Jackson, 2/26-?

Yet more impromptus change of plans, mostly influenced by the weather.

Instead of heading up north to Canada to visit resorts I've rare/never been (Banff & Revelstoke), I'm staying in the same vicinity of where the snow were expected to hit. That is, Jackson Hole. The forecast is 1-3 inches each day for the next few days, with a storm total up to a foot!

This morning (2/26), mountain report was 2" overnight. On the mountain, especially upper mountain, it felt like more. Maybe 3"? Or even 4. It doesn't matter though, it skied great with whatever amount that had fallen. These were the Rockies' DRY, FLUFFY powder that fly up all over me when my skis hit it. And it kept on snowing (lightly). I wouldn't be surprised if they got another inch or two throughout the day time hours.

Not expecting such good condition, I didn't even try first chair. But fortunately, I wasn't very late. And a couple who wanted a 3rd person for their "carpool" free parking picked me up at the Stilson (satellite) lot, which speed things up a tad. I first lapped the powder off the Casper chair, only because "it's there".

After those was skied off, I moved to Thunder and Sublet. Visibility was poor, so I didn't bother with the Tram. Snow was good, but not being able to see where the snow piled up was a bit challenging. Especially the many traverse Jackson has to get to places, there's the real problem of falling off the cat track. Not a danger but then one missed the chair! So I skied a couple other trails I didn't intend because I missed the intended chair. Not the end of the world though.

Snow were quite good in the trees. And there're enough trees to play in.

Still, it's surprising with all the FEET of snow they got 2 weeks ago, I hit plenty of scratchy sub-surfaces beneath the 2-3" of fluff. And some of the intermediate runs were downright slick.

It could use another half to a foot of new snow to really cover up all those skied-off scratchy areas. Fortunately, forecast is for that to happen within the next couple days.

I'll hanging around here and ready to harvest whatever comes.

(compare to the FEET of snow UT has, this seems small, but Jackson doesn't have the crowd level of Alta/Bird so hopefully less competition also)

Day 2 & 3, Snowing!

Everyday, a few inches had fallen. It's quite miserable to be skiing in driving snow, almost zero visibility. But each day, the slopes skied better.

Yesterday, only the trees were worth skiing. The groomed trail alternates between slick and death cookies. The ungroomed trails were even worse, hard re-frozen bumps covered by a couple inches of very light powder that flies away the moment the skis touched.

But in the trees, the snow were still good and I pity the intermediate adults who stick to the marked trails.

Up top also, there's no refrozen bumps. Just more soft snow. Unfortunately, there's also no visibility.

But today, that's starting to change. 9" had fallen the last 2 days. The scratchy refrozen mess is finally being covered up by sufficiently thick coat of new snow.

I'm also finding pockets of untouched snow left and right. Mostly not long, just a few turns here and there. Just enough to keep things interesting. (sometimes, the "hunt" is just as much fun as getting to ski the stashes I found!)

Tomorrow will be my last day in Jackson. Snow is diminishing and sun is trying to make an appearance.

pics or it didn't happen

bdfreetuna said:

pics or it didn't happen

Click to expand...

It didn't happen.

It was completely socked in, snowing on and off all 4 days. Even when it was not snowing, the cloud was all over the place.

Day 4, still snowing continuously

Yesterday ski so well, I made some plans on where to ski, counting on the additional inches we would receive overnight. When I got up in the morning, 5 more inches had fallen. Strangely, my car had almost no snow on it. What I didn't realize was the wind which blown the snow away.

So, by the time I got to the mountain, the 2nd chair I want to lap (Sublet) was on wind hold! But I didn't know that at first. I was lapping Thunder chair. The day before, I noticed a small patch of trees right next to the lift exit that not many people bothered to ski. The tree led to an intermediate groomer, so all the hot shot skiers were too busy doing Larami Bowl or Tower 3 etc. Today, I put my first track there! And turned around and rode that chair again.

There are actually so many untracked snow left and right, it's not all that surprising those short sections I found stayed untouched for more than an hour. I connected several small stands of trees to make my laps almost entirely on untracked powder.

But after a few laps, I was ready to move over to Sublet chair. That's when I found out it wasn't running. The beauty of that is, all the trails below Sublete were basically untracked. So I dropped in and enjoyed myself.

Today being the day when I lap almost the full vertical. But first, I need to take the tram to the top. Boy, the wind was so strong I had a heck of a hard time just walking out of the tram!

And the wind whip the snow around so there's zero visibility every 30 seconds! Lots of people fell, which helped me a lot, because they became stationary landmarks I could use to gauge my speed in the big empty space that's Rendezvous Bowl. The snow were creamy smooth though. In fact, too smooth I couldn't tell if I was moving or stopped.

I had intended to ski the Hogback to the bottom. But having to battle zero visibility in the bowl, I didn't feel like dealing with yet another wide open bowl. Instead, I just lap the gondola top to bottom instead. It was just fantastic!

The day before, I met some people in my hotel who said Saratoga Bowl off the Apre Vous chair was skiing well. So I gave it a try later in the day when I got bored of lapping the gondola. The snow wasn't as good there. I hunted some more but found relatively few powder stashes. Then they stopped the chair at 4. How dare they? There's still daylight for another 2 hours!!!

Anyway, I had a great time for the 4 days there. This is the first time out of my 4 trips to Jackson that I had good luck with the snow good AND my body cooperated to take advantage of it! So I must say I'm really happy about it. Still, there're so many other lines I didn't take, trails I hadn't skied, I just need to go back in the future!

Next stop, Sun Valley.

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