A Jackson Hole New Year!

With Taylor and Dylan coming home for the holidays, I figured we should continue our latest tradition of doing some skiing together. Last year the kids and I skied Grand Targhee and Jackson, but Tamara didn't make it due to her brother, Bill, unexpectedly passing.  She pretty much picked the location this year after having to listen to all our stories over the last 12 months.

It was dang cold when we pulled into Jackson Tuesday evening and after some excellent pizza at Caldera Pizza we hit the sack early anticipating some excellent turns in the near future.

Wednesday morning was a tad colder than Tuesday night - the car thermometer at the resort base showed -22!  Damn!

It was tough getting the clothes situated and the gear ready without getting frostbite, but we somehow managed.  We took the gondola for the first trip up, mainly because it was enclosed.  Upon reaching the top of the lift, the temperature was a balmy 17 degrees - excellent. Just too make sure we weren't out of our minds, we proceeded to ski all the way down to the resort base. Yep, still freezing a$$ cold.

Gondola Splattski

Being the smart folks we think we are, it didn't take but this one run to realize that we should ski the top half of the mountain, and stay away from base area.  So that's what we did.

We took the tram up next so Dylan could check out the conditions of Corbett's Couloir.  For my sake there was still a few large rocks showing, so he (we) decided to forgo risking death, but we still managed to get in some smaller couloir runs.

Dylan preparing to drop in

Overall the snow wasn't too bad for this early in the season.  The coverage was great and the snow soft.

We skied both Wednesday and Thursday and had a blast.  If the smiles are any indication...

Now where to go next year?