Take time Now to Plan your Awesomeness!

While winter affords a lot of opportunities here in Montana, some of my favorite trips are when the days are long, and the mountains are alive.

So each year, around the middle of January and through February, I start figuring out where I want to go this summer. What adventures will I embark upon? Which mountains need me to climb them? How many lakes can I fish in order to put even more pins in my maps (I have maps of the Beartooths with pins in them where I’ve camped, climbed, and fished)?

Between those ice climbing, sledding, and snowshoeing trips, here’s how to decide where to go when the weather perks up a bit.

Determine Which Area to Explore

We have a ton of awesome places within an hour’s drive of Billings. The first step to figuring out your summer time adventures is to figure out where you want to go.

Will you head southwest to the Beartooth Mountains to explore the miles upon miles of trails?

Will you head south to the Pryor Mountains to discover their magic and mysticism?

Or perhaps you will go north to the Big Snowies and see what Crystal Lake is all about?

Will you go somewhere else?

Decide Your Route and Timeline

Now that you have the area nailed down, it’s time to get a little more specific.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of trails throughout all of the mountains we have near Billings. You can spend hours on them, or days on them. It all depends on how deep you want to adventure into the woods.

When trying to decide, I like to use the All Trails app. You can search the map view and see all of the known trails from just about anywhere.

Once you have the place, the route, now it’s a matter of determining how many days you’ll spend outside.

Determine the Best Dates

Locking in a date is more important than a lot of people think. It’s easy to just say “sometime this summer” and then never actually get any adventures in. When you pick a date, you have it locked in place and now it’s going to happen, not just hopefully going to happen.

Of course dates are a bit more important than just locking things in.

Places like the Pryor Mountains are a little warmer and dryer than places in the Beartooths. So you can get into your Pryor Mountain adventures a lot sooner than you can get into your Beartooth Mountain adventures.

Even in the Beartooths, you can visit places like Mystic Lake as early as May or early June. But if you’re going to climb Granite Peak, you have to wait a little longer so that the snow up high can melt away.

Set up those dates, and make sure you’re ready as the date approaches.

Get Excited for your Adventures

Now that you have your summer adventures locked in, enjoy the rest of the winter that Montana has in store for us.

Get out there and do a little ice climbing.

Hit the trails for a snowshoeing adventure.

Or just grab a sled in town, and slippity slide down the hillside.

Adventure planning is a whole lot easier when you have a great home base to recoup, plan, and relax in. If you’re trying to find the right place for you and your family, then it’s time to get in contact with Liz Francis with North Acre Real Estate. Her expert knowledge of Billings, can find you the right home in the right neighborhood.

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