If anyone is wondering there is a ton of snow in the Tetons right now, seriously....we left at 6am on the 3+ hour trek and arrived to a socked in mountain of snow. The days before had the gee gettin 17 inch storms, so far this year 180 inches have fallen at mid mountain. I went with brit and matt, two co-workers from the repair shop next door, and we had the tri-fecta going with the tele/ski/snowboard crew. We basically just chased pow lines all day and by mid afternoon it was snowing so hard that our tracks down were gone by the next round.
It was cold. I rocked 3 face mask layers, and remained calm. By the 330pm the snow was coming at us horizontallly and we were repeatedly losing one another in the trees.
When riding anywhere exposed to the wind and snow sight became totally lost, and you had almost no idea how the snow was in front of you. Granted it felt great because it was pow, but each run closer to 4pm i felt like i was avoiding serious injury with these conditions.
I called it Sierra Nevada Time and hit the car. Not until a good 15 minutes away from the resort in the truck did i begin taking my outerwear off- everything had caked snow onto it. It was still snowing while we drove down to town, ate a quick meal, and began our trek back to Big Sky. We all contemplated crashing the night there and riding pow all day, but from how tired we all were it woulda been a push.
I woulda rode the next day tho if id stayed.....i woulda had to had- they got 14 inches that night.
Oh, and the top photo I cant take credit for- we were so socked in with fog and snow that the Grand Teton was never visible in the least. Generally tho the Grand sits right above Targhee at all times....stayed tuned for further Targhee trip reports and ill get a shot eventually.....
But our initial plan with this trip was to shoot and to ride the backside of Targhee, which is all backcountry access. There's no lifts running back there, so most of the terrain remains untouched. Anyways we were prepared to shoot a lot back there, but with the weather we ran into no one wanted to bring equipment out. The backside was also still closed, which was probably a mixed blessing with the conditions we were faced with.
The ride home was sketchy as hell, but i slept in the back. i didnt feel bad about doing this since ive been in the drivers seat of similar situations all too often. Got home around 830pm and was ready for work the next day with a great story about how deep the gee is right now.
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