2015 Geezer Ski Bum Tour ”“ DCSki #4
By Jim Kenney
Jackson Hole with JohnL, March 4, 2015
I’ve skied with fellow Northern Virginian JohnL on numerous occasions over the last decade in the mid-Atlantic. We originally met through online communications on DCSki well before that. His favorite local haunt is the trees at Timberline, WV, but he skis all around the US. He is a very solid skier in all respects and pretty dang adventurous for a guy approaching the big Five-Oh. I had never skied with John “out West” where he has much more experience and raises the term adventurous to a whole other level. John and I finally had a western rendezvous on Jackson Hole, Wyoming's Rendezvous Mountain (elevation 10,450’/vertical rise 4139’) over the last two days of February 2015.
Our meeting was in conjunction with a bunch of folks gathering at Jackson Hole from the EpicSki online forum/community. Jackson Hole had a great base of snow and pretty much everything was open, but they had sustained a few unusual rain events this winter and not as much new snow in the few weeks preceding our visit. Conditions were best in the north facing trees and quite variable everywhere else making an already challenging mountain even burlier. But together we not only survived, we thrived.
On our first day we tagged along with a strong group of skiers guided by a top local Jackson ski instructor. The rule of the day was steep tree skiing. We stayed mostly in north facing terrain where the snow was still soft and chalky, but because of the lack of recent snow the trees were full of high definition bumps. This was like Timberline’s Cherry Bowl Glades on steroids and with a much more severe tilt. We skied places like Hoops Gap Woods and Riverton bowl off the thunder Quad Chair, Bivouac Woods above the Hobacks, and North Woods near the Alta Chutes under the Sublette Quad Chair. The second day we did more informal exploration and skied the more open terrain of Rendezvous and Tensleep bowls. By two o’clock each day my legs were fried, but the great thing about Jackson Hole is there are groomer bailouts from many black diamond off-piste areas. John kept charging and seemed to ski better and better over the course of our two days together, possibly due to altitude adjustment and adapting to the conditions. The dude abides.
Here are a few photos from our visit to Jackson Hole. All photos by Jim Kenney.
Conferring with our guide, John on right. Reduced visibility was another reason to ski trees on our first day.
Emerging from Hoops Woods near the Thunder Quad Chair.
Many interesting terrain features at JH. John on right.
Can't talk about Jackson Hole without a shot of the tram.
Believe this is Bivouac Woods off the Sublette Chair.
Rendezvous Trail.
Never hurts to salute the god of snow.
Up in Rendezvous Bowl with our day 2 group.
Jim, JohnL, Jimmy,
looks a whole lot better than the Sierra right now. Make some turns for me and implore Ullr (in the proper way) to send us snow.
edited to say that pics look a lot like Whitefish on my Montana tour 2 years ago.
oh come now - that bottle of Ullr should be way more empty at this point. We had good over-hang here we were "sick" on Monday-Tuesday and got "trapped" at Alta where we got 14 inches yay thank you Jim Ullr works good. BTW i hightly recommend the Snowpine Lodge at Alta here:
http://www.thesnowpinelodge.com/
really good fora deep day when the road closes down.
Rock on , Jim!
Hi JohnL that looks like fun there.
Crush wrote:
oh come now - that bottle of Ullr should be way more empty at this point. We had good over-hang here we were "sick" on Monday-Tuesday and got "trapped" at Alta where we got 14 inches yay thank you Jim Ullr works good. BTW i hightly recommend the Snowpine Lodge at Alta here:
http://www.thesnowpinelodge.com/
really good fora deep day when the road closes down.
Rock on , Jim!
Hi JohnL that looks like fun there.
Crush, does the snowpine qualify as a staycation? I skied Breck today. excellent conditions. First time on snow since leaving JH on 3/2. Loving life with wife right now. She shops while I ski. Will look at Visa bill a couple months from now ;-)
Denis, we uncorked the Rombauer Zinfandel tonight. Delish!
Good to ski with you Jim. Hope Colorado treats you well. Spent two days this past week at Targhee; one was a nice pow day. It warmed up today and the lower mountain at JHMR had nice soft snow.
Back to work after a nice long trip.
Jim, wish I had known you were in the county. We could have skied together yesterday or today. Look forward to skiing with you starting the 17th.
