• Welcome to AlpineZone, the largest online community of skiers and snowboarders in the Northeast!

    You may have to REGISTER before you can post. Registering is FREE, gets rid of the majority of advertisements, and lets you participate in giveaways and other AlpineZone events!

Jackson Hole - 1/18/18

speden

Active member
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
913
Points
28
Hit Jackson Hole today. It felt kind of small after skiing at Big Sky. Had some weird weather with a warm-up. Started at 16 degrees in the morning, and got up to 41 degrees by the afternoon. So conditions started to feel spring like with soft snow.

The mountain pretty much kicked my ass. Lots of steep trails and not much else. The blues and double blues ski like groomed blacks. The blue trails were pretty busy too, but the blacks and double blacks were lightly used. Lots of hard core skiers here and mostly guys. The base area is kind of Vail like with extravagant stuff.

Favorite trail for me was Amphitheater off the Thunder Quad. Had lots of variety and a good pitch. Lapped it about five times in the afternoon until my legs were fried. After that I wanted some easy cruisers to rest, but of course there aren't any. [emoji4] So instead I started lapping a little terrain park to work on my jumps.

Overall a good day and it improved my skiing, but man it was hard work. I can see why high level experts would love this place.

Sent from my SM-G920V using AlpineZone mobile app
 

speden

Active member
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
913
Points
28
Some pics from today.

c065569ff9128e932369cce09725887b.jpg
d97f3a0b82fccbaed2e118ab71bcb644.jpg
a3214ff29c09db2efcef08e17c40f75a.jpg
7718a080bfa5829ba64e163347510f7e.jpg


Sent from my SM-G920V using AlpineZone mobile app
 

kingslug

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 30, 2005
Messages
6,990
Points
113
Location
Stamford Ct and Stowe
Did you hit the Apres vous area. Check it out on the trail map to the right. Good place to hang when your cooked. Then when your ready hit Saratoga Bowl in there. Funny thing about Jackson..all the blues run across the place, everything going straight down is black and double. The blues kind of connect everything else. When the Hobacks are good they arent that hard but you have to hit them right..or its a world of pain in there.
 

speden

Active member
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
913
Points
28
Had some excitement at the hotel last night. Somehow the warm-up caused a water pipe to burst and it flooded part of the lobby. An ear piercing alarm then sounded for almost an hour and they couldn't figure out how to turn it off. We got a free breakfast this morning to make up for it.

Headed back to Boston today. Stopped in Jackson City on the way to the airport. There's a little ski area behind the city.

1fa8057e054b4c56af53d3d5c6e48eb3.jpg
e582e54e12e66064262c87fd9c296a34.jpg


Sent from my SM-G920V using AlpineZone mobile app
 

speden

Active member
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
913
Points
28
Did you hit the Apres vous area. Check it out on the trail map to the right. Good place to hang when your cooked. Then when your ready hit Saratoga Bowl in there. Funny thing about Jackson..all the blues run across the place, everything going straight down is black and double. The blues kind of connect everything else. When the Hobacks are good they arent that hard but you have to hit them right..or its a world of pain in there.
Yeah we started the day in the Apres vous area. It was okay, but we like the pod off the Casper lift a little better. So for the day we started on the lookers right side of the mountain and worked our way across to the left.

For apres ski we liked the Mangy Moose. Pretty good live music once the lifts close and a large boisterous crowd. They had a nice pale ale on tap.

Sent from my SM-G920V using AlpineZone mobile app
 

speden

Active member
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
913
Points
28
Did you like Jackson Hole or Big Sky more?

That's a tough question. Big Sky had a lot more trails that matched my skill level, but thinking about the trip I get a bigger grin on my face remembering the stuff I did at Jackson Hole. That's probably because I was skiing with my brother, who's a low intermediate, so at Big Sky we were doing big wide greens and blues that weren't very exciting, and there was all this amazing looking stuff there that I didn't get to try.

At JH we had no choice but to ski harder stuff, so I was getting more adrenaline rushes and pushing myself. After about half a day at JH, my brother was worn out and had a near disaster on a traverse, so headed back to the room, and then I was free to hit the hardest stuff I could handle.

The lodging was much better at Big Sky where we had a big condo with kitchen, while at JH for similar money we had a cramped hotel room. The people in Montana were a lot more friendly than the people in Wyoming, but the people in Wyoming partied harder, so I call that a draw. The JH base area was sort of pretentious, with ice carvings and flaming balconies, compared to the more simple Big Sky base area, but JH also seemed to have better food options for dining out. I had a really good creme brulee and cognac for dessert at the Four Seasons on our last night, and it was delicious.

So yeah, I'd give the nod to JH for this trip, but I want to get back to both places and hit more stuff.
 

Jcb890

Active member
Joined
Feb 25, 2015
Messages
1,741
Points
38
Location
Central MA
That's a tough question. Big Sky had a lot more trails that matched my skill level, but thinking about the trip I get a bigger grin on my face remembering the stuff I did at Jackson Hole. That's probably because I was skiing with my brother, who's a low intermediate, so at Big Sky we were doing big wide greens and blues that weren't very exciting, and there was all this amazing looking stuff there that I didn't get to try.

At JH we had no choice but to ski harder stuff, so I was getting more adrenaline rushes and pushing myself. After about half a day at JH, my brother was worn out and had a near disaster on a traverse, so headed back to the room, and then I was free to hit the hardest stuff I could handle.

The lodging was much better at Big Sky where we had a big condo with kitchen, while at JH for similar money we had a cramped hotel room. The people in Montana were a lot more friendly than the people in Wyoming, but the people in Wyoming partied harder, so I call that a draw. The JH base area was sort of pretentious, with ice carvings and flaming balconies, compared to the more simple Big Sky base area, but JH also seemed to have better food options for dining out. I had a really good creme brulee and cognac for dessert at the Four Seasons on our last night, and it was delicious.

So yeah, I'd give the nod to JH for this trip, but I want to get back to both places and hit more stuff.
Nice TR and thanks for the response!

We just came back from Big Sky ourselves and had a great time. I'm posting a TR myself, but not done yet.
 

mikec142

Active member
Joined
Jan 27, 2014
Messages
738
Points
43
Loving this thread. Although I haven't had the pleasure of skiing at Big Sky, I've been to Jackson Hole twice. First time was 25 years ago when I was in college, but more recently two years ago with my wife and two daughter (ages 11 and 14 at the time).

We picked Jackson Hole for a couple of reasons:

1. My kids love watching TGR films (as do I)
2. We got a great deal
3. It's different. To me this is the most important aspect. Where I live, if you asked 100 people what their first choice of places to ski out west is, I'm going to guess that 98/100 will say Vail, Breck, Park City, or Deer Valley. I love the idea of doing stuff that's different. My list of places that I really want to hit include Jackson Hole, Big Sky, Sun Valley, Squaw Valley, etc.

I found Jackson to be incredibly laid back and friendly. Especially when my baseline is Vail and Aspen. At one point while strolling through Teton Village, my wife turned to me and said she couldn't believe how nice everyone was. We are from a suburb of NYC and work in NYC so we are very used to a fast paced lifestyle and thus really see a difference and enjoy our time spent outside of the NYC environment.

Can't wait to hit JH and Squaw Valley again and to try BS and Sun Valley.
 

speden

Active member
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
913
Points
28
It certainly is different. :) One image I can't get out of my head is looking up at a trail called either snag tree or maybe pair-a-chutes. I was standing there near the bottom of it watching a group of snowboarders come down at mach 9 and thinking those guys are nuts! It looked like they had just dropped out of an airplane without a parachute they were moving so fast. There's a big open area at the bottom and they came off the trail so fast, they had to ski up part of wide trail I was on just to slow down. They were hooting and hollering the whole time and it looked like a blast.
 

speden

Active member
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
913
Points
28
I didn't get very close to Snow King, but yes from the city the trails did look steep. Apparently Snow King was built before JH or Grand Targhee. There are a lot of art galleries in the town of Jackson, and we were talking to a dealer and he was saying most of the land in Jackson Hole is federal land and pretty much nothing new can be built there since all the non-federal land is in use. Many people cannot afford to live in the city because of that. So I guess the Snow King land is grandfathered in and sticks around even though it isn't the best skiing in town anymore. Probably puts my local hill of Wachusett to shame though...
 

mikec142

Active member
Joined
Jan 27, 2014
Messages
738
Points
43
Snow King does get steep up top. They hold a "King of the Hill" snowmobile contest there every year where they see who can get the furthest up the hill in the fastest time. We had time to kill before we flew home on our last trip and spent the morning watching the fun. They are really working hard when they get near the top and many in the smaller engine classes just don't have the power to make it.
 
Top