Backcountry Skiing Gash Point

Gash Point is one of the more popular tours in the Bitterroot range for good reason - lots of low angle skiing with nice bowls at the top!

The Basics

• Seasonality/Snow: Depending on the snowpack, Gash can generally be skied from December to April from the car, and you can ski it later if you're down to hike.

• Parking: Be prepared to park a mile away from the lower trailhead, cars often get stuck if they push it.

Equipment

Depending on when you’re going and what the snow is like, you’ll need some equipment to keep having fun. There are the obvious ones, including your backcountry ski/splitboarding setup, personal safety gear (helmets, goggles, medkit, etc.), and appropriate layers to keep yourself warm and dry. And then there's the more technical gear

• Avalanche safety gear: beacon, shovel, probe, and the know-how to use it!

• Traction: you might benefit from ski crampons on the lower skin track, it can get icy.

• Radios: Radios are becoming more and more common in the backcountry skiing world, as they dramatically improve communication and safety.

• GPS/Navigation: Bring it and know how to use it!

A disclaimer on this description and included GPX track - this line was skied on a single day with certain snow and avalanche conditions. The track described is a reasonable way to move through this terrain, and the description below mentions some of the hazards found during the trip. However, conditions may be significantly different when you visit this area. The advice in this trip report is not meant to be followed perfectly - you will need to adapt the route for the conditions you find and for your party’s abilities.

The Trip

This is a very straightforward tour for the Bitteroots. Head from the lower trailhead up the skintrack to the upper trailhead (at 5,700'). From there, fiddle through the tight trees, following the skintrack up and northwest. At 6,200', you'll likely come to a fork in the skin track, stay right and head up the long low-angle slope, heading increasingly west. Near the top, you can descend the obvious bowl to skier's left, or tack on a bit more gain to get the summit views from Gash Point.

From the summit, traverse back over to the main Gash bowls and enjoy 600' of bowl turns before hopping back onto the ridge and cruising out the low angle trees back to the car!

If snow levels are extremely low and the lower skin track doesn't have much snow, you can skin the road between the upper and lower trailhead but this requires more climbing and a lot of hassle. It's easier just to boot down from the upper trailhead.

Please post an observation to the West Central Montana Avalanche Center after your trip, describing the travel conditions and snow stability you found! Submitting avy observations and writing trip reports on forums are great ways to contribute to the community and improve avalanche forecasts. It's also incredibly valuable to read the observations and trip reports written by others, as they'll help keep you updated on what the mountains are doing on a day-to-day basis. This will help determine whether you have a fun time next time you get out!