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.

Sun Valley

Sun Valley was one of the most enjoyable places we visited. Our host was amazing, and she had two puppies and an older dog, along with three cats. The puppies had so much energy and a keen instinct to jump on anything

that moved. On walks they would chase me constantly and jump whenever I stopped.  Aside from the jumping they were adorable. Over the week we were there my mom really developed a connection with them. The skiing was pretty good as well. The first day we went the snow was soft but not too much so, and there weren’t that many people. All the lifts were open, and they were high speed detachable chairs, so we didn’t lose blood flow to the legs once. The lodge was also great. It was one of the most beautiful lodges we had been in. It was all timber framed vaulted ceilings with huge rock walls rising up.  There was also a cafeteria serving some amazing nachos. These nachos were unlike any nacho I had eaten before. They were a pile of waffle cut fries coated in beef chili with a glob of sour cream and scallions. I had never had nachos on fries, but it turned out to be really good. It was a good unwind at the end of the day to eat something like that. The type of thing you know is probably bringing you one step closer to heart disease, but you don’t really care. On the mountain there wasn’t a lot to note. It felt a lot like some of the other mountains we had been to. The snow was soft but not powder. One of the main differences is that their easiest trails were significantly harder than the easiest trails on the other mountains. One run that was

notable was Fire Trail. Fire Trail was a double black diamond that was probably 30 degrees steep and covered with moguls. That was one of my favorite trails. About half way down I fell. Luckily I didn’t hurt myself, but other bad things happened. My helmet is made up of two parts: the inner part with the styrofoam and padding, then the outer part which consists of a plastic shell that controls the vents and makes the helmet look cooler. During my fall the outer part popped off, and I ended up chasing it down forty feet of hill. For the rest of that run I had to carry my poles in one hand and my helmet top in the other like it was a football. Currently it is serving a new purpose in my room holding a bag of sesame seeds and a dirty sock. After skiing that day we went back to the house, and I enjoyed one of my favorite aspects of the house - the candy. Yes our host Kimmie had a huge bowl of candy consisting of Hershey products, tootsie pops, and tootsie rolls. Over the next couple days we did some school work and took the dogs on a few walks.

When we went skiing again and our experience was very different. The main difference was the snow. The stuff was pouring down all around and pelting us in the face. Also near the top a layer of fog set in, along with a strong wind.  Between the two it was impossible to see more than 40 feet past your ski tips. This became a real hazard skiing. There were a few steep hills that were up in the fog. Since the snow was almost unmarked and the fog was white, it was impossible to judge distance. When we were skiing down one hill I thought that I could only see about five feet before a orange sign appeared 100 feet in front of me. Another time I was skiing on a run-out, and I thought I was going three to four miles per hour. Eventually I looked down, and I saw that the snow at my feet was not moving at all; at that point I realized that I had been standing still for the last ten seconds. In addition to depriving us of spatial relations, the fog presented other challenges. The white out gave us vertigo. Sometimes I would drop off tiny ledges that had been completely hidden. Skiing like this is a really weird feeling. It gives you a sense of what it would be like to be a blind skier. Strangely it is a slightly euphoric feeling. It may sound weird, but having no idea where you are is a lot of fun. I would have liked to do it again, but the entire concept freaked out my mom. The snow was a little soft and heavy, but luckily my skis were very wide and floaty. After a few runs my feet were in so much pain from all the pressure that I had to take a break. We had to take two such breaks. After the second break we took one run and were done. At the end we were soaked to the bone, so we did the natural thing. We went home, took a shower, and then went to get burgers.

That was our Sun Valley experience. The next day we packed up and left. It wasn’t easy to say goodbye to Kimmie and the puppies, but we had to in order to get to Jackson Hole.

Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows

Tahoe really hates me. As you might remember in one of my earlier posts we stayed in Tahoe for two days during October, and the weather could have been better. In addition I fell on my bike, got five stitches in my chin, and chipped a tooth. Honestly I still can’t eat anything chewy, crunchy, sticky, or cold without my tooth hurting. Anyway now we are back near Tahoe in a town called Truckee. Our plan was to go skiing and enjoy the Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows bliss, but instead it rained for four days straight. As you can imagine, freezing rain is not the most enjoyable weather to ski in. Oh, also the places were closed because there were 120 mph gusts on the mountain. On the up side our hosts Leigh and Lauren had a pool table and a hot tub plus a kitchen that had lots of things that are actually used to cook. Unlike all the other Air BnBs we had rented, in this one we were just renting rooms, and we shared the house with the owners. That was advantageous in many ways. Firstly, they were nice people and we hadn’t met anyone new in ages. Secondly, they knew about the place so we could ask questions. Lastly, since they lived in the house it was made to be functional and Leigh liked cooking, so the kitchen had everything we needed. During the rainy days we made two batches of cookies, and I tried out two new recipes that I am planning to put on the cooking website I am developing. The first was a breakfast biscuit cup. Basically it is biscuit dough in a cupcake shell with sausage, bacon, egg, and cheese all baked up to golden brown, melty, cheesy, goodness. The second was a recipe for Pad Thai with sautéed chicken and tofu, along with cooked carrots, green onions, and sprouts, then garnished with roasted peanuts. I made that twice during the rainy days, and it was amazing. We played about a dozen games of pool and ate about half a million calories in cookies.

When we did go skiing it was mostly because we were leaving the next day, and I really wanted to be able to say that I had skied at Squaw and Alpine.  We started at Alpine because we heard that more lifts were open there (3 lifts out of 12). We took two runs and decided that it was not for us, mostly because it was snowing so hard that it felt like my nose was being shot with air soft

pellets. Also none of the express lifts were open, and the rest moved slower than Bolton chairs (really slow). After my mom and I went into the lodge my dad decided to get one more run in on a different lift. On the way down he went off a two foot cliff and face planted in the snow.  After he warmed and got coffee we went to Squaw. The conditions were better there. It wasn’t snowing, and the high speed lifts were running. The only problem is that at the top the snow was like wet cement. When we were done I was exhausted, so we went back to the house and I vegetated on the couch.

I will definitely remember Squaw as I will with all the other places we visit. I can’t wait to see what Sun Valley is like next and so help me if the snow isn’t better there. 

Mammoth Lakes, California

I had just as much fun in Mammoth. The first day we were there we went skiing, and it was amazing. There was even more snow in Mammoth than there was in Whistler, especially the second ski day when it was snowing.

On the first day of skiing we started on the east side of the mountain and worked our way west. On the east side I almost had a heart attack. One of the lifts we rode up

on went up a good third of the mountain, and it had absolutely no safety bar to speak of. There were several of these chairs, but none quite as terrifying. The main reason it was scary was because it took us 30 feet above sharp rocks. Also, in Vermont there are signs on all the lifts saying “State law requires the use of the safety bar” so I’m used to safety bars.  In California, not so much.

There weren’t any more really memorable parts of Mammoth on the east side, but on the west there was a

The sun was really bright.

mogul run that was out of this world. The snow was soft and the moguls were perfect. The run was so good that we ran it three times. On the third run I took a tumble. I caught an edge near the bottom of the run and flipped. I landed right on my neck and got a huge headache. That ended my day and made me sad. The next two days we stayed home and relaxed, which was probably good because in my fall I had strained my sternocleidomastoid, (in technical terms that is a neck muscle). Since I had strained my neck it hurt to move it at all. One thing that I could do with a strained sternocleidomastoid was make chocolate mousse. That was good. Unfortunately I had to whisk the eggs by hand and I messed up on the first batch, so all in all I spent 20 minutes whisking eggs.  We had to get groceries several times, and one time we decided to walk there. We needed things for chocolate mousse, and according to my mom I needed fresh air. Since we had gotten several feet of snow the sidewalks had five foot walls of snow on either side. Other than that the

sidewalks were incredibly icy. We had to get picked up by my dad because we might have hurt ourselves on the way back.

The second day we skied it was snowing like crazy. Huge puffy flakes were all around us when we were going up the lift. On our first run we went to the summit. It wasn’t the best conditions but I’m glad we went. Later that day the lifts to the top were closed because of wind dangers. Even when we were up there the wind was howling. While I was pulling up my hood and putting on another face covering my helmet started blowing away. While I was chasing that, my gloves started moving, so I had to grab those as well. Even worse, when I was almost done putting everything back together my poles started rolling away. Aside from that I had a great time. There was nobody else on the slope, so we had a foot of untracked powder. During lunch we saw something very strange. A guy in a fuzzy mammoth costume was walking around the room like it was perfectly natural. On that note we also saw three guys in matching bear head hats in line at the lift. One guy in the line next to us took about a dozen pictures of them.

And that was our experience in Mammoth. I would definitely recommend going. Our next stop will be in Squaw Valley, California. 

The skiing in Whistler was the best skiing I have ever seen. There was over 17 feet of snow on the ground, and if you knew where to look there was some amazing powder.  We were renting a condo about three minutes from the slopes, so we could ski from first lift till last, (we never did). All in all it was the best skiing experience I have ever had.

Despite all the great things about Whistler, getting there was not all that fun. We flew into Vancouver at about 3:30 and grabbed our stuff. Since we were skiing we also had two bags full of skis, along with a backpack and a carry-on each. As if that wasn’t enough, we also had to carry a 50 pound bag. Even worse, as we soon found out that we had to walk through the freezing rain to get to the shuttle for the rental cars which was out of the airport, across the street, and through a parking garage, (to grandmothers house we go). Once the shuttle came we went to the rental car place and were offered two options. We could either have a Hyundai Tuscon or a VW Tiguan. Immediately we answered Tuscon. We had a Tiguan in Hawaii, and it was just way too cramped, even if it did have an awesome name. Tiguan, honestly where did that come from. Anyway, after we got our car we started our drive to Whistler. In Vermont we have no idea what traffic is. The “traffic” I grew up with meant waiting 30 seconds at a red light behind four other cars. Vancouver traffic means that you’re lucky to get your car through a red light in less than ten minutes. The drive took a lot longer than expected, so we got to Whistler an about 6:30 at night. Six-thirty may not seem that late, but since we were so far north it had been dark for about 45 minutes. We found our place and spent about five minutes trying to figure out how the lock worked. When we got in we unpacked groceries and passed out.

The next day we just relaxed. Since we were there for a week we were in no hurry.

It was cold on Friday, so we didn’t go skiing then. We heard that the place was mobbed on the weekends, so we waited until Monday to ski.

We didn’t just relax over the weekend. On Sunday we went to a fire and ice show. It consisted of fire dancers, and skiers jumping through a flaming hoop then doing tricks. It was pretty amazing seeing people doing insane stunts in the dark after flying through a flaming hoop.

On Monday we went skiing for the first time. I woke up as early as I could and took the shuttle to the mountain. We had gotten the mountain collective pass from Liftopia, and it took a while to redeem, but after about a half hour we were ready to ski. We took the chair up and started out on one of the easier trails, a blue groomer that had hardly been touched yet because it was so early. I am glad that we started easy because I had just

This was the view from the top of Whistler.
My favorite part is the fin in the background.

gotten new skis, and they had a completely different feel than my old ones. In the past I had just rented skis since I was growing so much, but in the recent months I had grown a few inches and was hopefully flat lining for a few years. I am 5’7” and estimated to be about 6’1” when I’m done growing, so that gives me several years to grow six inches. The point is that I am hoping that I may be able to use these skis for a few years before I outgrow them. They are green Soul 7s that feel really weird. I can’t put much weight on my downhill foot without skipping out, so I had to learn an entirely new way to ski in which I have weight on my uphill foot.

After the first run we went up again and took another route down. This time we skirted the ski area boundary. My favorite part was right above the trail where there was a foot of fresh powder. In Vermont there isn’t powder like that often, and when there is it doesn’t feel the same. On that much powder it feels more like water skiing on a completely smooth lake. Later on we also found some powder bowls that had the same feeling. That day we skied a lot of trails and finished completely exhausted. We went back to the condo, and I had a Gatorade and a Dr Pepper, which

pretty much topped off the perfect day.

After a hard day of skiing I really needed a day off, so we stayed home and relaxed for the day. When I say we, I mean me and my mom. My dad doesn’t know how to relax. He decided that his ideal day off was to go hike the mountain even higher than the lifts took people and ski down. See what I mean. It is a five hour hike up and a

Fresh tracks on a hike.

one hour ski down, but there are fresh tracks and a foot and a half of powder, so I can understand some of his motives. My mom and I stayed back, and I worked on school work. After a few hours we went cross country skiing on the trails surrounding Whistler. Overall the highlight of my day was getting in the hot tub in the evening.

On our second day of skiing we went to Blackcomb Mountain. Even though the place is called Whistler there is another mountain right next to Whistler called Blackcomb that is part of Whistler. Overall I liked the skiing at Blackcomb more than Whistler. I don’t know why. It might have been because I was better with my skis, or there might have been a little snow overnight. Whatever the reason I thought it felt better. The most notable thing we skied was called the Blackcomb Glacier. Yes now I can say that I have skied a glacier. By definition a glacier just means that the snow has compacted so much that it becomes ice and stays as such throughout the year and moves a tiny bit. We only skied one of the trails on the glacier, but there were several. From the top there was the Blackcomb Glacier Trail, (the one we did), along with Blowhole. An alternate route was to go up Spanky’s Ladder to access Diamond Bowl, Ruby Bowl, Sapphire Bowl, and Garnet Bowl.

We did several more runs on Blackcomb then took the Peak To Peak gondola back to Whistler. The Peak To Peak gondola actually holds several records including the highest gondola off the ground and the longest section of a gondola to be suspended without poles. We spent a few more days at Whistler then, “We were leaving on a jet plane, I don’t know when I’ll be back again. Oh slopes I hate to go.”

-John Denver 1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SneCkM0bJq0

Now we are heading to Mammoth, and I am hoping to have just as much fun there.

This is the view from Mauna Kea

Our home at the farm.

Hawaii

Aloha makamaka. This is going to be a long post, but it’s hard to describe a month in Hawaii in less than a page. I hope you’re comfortable because this one may take a while. Mahalo.

Hawaii is not as you would expect. I personally thought that it would look like it did in Hawaii Five-O, with roads lined with palm trees and glittering condos everywhere.  In truth the Big Island is not like that at all. The other islands such as Oahu are closer to that vision because they have finished forming. The Big Island on the other hand, can’t be developed as extensively due to the active volcanoes.

The Hawaiian Islands were formed over a period of more than 60 million years. There is a magma seep under the Pacific tectonic plate that is constantly pushing molten rock up and forming volcanoes. This seep is stationary, but the plate above it is progressively moving northwest at four inches per year. As the seep makes volcanoes across the plate, the islands will form around the volcanoes, and that is how the Hawaiian Islands were born. The cool thing is that the islands are still forming. The Big Island is getting bigger and bigger from the lava flows, and right next to the Big Island another island called Loihi is forming deep below the surface. Loihi probably won’t be visible for thousands of years.

Needless to say, when we arrived we did not stay in a glittering condo. We stayed in a tent on a farm with goats and sheep everywhere. After a while we got used to it, but at first it was hard.  We had a canopy tent about 15 feet tall at the peak, at the base it was about 10 feet by 20 feet. A canopy of tarps had been strapped to the front which expanded it a little bit and offered a place to eat.

See what I mean, it looks exactly like M and M

Before we even got to our home we had an adventure.  First we went to a black sand beach where we saw turtles crawling up the beach.  Then we went to the Mauna Loa macadamia nut factory. BTW, they totally copied M and M with their logo.

The first few days of living in the tent were challenging. First of all we didn’t know where anything was, as is normal with new places. Second of all, my mom was sick, but she pushed through it and didn’t complain for our sake because she is such a wonderful mother.

There had been a bug going around my family so it wasn’t all that surprising when she got it.  Originally my aunt had it, and when she came to visit us in Sedona my mom and grandpa must have caught it because about twelve days later they felt awful. It took about a week until she felt better. While we were on the farm we took weekend excursions to explore Hawaii.

On our first weekend excursion we went up to Hilo. Originally we had been in Pahala, and there was not much in the way of food stores there. The first thing we did in Hilo was go to the farmers market because we really needed food. Afterward we went to the Queen Lili’uokalani botanical garden and saw a lot of banyan trees.

For anyone who hasn’t seen a banyan tree I will put in a picture. Banyan trees are really cool trees that look like a million tiny little trees fused together. There are also little roots hanging down from the branches. These are an adventitious root system. We heard that these grow on the tree to collect extra water. After the garden we

went to Coconut Island and found a great jumping spot where we got an awesome picture of me jumping.

We spent another week on the farm then took another vacation for Christmas. We went to two parties with our host Malian, and her friends. We also drove up Mauna Kea to see the telescopes and the view. Mauna Kea was amazing. The peak is 13,000 feet above sea level, so it was above the clouds. At the base it was raining, but as we climbed we broke through the clouds and were above them. It looked amazing to be above the clouds. I have only seen something like that before when I hiked Katahdin in Maine. We also saw several of the telescopes, which are a very controversial topic we need not go into.

The next day we visited two beaches. The first we didn’t stay at very long.  My parents went to check it out while I climbed a tree. It was a very strange tree. Climbing it was closer to walking on a balance beam than climbing a tree. The branches splayed out until they went horizontal to the ground and made it the easiest tree ever to climb.  Next we visited the black sand beach again and saw more turtles.

We spent another day at the farm, then went to a place called the Green Sand Beach. The Green Sand Beach takes its name from the distinct greenish hue derived from the olivine in it. Olivine is a silicate mineral containing iron and magnesium. Interestingly this is just an unrefined version of my birthstone, period. 

It was a four mile hike to get to the beach, but when we got there it was really cool. I tried to go snorkeling but the waves and the lack of anything remotely interesting quickly deterred me. When we were done we made the four mile hike back.

After the Green Sand Beach we left the farm to go explore more of the island. It may not look it on a map, but Hawaii is big. The cities are spread out so it isn’t just a hop skip and a jump anywhere. In fact the Big Island has more land mass than all of the other Hawaiian Islands combined.  Over half of this is attributed to Mauna Loa, the largest mountain landmass in the world.

The first place we went was Hilo, the sixth rainiest city in the U.S. We stayed a few nights at a place called Arnotts, and that’s when my dad and I got sick. It may seem kind of random that we got sick about two weeks after my mom, but that seemed to be the pattern. My mom got sick about two weeks after seeing my aunt, and we got sick about two weeks after she got it. What supports this even more is that my grandpa got sick about two weeks after coming to Sedona with us and my aunt, then my grandma got sick about a day before I did, two weeks after my grandpa. Anyway, it sucked.

For the first few days it felt like I had a fever and chills with a hacking cough. Then the fever abated leaving me coughing my guts up. We stayed at Arnotts through New Year’s Eve. During the day we went to another black sand beach and saw more turtles. The up side about being on a five hour time difference is that when it was midnight in Times Square it was seven at night here, so I could finally see the ball drop. Usually at midnight I am out like a light. At midnight for us some people started setting off fireworks right next to our window, which as one could imagine, made it hard to sleep, and I need my sleep. On any given day I get tired if I get less than nine hours of sleep. While I was sick I would get about ten hours at night and take a two to three hour nap during the day. That night I cried myself to sleep from sheer exhaustion.

After a restless night (six hours of sleep) we went to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The first night we stayed at a place called the Volcano Inn. We got in at about noon, and at one I promptly took a nap. At eight that night I woke up from my seven hour “nap”, watched TV for an hour, and went back to sleep. After ten more hours of sleep I woke up and felt absolutely no better. We left to go our next room. We had rented a cabin in a different part of volcano for a night, and I had absolutely no idea what it looked like.

When I saw it the first thing I said was, “It’s a freaking birdhouse.” It honestly was the exact same shape as a bird house. Not that that changed the fact that I went in and took a nap.

The next day we left Volcano National Park and went north. My uncle’s brother owned several cabins that he rented in Honoka’a. The cabins are on cliffs overlooking the ocean with an orchard right next to them so we had amazing views and all the fresh fruit we wanted.

We stayed for four days and went to a few places. First we hiked down a mile long road to a beach. With my cough walking was bad enough, but what made it even worse was that the road was at a 25% grade.  At the bottom the beach wasn’t all that exciting, just a sandy strip with sticks everywhere. From the beach we could see up the cliffs that the houses are situated on top of. Since this part of the island had been getting an abnormal amount of rain there were waterfalls cascading down the cliffs that looked amazing. Then we walked back up. When we reached the top I was panting and coughing like crazy. We went into town because we needed food, and on the way there we passed a shave ice stand. I got a snow cone the size of a small baby’s head, which made things a little better. 

A few days later we did another hike to another beach.  It was a trail instead of a road this time, but that didn’t make it any easier.  At the bottom we sat on the beach and looked out at the horizon. All of a sudden we saw whales breaching miles out in the water. We saw about seven jumps before they settled down. We walked back with my mom buzzing because she had always wanted to see whales.

Next we went to Waimea and stayed in a bed and breakfast for four more nights. While we were there we visited several beaches on the Gold Coast. At three of them we snorkeled and saw some amazing things. Out of all the fish we saw I had a few favorites. There was a fish that was about two feet long but only as thick as my thumb. There was another that was covered in about five different colors, seemingly spaced at random, that looked like a little like a kindergarten art project (or mine).  There were also schools of about a hundred tiny yellow fish that would swarm around eating things off the coral.

Originally we were supposed to fly out on the 11^th but our flight was delayed until 10 at night and eventually canceled. We stayed in a hotel for the night and flew into San Diego the next day. Now we are staying on a forty foot yacht in a marina before we go to Whistler.