degree pitches.  But all in all it was a low angle slope, and it was so deep that we couldn't stay vertical, we both ate powder at least 3 times, but got a few really nice turns in between.  Day 11 on our SplitBoards!
We kept going north in hopes to find a couple more hotsprings, unfortunately the ones we found were mixed with too much cold river water and we couldn't bear the chill. 
By 6:30pm we made it to Salmon, ID and Ben finally filled his growlers at the brewery.  A few hours later we crossed the boarder into Montana and spent the night in the Lost Trail Ski Area parking lot. 
It was still snowing and we were hoping for some good turns for the last day of 2011.