Lost Trail Powder Mountain sits right on the Montana-Idaho state line, straddling the Continental Divide at Lost Trail Pass on US Highway 93. The name tells you almost everything you need to know: this is a powder mountain, and it's lost - in the best possible sense - in one of the most remote and beautiful corners of the northern Rockies. The ski area has been operating since the 1930s, making it one of the oldest in Montana, and it remains a not-for-profit, community-oriented operation with no corporate ownership, no resort village, and no pretensions beyond providing excellent skiing in extraordinary surroundings. The Bitterroot Mountains rise on all sides, the nearest town of any size is Hamilton, about 90 minutes north, and the silence on the mountain is the kind that only genuine remoteness can produce.

Lost Trail ski resort covers around 1,800 acres with a vertical drop of 450 metres (1,480 feet) from a summit of approximately 2,460 metres. The resort runs 60 trails served by six lifts, including two triple chairs and two double chairs. Terrain is weighted towards the challenging end, with roughly 20% beginner, 40% intermediate, and 40% advanced and expert. For UK visitors, North American resorts use a different rating system: green circles for beginners, blue squares for intermediates (spanning a wider range than European blues), black diamonds for advanced terrain, and double black diamonds for expert-only runs. There's no direct equivalent to European reds. The Continental Divide location is a snow magnet, with average annual snowfall of around 9 metres - among the highest in Montana - and the cold, high-altitude climate produces the dry, light powder that the northern Rockies are famous for. The season typically runs from early December through early April.

Beyond the slopes, Lost Trail is emphatically a mountain-in-the-wilderness proposition. The base area has a small day lodge and that's essentially it. There's no village, no shopping, no nightlife, and the nearest restaurant is in Sula or Conner, each about 25 minutes away along the Bitterroot Valley. What there is, in abundance, is wild, untrammelled mountain country: the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness to the west, the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness to the east, elk in the meadows, and some of the most unspoiled mountain scenery in the lower 48 states. For skiers who care about powder, solitude, and the price of a lift ticket, Lost Trail is something close to paradise. Check out Lost Trail ski deals to start planning your trip.