Table Mountian-A Yearly Ritual

This season’s tradition of skiing Table Mt finally came to fruition. After a couple weeks of weather and scheduling conflicts, I was able to posse up with my ski partner Reed Finlay, his wife Rebecca and friend Samantha Worthington for a great day on the Idaho side of the Tetons.

The day started overcast but the clouds slowly cleared as the sun rose higher in the sky. We were able to start skinning directly from the parking lot, though it was still quite thin…good time for ‘rock skins’. We made good time to the summit (about 3:20) and were rewarded with views of the rime encrusted Tetons…some of the best around.

After a quick bite to eat, we poked around the summit searching for an entrance into the bowl on the north side of the mountain. Snow conditions were marginal up top…with a few inches of grauple type snow on top of a hard crust. The grauple layer got thicker once in the bowl and made for fun, fast, predictable skiing. After a few laps and a total 5400′ of skiing, we made big, non-stop turns back towards the car. We milked turns on the northern side of the ridge skiing a far down to Teton Canyon as possible and ended up hiking down the final 1000′ because of the thin coverage. All in all…a great tour!