We left Jackson this morning, arrived at Targhee ~10AM in a steady snowstorm that had just started. The top of Dreamcatcher was completely socked in with fog. Here’s a patroller carrying his avy dog near the top.
After one Braille run down Wild Willie and one flat run around Teton Vista we checked out the Sacajawea chair which doesn’t go as high and thus avoided the densest fog. Both Dreamcatcher and Sacajawea face west but their longest fall lines face SW and thus had some crunch from the sunny days since last Friday. This effect was more widespread than at Jackson because Jackson’s temperature inversion had kept its lower slopes in single digits during most of the sunny days. Patrick and I observed this phenomenon in 2006 also. The more common situation is for Jackson to have more sun effect due to more consistent cloud cover at Targhee. In March 2001 with Garry Klassen Targhee was nearly all packed powder when Jackson was mostly slop.
We checked with patrol before returning to the base from Sacajawea. The north facing slope has good snow but we skirted to skier’s left of the cliff band to Das Boot. There was some nice snow among the trees there.
After lunch with the ongoing snow conditions improved by the hour. We took 3 runs on the Blackfoot chair, which is a slow double with west facing fall lines paralleling the lift. Now most turns were in soft snow and I was pleased I had been optimistic and chosen to ski on the Jimis today.
We got a bit low on the last Blackfoot run and had to return to the base via the Shoshone beginner chair.
The next 3 runs on Dreamcatcher we picked our way down foggy Sitting Bull Ridge to the Good, Bad and Ugly runs dropping into north facing trees.
These were Liz’ favorite runs here. Even though we had to drive to SLC after skiing, Liz was eager to ski to closing bell as she hadn’t been in powder since skiing with Kevin Quinn in Antarctica. Our last run was wide open soft and smooth skiing paralleling the Dreamcatcher lift.
This day was quite similar to the first day at Schweitzer last week, so anyone who got to ski Grand Targhee the next day was going to be very happy. 22,900 vertical, about 4K of powder late in the day.
Down the hill the Driggs City Center has some interesting snow sculptures.
After one Braille run down Wild Willie and one flat run around Teton Vista we checked out the Sacajawea chair which doesn’t go as high and thus avoided the densest fog. Both Dreamcatcher and Sacajawea face west but their longest fall lines face SW and thus had some crunch from the sunny days since last Friday. This effect was more widespread than at Jackson because Jackson’s temperature inversion had kept its lower slopes in single digits during most of the sunny days. Patrick and I observed this phenomenon in 2006 also. The more common situation is for Jackson to have more sun effect due to more consistent cloud cover at Targhee. In March 2001 with Garry Klassen Targhee was nearly all packed powder when Jackson was mostly slop.
We checked with patrol before returning to the base from Sacajawea. The north facing slope has good snow but we skirted to skier’s left of the cliff band to Das Boot. There was some nice snow among the trees there.
After lunch with the ongoing snow conditions improved by the hour. We took 3 runs on the Blackfoot chair, which is a slow double with west facing fall lines paralleling the lift. Now most turns were in soft snow and I was pleased I had been optimistic and chosen to ski on the Jimis today.
We got a bit low on the last Blackfoot run and had to return to the base via the Shoshone beginner chair.
The next 3 runs on Dreamcatcher we picked our way down foggy Sitting Bull Ridge to the Good, Bad and Ugly runs dropping into north facing trees.
These were Liz’ favorite runs here. Even though we had to drive to SLC after skiing, Liz was eager to ski to closing bell as she hadn’t been in powder since skiing with Kevin Quinn in Antarctica. Our last run was wide open soft and smooth skiing paralleling the Dreamcatcher lift.
This day was quite similar to the first day at Schweitzer last week, so anyone who got to ski Grand Targhee the next day was going to be very happy. 22,900 vertical, about 4K of powder late in the day.
Down the hill the Driggs City Center has some interesting snow sculptures.