Welcome to First False Spring, Try to Stay Sane

Maggie Slepian

It’s March, the start of the in-between season. In the frozen tundra I call home, this is the beginning of a freeze-thaw cycle that lasts long enough to make even the most mentally stable outdoors individual lose their mind. Here in Montana, we are at the end of Big Winter and the start of the First False Spring. We’ve had a week of sunny temperatures in the high 40’s, which out here, feels like bathing suit weather. We stroll down Main Street in spring jackets and sunglasses, stepping over the crusty remnants of snow in the gutter and puddles in the crosswalks. But our dingy winter boots wait inside the front door, and our down jackets are still hanging on the hooks, because next week will be back to below-freezing temperatures, snow flurries, and sliding on ice in the driveway trying to take the trash out.

That will be Second Winter, followed immediately by Second False Spring, then Third Winter. Finally, by the tail end of April, we will be in True Spring, also known as Mud Season. 

If the north-facing icy slopes of trails don’t knock your teeth out during Mud Season, the ankle-sucking goop of south-facing trails will do you in. This is the most challenging season for outdoors people at our latitude, and the fact that the weather goes back and forth between sunny and sleeting doesn’t help. 

We are just entering the between-time, the shoulder season. While we might have a few days of fluffy, fresh snow and then a few days of sunny spring skiing left, most of our snowpack is unstable, icy, old, or tracked out. So the skiing isn’t great anymore, but it’s too muddy to pull out the mountain bike lest you ruin the trails for the upcoming dry season. The lower running and hiking trails are alternating ice and mud, but the higher trails are still snowed-in and inaccessible for backpacking.

We are relegated to a collection of dirt roads, in-town trails, and alternative activities. I was working from one of those weird greenhouse things for Covid-time coffee shops when my friend pulled off her noise-cancelling headphones and invited me out on a classic early shoulder-season outing, i.e. a dirt road on the west side of town. 

“The first two miles of River Road are dry, if you want to bike or run,” she said. I declined. I’d rather wallow in the human greenhouse than trudge along the only dry section of anything, on which I spend too much time during the three false springs I know are hurtling at us.

In years past I would have taken trips to warmer climates to get my “outside time” allotment while Montana gets its sh*t together. March and April are prime months for desert backpacking, mountain biking, and climbing, and I’ve taken trips over the past few years with Jeff, as well as with my crew of lady crushers. But, alas, Covid has planted us mostly in our immediate locales, which means post-holing to south-facing climbing areas, taking the cat on walks, and finding other ways to stay sane while the skiing is bad and the trails are sheets of ice. 

I play airsoft with a bunch of other adults out on a wind-swept ridge above the Madison River. It’s a perfect shoulder-season activity, where it needs to be cold enough to wear layers (the BBs hurt!) but the ground should be dry. We meet up every few weeks and run around the hills and drainages, shooting each other from behind rocks with the biodegradable pellets, darting in and out of trees and wheezing at the sudden cardio after a season of downhill skiing.

The other day Jeff dragged me from where I’d melted into the couch, with the promise of walking the cat around the park. This outing was an activity we would never do if there was quite literally anything else to do. I spent time downtown last week and walked around the parks with a friend, looking at different spaces between trees that will be prime for setting up a slackline when the weather gets warm enough for lounging.

This time is rough in Montana, but it forces us to get creative. We run through our arsenal of outdoor activities: if the in-town trails suck for Nordic skiing, the ski resort runs are old and crusty, and the trails are still sheets of ice, we still usually get out of the house and find something to do. Sometimes it’s chasing each other around hills overlooking a spring-swollen river, training the cat to walk on a leash, or simply enjoying the fact that it’s warm enough to walk to a coffee shop. At least we know the patterns of “spring” around here, and once summer arrives for real, it’s no-holds barred on All The Things. 

At least, that’s what helps me get through the next two months.