Jackson Hole, WY

Overall Mammoth had been our favorite ski resort of all. Jackson Hole was just as good, if not better than Mammoth. There wasn’t a lot of powder on the mountain, but I had just gotten another new pair of skis for all mountain, so I could carve in them. We also tried some back contryish skiing in a place that almost no one went.  In addition my friend Henry had come up for a few days, so he could try skiing in the west. Originally we were planning to ski the first day he was here, but most of the lifts were closed due to 70 mph gusts. Instead that day we went to downtown Jackson so he could buy

In the town square there were four giant arches made
of elk horns. At night they were lit up.

souvenirs for his parents and brothers. We also ended up buying a butt load of candy, and he had a sugar high.

The first day of skiing we decided “as a group” to ride the tram up. I honestly voted against riding the tram, but I got vetoed. All in all we ended up waiting in line for an hour and forty minutes. After the wait we got crammed on a tram with 100 other people. My dad has real problems with those types of situations, so he looked like he was ready to scream. On the way up one person passed out, but it was so cramped that no one noticed until we were almost at the top. After that experience we decided not to go on the tram again. Admittedly the skiing was pretty good at the top. There was a lot of powder at the top along with really steep hills, so I was happy. We also found a gully that was untracked, so we had completely fresh snow. That day we mostly focused on the middle of the mountain. The place was so big that we couldn’t ski the whole mountain in one day.

On day two we did more skiing in the middle and on the left side of the mountain. On the left side we found a few trails that were untracked. To tell the truth they were untracked because the snow was too hard to track, but I’m looking on the bright side.

On day three my parents didn’t want to ski, so it was just me and Henry on an enormous mountain. Since we hadn’t done much on the sides of the mountain we

avoided the middle and hit some of the runs we had missed. On the right we found a couple good runs and a few icy awful woods runs.  My favorite run was on the left side of the mountain. It was incredibly steep and was covered with moguls. If anyone is detecting a theme with my favorite kind of run, you are right. I really like steep mogully runs.

That was the last day of skiing in Jackson Hole. The next day we drove to Alta, UT and met Carter, but I’ll have to talk about that in my Alta post.