Funny that one of the first few posts here is of skiing on the first snow of the 2006/07 season. It snowed to the valley floor on the night of Thursday, September 21st and created havoc in many Jackson areas. Many of the leaves are still on the aspen trees and the weight of a couple inches of wet, heavy snow caused many trees to topple.
Enough about the trees though, on Friday the 22nd, I straped on the rock skis and rock skins and toured to the top of Mount Elly on the south side of Teton Pass. I had NO intentions of making any turns and the trip was purely investigative…mainly because this is the one of the biggest, earliest, snow storms I can remember in my 13 years of living in Jackson. I ran into Jacksonite Trevor Bain, looking to see waz up as well on his way to Bozeman. We fallowed tracks to Olympic Bowl, where we saw a couple sorry excuses for turns, until they ended as we entered the trees.
It felt SO good to be breaking trail again, espesial cuz I’m headed to New Zealand with Andrew McLean and Chris Figenshau for some skiing in a couple weeks. There was more snow than I expected, about a foot, and I heard that there was about 2′ on top of the Village. Reports of someone making turns in Rendezvous Bowl didn’t really suprise me, but is always amazes me how bold some people are as far as early season skiing goes. On the ski up I did the usual ritual of packing more snow over the rocks, so I can fully enjoy the ‘James Bond’ run down the skin track from the top. Looking for more, I threw the skins back on when I got to the power station and went back to the top for another runout on the skin track.
The weather forcast is calling for bluebird skies for the next few days and temps hitting 70 in the valley. The snow will not last long, but I’m glad I got a little while I could.