1st Real Day at JHMR

Finally, we had a "real" ski weekend at the village. You might ask, what does real mean?

• All lifts open


• Deep powder


• Good friends

A few notes from the fist days of powder at the village:

• People live in Jackson ski FAST


• Cowboy powder beats Cascade cement


• The village is rocky (I compressed my toe side edge)


• It was great to run into a mix of new and old friends on the hill


• Brad skied 9-4 on Saturday!!!

Andy Making 1st Tracks on Edelweiss

If you look carefully you can see the top of the bowl in the background. This picture was from our run on Wednesday.

Deep Pow to Stuck at Home

Yesterday I was privy to being in a party that broke trail on the way to Edelweiss at Teton Pass. We were the 2nd group to decend and enjoyed 2 feet of untracked snow. Total time from car - ski - car was about 1.5 hours.

Today is another story. With the additional snow and heavy winds the avy danger bumped up to HIGH. That means DONT SKI THE PASS, so I am stuck at home.

Teton Pass Ambassador

A Wilson resident, Jay Pistono, has been named the first "Ski Ambassador for Teton Pass". Here are the issues that I hope can be resolved:

1. Parking - we need a better system because the lot is always full. I am not sure if a shuttle is the answer, but something needs to be done. A shuttle might encourage more knuckleheads to ski on the pass which will endanger everyone.

2. Backcountry ethics - people ski the pass as if it's an inbounds ski area. We need to promote safety and responsibility and encourage people to watch out for others.

Jay has his work cut out for this winter. I wish him luck and hope that I can help him address the 2 issues above. Either way, being a ski ambassador for Teton Pass is a cool job.

Impact

Have you ever wondered how fast you hit the snow after jumping a cliff? Check out the splat tool to determine the exact speed of your impact.

It makes me want to stick to small cliffs. What about the guy who hucked the world record at Targhee last year? I wonder how fast he was falling!

Christmas Tree Hunting

img083.jpg
Originally uploaded by krughb.

On Sunday we hiked into Darby Canyon on the west side of the Teton Mountains to cut down a Christmas tree. This is my first “real” Christmas tree and I am enjoying the wonderful smell of a fresh tree in our house. We did fall into the standard trap of finding a “small” tree in the forest which ended up being a HUGE tree when it arrived home. I think it grew 2 feet during the 30 minute drive home. It’s a good thing that we have tall ceilings.

Tree dimensions: 10+ feet tall – 7 feet wide.

Top of Glory

Top of Glory
Originally uploaded by krughb.

I hiked Glory (North of Teton Pass) for the first time this winter during an extended lunch break today. 2,000 ft up -- 2,000 ft down on a snowboard. The lack of snow and the warm sun made the run challenging. However it felt good to get outside and get exercise.

High and Dry in the Tetons

Teton County is officially high and dry. We only have a 35 inch base of snow in the mountains which is just enough to cover the rocks under a few inches of snow. This makes for what should be excellent ski runs interwoven with rocky land mines on Teton Pass.

The Jackson Hole Mountain Resort opened 2.5 trails last weekend and without new snow we will be stuck skiing the same 2.5 trails again this weekend. The crazy part about ski resorts is how they get away with how 2.5 trails equals 11 on the ski report. I guess the trails must change names every 500 feet.

The 2.5 open trails are serviced by a highspeed quad that whisks riders up 2,100 vertical feet in only a few minutes. This enabled me to ski over 16,000 vertical feet in under 2 hours last weekend. It was good training for my legs.