Missing Lolo Peak Skier found dead near peak

6/21 UPDATE : KPAX - Skier died in avalanche

A very sad and horrible reminder of how hostile a June ski outing in Montana can be. The details have not been disclosed. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family of this young gentlemen.

The weather was quite bad the past few days. This morning from the Missoula Valley one could see the snowline had dropped down to nearly 5500 feet. The Stuart Peak snotel shows that 10" of wet heavy snow fell since Tuesday the 15th of June. Temperatures were around 33 degrees, which would have made for a very wet heavy snowfall.

"A 38-year-old skier who had been missing in the Lolo Peak area since Tuesday was found dead high in the backcountry on Friday morning. Missoula County Sheriff Mike McMeekin said the man's body was located by ground search crews near the top of Lolo Peak at 9:20 a.m., but had not yet been recovered.

"They located his skis first, and then found his body nearby," said McMeekin, who said the initial search crew did not speculate how the skier had died.

Search and rescue crews from Missoula County, together with a helicopter search crew from Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, spent all day Thursday searching for the man, who was first reported missing on Wednesday night after he failed to show up at work......"

September snow!

The last week has brought a bit of winter into the surrounding hills of Missoula. There haven't been any signs of flakes in the valley but its exciting none the less. We've had 2 seperate occasions where its rained or at least sprinkled for 1-2 days. That feels great compared to the scorcher of a summer that we had last year. Last year brought record temps in July (11 days of triple digit temperatures), while this summer I'm not sure we had any triple digits?

Today the clouds finally broke enough to see up towards Snowbowl, what did I see? Snow, thats right. Not a bad way to start off Septemeber. The Stuart Peak Snotel site said it was 36 degrees at 3pm and dropping. We actually had to turn on the heat in the house for the first time since June. Time to get serious about the knee......winter is around the corner :-).

Here's a picture from this morning, Sept. 2nd. Lolo Peak looking good