Alta, UT 4/20/2008 (closing day)

oow yaa been up to jackson when it's snowed 7' in one week afew years ago in march . locals said it was the best week of the year . wouldn't advise going unless it's snowing. the aspect of most of the mountain is wrong. the place can cook in a real hurry.even in the dead of winter . i'll skip the debate on pitch. allthough my own personal experience is the place isn't as steep as you would think. i've been in places up there where only a tick would go and it's just not that steep it has very good pitch but limited. besides if you took the snow pack from alta & plooped it down on jackson the place would be an (intermediate heaven) my opionion only. how bout some debate on that???????? :wink:
 
IMHO Altabird is the best lift served area/s in the states. Jackson just doesn't come close. In terms of snow quality, access, it just doesn't compare. If it doesn't snow there you better hope there are no clouds and it's warm. Hard snow is more than likely due to its exposure/elevation by mid feb . So, you can only pretty much nail great conditions if you get lucky, or go earlier in the season, when often there isn't that much of a base. In other words, when LCC is rocking out march, Jackson skiers are trying to set edges with crampons until the sun creates mush.

p.s.
Altabird has comparable elevation to jackson but far superior exposure.
 
Rob, you had a good run going until you wrote:

rfarren":zfm6zrq9 said:
p.s.
Altabird has comparable elevation to jackson
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While the summit of Jackson is only 100 feet lower than Alta's, and only 550 feet less than the top of Snowbird, the base elevation is 2,219 feet lower than Alta's. That, in combination with the exposure makes a huge difference. In essence, due to its layout more than half of Jackson's terrain is lower than Alta's base.

Add to that the snowfall issue. Jackson is on the dry side of the Tetons, the "wrong" side. Just like Alta, Targhee's on the "right" side for approaching storms, which in combination with its higher altitude accounts for Targhee's much greater average snowfall. It's akin to the Wasatch Front vs. the Wasatch Back.
 
I realize that JH's 600+ snowfall total this season is a once-every-42-years thing, but has the backside of the Wasatch ever put up those kind of numbers?
 
I only put the elevation comment in there to protect my behind from the nay sayers. I do indeed realize that the summit of Jackson is close to the "top" of the Alta, and of course you can go 500" higher with a boot trek. I do understand that Snowbird is a cool 500' higher than jackson too. I also understand that the base altitude at jackson is well lower, and therefore much of the terrain lives below the base of Alta and the Bird. I just didn't want someone to go ahead and write well..."Alta is only 50' higher than Jackson."
 
no one skies over there. ow you mean park city and those other so called resorts. they don't usually get the snow. some times but not often they'll get more than this side. glorified eastern resorts
 
jamesdeluxe":10x52s36 said:
I realize that JH's 600+ snowfall total this season is a once-every-42-years thing, but has the backside of the Wasatch ever put up those kind of numbers?
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The Jupiter reporting station at PCMR exceeded 500 this year, and it's not the first time.
 
The Jupiter reporting station is somewhat suspect from some comments I've heard.

The Targhee to Jackson dropoff in snowfall (463 vs. 366 both midmountain) is not nearly as drastic as the LCC/BCC to Park City dropoff (461 Snowbird base vs. 287 Summit House).

But the altitude impact is more than admin suggests. Alta and Snowbird are both as wide at the top as at the base. So there is roughtly an equal amount of skiable terrain above and below midmountain (~9,500 in both cases). Jackson is a peak at the top of Rendezvous, and very wide at the base, with a separate mountain Apres Vous that only goes a bit more than halfway up. So I would say there is probably 3x as much terrain below mid-mountain (~8,400) at Jackson as above. As an aside, measuring snowfall at 11,000 on Vail is OK by me because it has much more terrain high up than near its base.

Due to the layout description above, I recommend focusing on Jackson's mid (480 this year) rather than upper mountain (606) quote for snowfall. The mid-mountain data set also goes back to 1971 and thus is very useful as a comparison for what kind of season they are having. While press releases are just going to quote that upper number, the season-to-date mid-mountain number is always shown on their report page http://www.jacksonhole.com/weather.snow.report.asp and I give Jackson credit for that.

But as rfarren points out, the key issue with Jackson is exposure. The refrozen coral reef is most unpleasant, but I can tell you that the warm days are not very good off the groomed. All that low-density terrain on the lower faces that is so good for powder is unconsolidated goo on a typical sunny March day. Think the Mineral Basin liftline, but 2,500 feet lower.

The SLC locals are within drive distance, so they do have the opportunity to cherry-pick Jackson's weather. And with its terrain quality I would think that would be worth doing once in a while. As I've mentioned before Jackson rates #8 in North America IMHO, but if you rotated the mountain 90 degrees so that it faced NE instead of SE it would jump to #3.
 
Tony Crocker":3pc4edrs said:
The SLC locals are within drive distance, so they do have the opportunity to cherry-pick Jackson's weather. And with its terrain quality I would think that would be worth doing once in a while.
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Probably. We're just a bunch of lazy, cheap bastards though! :lol:
 
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