Back Country Riding

Ever wanted to ride the back country but thought it was too expensive? In this article I'll be telling you the secrets of getting to the back country as cheap as possible while maintaining the highest level of fun expected from a top touring company.
First of all I'd like to introduce myself, my name is Derek and I have been an avid snowboarder since I was about 9 years old. I currently live in Colorado working in the winter as a snowboard instructor at Vail and in the summer I teach mountain biking. This is all good and fun and it's what I love to do but in the winter seasons I also plan and sometimes guide back country tours, which is by far the most exciting and my passion. I'm certified in First Aid, CPR, Avalanche Safety, Climbing/Ice Climbing just to name a few. Ok so here's the rest of the story.
As I grew up in Minnesota and my snowboarding progressed I needed a little more than the Minnesota hills had to offer. I first came to Colorado in high school on a snowboarding trip with all my buddies. We loved it so much we went every year after that doing what everyone does - road trip out to Colorado and rent a condo in one of the towns like Breckenridge or Vail and spend over $100 a day just to ski the mountains. These trips became expensive roughly $800-$1200 each and one by one my friends dropped out of the tradition because of money issues, and to be honest we hit almost every major mountain in Colorado and it was losing its.... well.... awesomeness....

I decided to take a new approach with the trip and plan a back country riding expedition that would be both cheap and re-vamp that extreme excitement and adrenaline we needed. Heli-Skiing or (Boarding in our case) is obviously the ultimate goal but still a little too expensive for a bunch of college kids on a budget. I searched and searched for back country tours in Colorado and they were still expensive ($300-$500) a day. The biggest factor in finding cheap deals is to not follow the herd. I steered away from Colorado and looked in the Wyoming area and BOOM prices dramatically decreased. I was looking at numerous lodges in the mountains (which I'll name in the next post) that roomed very cheap, and also rented out nice mountain snowmobiles for around $200 for a full day without a guide. These snowmobiles were 2 person machines, so that's $100 a person for a full day of shredding the sled and pickin your own lines! This worked great we had a group of 8 so we rented 4 snowmobiles (at a discount since there was 4) and we just switched off every run rider and driver. It worked out fantastic! When it was all said and done the trip cost me about $500 and the amount of fun we had on the 7 day trip was better than any other winter trip I had been on.
In my next post I will break down this first trip I took to Wyoming back in 2010 step by step cost by cost so that you can have this amazing experience for cheap and not have to deal with the crowds and long lines!