Exploring Gros Ventre

Lot's of photos from today...

Brandon, Eric, and I decided to go on a backcountry touring adventure. We woke up early and cooked a tasty breakfast with eggs, potatoes, onions, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, and cheese. Delicious. Our original plan was to either go to Teton Pass or go out of bounds at the resort. After a long debate, we ended up going North of Jackson to Gros Ventre Road. Even with the early breakfast, we got a slow start leaving the house at about 10:30.

[ Where are we going? ]

[ View of the Tetons ]

Our first destination: Shadow Mountain. After arriving at what we assumed was the trail head, we decided that it looked like a long flat tour before reaching anything worth while. The only people we saw were on cross country skis. We turned around and kept driving. After heading down a long random road with incredible views, we reached a gate. Closed for the Winter.

[ Eric works commercial fishing in AK during the summers ]

[ Our drive was amazing ]

Finally we decided to start touring up a hillside that had some tracks going up it. There was only a few inches of snow and we were probably on rocks. The weather was beautiful. We saw a wind-lip in the distance and made that our destination.

[ We decided to ski up the hillside next to the river and see where we end up ]

[ Brandon stopped to snap some photos. You will see his perspective further down... ]

[ Following ]

[ Spotting our destination ]

The three of us spent a couple hours hanging out in the sun and taking turns shooting photos and dropping the lip. We saw a fox and a herd of elk in the distance. Couldn't have been a better afternoon.

[ Checking out the drop ]

[ Eric being the guinea pig ]

[ Brandon hiking up after taking photos ]

[ Getting ready to drop in ]

[ Brandon's first hit ]

[ Round two ]

[ Eric throwing snowballs ]

[ My favorite photo ]

[ Eric getting ready to hit it switch ]

[ Nice try ]

[ Relaxing in the sun ]

These photos are from Brandon. He got some good photos of me today...

[ Me and Eric starting to climb ]

[ Dropping ]

[ Hiking up for another round ]

[ I'm just sending it ]

On our drive home, we saw a great view of the Tetons. Eric (aka Gramps) was rocking out to Lady Sovereign in the backseat.

[ Eric singing Love Me or Hate Me ]

Yesterday, a group of us did some beacon training at the resort. It was good to get some practice, but I was a little disappointed with the set up. There were only two hidden signals and they were fairly close to each other. Supposedly there is another beacon playground in Teton Pass. We'll probably go check that out.

[ Beacon Basin ]

[ Practicing ]