Trip Report - Spring Skiing in Cooke City, MT with Blizzard Tecnica

Featured Image: Rick Sorensen | Skier: Piper Kunst

"Can you get there by 8:30 tomorrow morning?" When someone asks you this question regarding a mission to Cooke City, Montana, it's irrelevant whether you have to wake up at 4 a.m. to accomplish the goal. You say yes.

I was stumbling my way back home to the Treasure State after an incredible week at Sugar Bowl Resort for The Silver Belt freeride competition when this inquiry landed in my inbox. And while some would say that April is the time of year when the mind switches from skiing to... anything else, others would argue that April is one of the best months for turns in the high alpine. The snowpack tends to stabilize, you've got more daylight to work with and the weather can be a bit friendlier.

As the knowledgeable faces of Beartooth Mountain Guides would confirm just days later, this is true for skiing in the Beartooth Mountains, the peaks that tower over Cooke City. And if proper turns weren't enough to incentivize the mission, the goal certainly was. It was a simple concept: link up with the Blizzard Tecnica crew and put the new Decoy Pro touring boot plus the Canvas 108 and 118 skis to work.

So, after pulling into my driveway with grime from California, Nevada, and Idaho still fresh on my tires, I threw in a load of laundry, put fresh batteries in my beacon, mowed down a Rainer and began reorganizing for the next endeavor. It was time to make the pilgrimage to the spring skiing mecca and sledneck capital of America: Cooke City.

It's that time of the year; the spring harvest is ON

Photo: Jordan Grant-Krenz | Skier: Rick Sorensen

An early-morning drive through Yellowstone National Park south of the Montana-Wyoming border yielded a staggering selection of views, an expected amount of coffee shakes and an assortment of bison herds stretched out across the Lamar Valley, bathed in the dawn's golden sunlight.

For the uninitiated, this route is standard operating procedure if you want to reach the thriving 150-person metropolis of Cooke City. The town is sandwiched between the northernmost major road in Yellowstone and the seasonally closed Beartooth Highway. Easily one of the best roadways on earth in the summer, the highway remains unplowed and covered in tens of feet of snow during the winter. By car, Cooke has but one way in and one way out when the snow falls. But by snowmobile and by foot, the possibilities are endless.

Cooke's reputation precedes it. It's perhaps the unofficial snowmobile capital of the world, with the colossal peaks of the Beartooth and Absaroka Mountains connected by rolling saddles and undulating hills. To the trained sledder, the possibilities are endless. And when you hit the wilderness boundaries surrounding town, that simply means it's time to break out the skins and put the legs to use.

Skiers like Wiley Miller, Jake Hopfinger and Parkin Costain are just some of the many legends who have staked their claim in these mountains. And as I pulled into town just after 8 a.m., I found that was exactly what Blizzard athletes Piper Kunst and Connery Lundin had set out to do in the early hours of the day. "Oh yeah, the rest of the crew is up there," Greg Fitzsimmons of Chair 6 PR said to me as I unloaded my bag. I looked to see he was pointing up to a Cooke classic line: The Fin.

Unsurprised but astonished, I quickly threw my bibs on, slipped into a pair of Tecnica's new Decoy touring boots and headed out to claim a sled. It was time to see what the hype was all about.

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After a radio and beacon check with Fitzsimmons, Brigid Mander and Max Ritter, we mounted up with Beartooth Mountain Guides co-owner Akio Joy and headed into the hills. The snow was still firm from the night before, but as we hummed through the trees and into the alpine, the sun worked its magic under blue skies.

Joy's knowledge of the landscape quickly had us on top of a gorgeous ridgeline as he shuttled us up from where we parked the sleds. A brief skin up said ridgeline revealed our first line. Variable conditions gave us all a hearty warm-up, but with a stable snowpack and ample smiles, it was clear this would be a stellar day.

We farmed our way back to the rest of the sleds, turning our attention to the other side of the bowl toward multiple chutes, as a whole dubbed Bob Marley and The Wailers. These chutes would require a slightly longer bootpack, but once again, Joy's flawless sled skills had us up there in no time as we took turns riding Canadian with the veteran guide making quick work of the faces. "So does this make you a closeted sledneck?" Fitzsimmons said with a laugh. "I guess you could call me that," Joy responded, smiling.

By the third run, Mander, Ritter and I looked farther down the ridgeline and eyed up three untouched lines, each walled off by rows of trees. With no hesitation, I offered to drop last, never one to pass up a serene moment in the high alpine. As the sounds of their pristine turns faded one by one into the valley, I scoured the endless sea of mountains on the horizon under the hazy blue sky. Radioing down, I meandered my way to the farthest skier's left chute before pointing 'em downhill and gleefully leaving my own mark on the blank face.

Tight turns opened up into full-speed lefts and rights before the pitch flattened, and like everything else that day, the Canvas 108 handled it all. It carries enough give to easily pivot in the trees and pop off fun transitions, yet still boasts a speed limit that lets you open it up for larger arcs. Our setups were complete with a Cast Freetour 2.0 Pivot 15, which is certainly on the heavier side when compared to true lightweight touring options. However, for sled laps, multi-mile day trips, or peace of mind on high-speed descents, there's no better option.

Blizzard Tecnica Decoy Boot — *The Decoy Pro skis as good as it looks, and that's saying something*

*Photo: Rick Sorensen*

Returning to the house, we reconvened with Kunst, Lundin and Blizzard Tecnica Marketing Content Manager and sex appeal Rick Sorensen. Depleted after their long mission up The Fin, they were recovering with a few well-earned refreshments. I slipped off my boots and promptly realized this was the first time all day that I had thought about my feet.

Let me preface this by saying I've skied plenty of boots that felt like... shit. I'm not someone who's convinced they can ski a pair of boots fresh out of the box and enjoy it. Nor am I a skier who thinks that because a boot hurts, it's a bad boot. If it fits, that's great, but the performance can still be subpar. The fact that Decoy Pro fit my foot great didn't impress me; that's just the luck of the draw. The fact that it did so much, so seamlessly, left me lost for words.

Throughout the day, I rocked the Decoy Pro on the sled while touring, bootpacking, and riding, sthen back on the sled. At no point did I think this boot didn't belong in the situation that I had put it in. As a hybrid touring boot, it makes sense that its alpine characteristics would be good, but to have it check all of those boxes and leave me ready for more was something I had never experienced before.

The boot rocks a four buckle package, weighing in at just 1,650 grams with a 99mm last. This makes the Decoy Pro 200 grams lighter than Tecnica's current hybrid touring offering, the Cochise, while being around 400 grams heavier than Tecnica's redesigned uphill workhorse, the Zero G Tour Pro. The extra weight is not in vain, as the reinforced Power Frame shell helps deliver the confidence-inspiring stability I enjoyed. While the Decoy will fall under the Zero G collection, it is far from a repeat and brings a wider range of options to the lineup.

"That's been the goal for a while; to build a boot that can truly hold up in multiple environments," Sorensen told me over dinner. "You can't always make the best of both worlds. Sometimes you don't accomplish anything if you take that approach. But this time, I think we've made a boot that really does satisfy concerns for the uphill while packing performance for the descent."

The crew puts the Decoy Pro to the test in Cooke

Photo: Rick Sorensen

Sorensen was describing something that most brands have attempted and failed at. But Tecnica isn't like most brands. The master Italian bootmakers have earned a robust reputation for good reason. However, craftsmanship alone doesn't get you good products. A cooperative team is needed to do that.

This thought permeated my mind as we happily tore through our steak dinner and hit the hay, and it remained as Sorensen, Lundin, Fitzsimmons, guided Austin Hart and me set out the next morning. I kept thinking about how the camaraderie this team shares translates into the products they're making.

Similarly to the previous day, we were treated to blue skies and soft snow by 11 A.M. After hot laps and a tour in the warm sun, we sat, happily depleated, in the basin next to our sleds. Over the radio, we heard the hoots and hollers of Kunst, Joy and friends, who had headed to the valley over to enjoy a few righteous lines of their own.

Radiating with excitement while debriefing our adventures over a game of poker that evening, I was once again convinced that a team's attitude determines the quality of their creations. There is no denying that Blizzard Tecnica has been a key player in the ski world for longer than I've been alive, and that's likely thanks to the continued evolution of this crew, bonded by a love for skiing and connected by an undisclosed mutual agreement to always take the craft seriously without taking themselves too seriously in the process.

Perhaps the success of the recently launched Canvas line or the positive early feedback on the upcoming Decoy Pro is due to technical superiority. Or perhaps it's because the engineers, front office folks and athletes here work in unison to perpetually create a brand and subsequent gear that they're proud to stand behind. As the beers flowed and the night faded into smiles and slumber, I was just happy to be along for the ride with a group as passionate as this one.

Departing Cooke the next morning after a brief but overtly successful mission, I felt comforted by the accuracy of my original logic: no matter the time, you always accept a last-minute invitation to a ski trip. With the right people, it's bound to turn out well. Corny? Absolutely. Correct? Without a doubt.

Editor's Note: In addition to the Decoy Pro, Blizzard will also be releasing the Zero G Decoy 115 W GW. Packing the same power transmission but with a lower cuff, stay tuned to FREESKIER this fall for more about this 2027 boot.