Dates: January 26 – February 3
Crew: Mom, Dad, Dillon Arey, Andrew Chin, Molly Crowther, Taylor Crowther, Hannah Neville, Thanh-Ha Nguyen, Grant Oakley
Locations: Big Sky, MT and Jackson Hole, WY
“Mmm…waffles…”
This will be a slight change of pace from my normal posts, seeing as this ski trip was a bit more “frontcountry” than would normally warrant a trip report. But it was a great week of skiing with friends and family, so certainly worth a little documentation!
Hannah and I started the trip with a flight into Spokane (with an unplanned detour to Boise to wait out fog and pick up more gas). We met my parents for another 8 hour drive to Big Sky, Montana. We tried not to think too hard about how we could have just driven from SF in those 15 hours…
Montana treated us to the weather it knows best: cold & windy. But the weather made for nice and light snow conditions, despite a bit of a dry spell.
The clear weather made for little fresh snow but plenty of great views.
Next up was a drive down to Jackson, Wyoming. The weather continued to be…nippy.
We took a great pitstop in West Yellowstone to check out the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center, where the critters were clearly unfazed by negative temps.
In Jackson, we were joined by Andrew, Dillon, and Thanh-Ha.
I took advantage of the cheap demos to develop some real ski envy.
The signs at Jackson warn that it “is nothing like you have ever skied before!” And they’re not exaggerating. Over the course of the week, I was blown away by the sheer number and length of stellar steeps. For a little extra challenge, I set a goal to hit every Jackson lift sequentially in a day, which came out to be 45k feet of vert!
The calm weather meant we got to watch plenty of paragliders launching from mid-mountain.
And of course, we made pilgrimages to the waffle house and Corbet’s Couloir (which sadly was closed on account of hard conditions and prep work for Kings & Queens of Corbet’s).
And no trip would be complete without spotting our own mangy moose on the bunny hill.
The trip wrapped up with another 18 hour travel fiasco back to the bay. Once again, we tried not think about how easily we could have just driven from the Bay. Or flown to Fiji.
Grant's Loose Parts Bin 