The Deep Hole
With Stowe receiving over 360 inches of snow this winter, its safe to say that the East Coast has had a pretty good winter - until you compare it to the winter Jackson Hole has had. Since breaking their all time single season snow record in late March, Jackson Hole is about to break the 600 inch mark - 50 feet of snow. Dang.
With a few fellow East Coasters holed up in Wyoming for the winter, John, Jenny and Joe decided they wanted in on the Wyoming fresh. Banking on fresh snow during a pre-planned trip is never a good idea - 99% you will get skunked. However, we must have done something right because we scored. It started snowing about five minutes after our plane landed and didn't stop until the morning we left. You could not ask for anything more! Two feet of Wyoming fluff left us with perma-grins and sore legs at the end of every day.
Jackson Hole is a big mountain. With 4,139 feet of vertical and 2,500 acres of in-bounds terrain, there was very little chance to find the stashes in three short days. Thankfully, Don Watkins took us under his wing and showed us the ropes. Don has the mountain dialed; everything from open snow-fields to tight woods to cliff bands. We rode our asses off for three days straight.
Living in New England my entire life, I have not had the opportunity to ride steep terrain for extended periods of vertical. Now I know what I'm missing.
