Sunrise on Glory

This morning Jacki, her visiting friend Sam, and I wanted to hike Glory before work at noon. I had a rough start to the morning. I was going to wake up at 5am and pick Jacki and Sam up at about 5:45 so that we could be at Teton Pass by 6:30. I slept through my alarm and work up at 5:35. I was already flustered and then after my car failed to start, I realized that a connector in my coolant hoses was broken. I had a pretty bad start to the morning.

Jacki saved the day by driving us. We were a little behind schedule, but still managed to get to the pass by about 7am, about 20 minutes before sunrise. It was amazing to watch the sun come up over the valley. We reached the top around 8:20. Surprisingly, my ankle felt pretty good the entire way up.

Skiing down was great. We chose to head down in the Shovel Slide area. The very top was hard and wind blown, but once we dropped off the ridge, it was soft and pretty consistent. The ski down is never long enough, but it was a great way to start off the day.

We made it back to town by about 10. Just enough time to shower, eat, and hop on the Red Line to the village.

[ Sunrise ]

[ Sam reaching the top ]

[ The valley ]

[ Jacki at the top ]

[ Good morning! ]

[ Classic jump photos ]

[ Me & Sam ]

[ Me ]

[ My turn...and some random dog ]

[ Sam didn't do as well ]

[ Jacki & Sam gearing up...and some dude with the random dog ]

[ Getting ready to send it ]

Classic White Bread

After looking through Joy of Cooking I decided that learning how to bake bread could be a worthy trade. There are a lot of various bread recipes and it seems fairly straight forward.

Dana and I are both broken and taking the day off from skiing so we figured this afternoon would be the perfect time to give it a try. We decided that a classic white bread recipe would probably be an easy starter. We only have one load pan (9 x 5 in glass), so we cut the recipe in half.

Ingredients (for one loaf):
3 cups flour
1.5 tbs sugar
1/2 tbs salt
1 tbs butter
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/4 cup warm water
1 tbs butter melted, if desired

1. In large bowl, stir 1.5 cups flour, sugar, salt, butter, and yeast until well mixed. Add warm water. Beat with electric mixer on low for 1 minute. Stir in enough remaining flour (1 cup at a time) to make dough easy to handle.


2. Place dough on lightly floured surface. Knead for 10 minutes until dough is smooth and springy. Grease large bowl. Place dough in bowl, turning to grease all sides. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise for 40-60 minutes or until dough has doubled in size.



3. Push fist into dough to deflate. Flatten bread with rolling pin into 18x9 inch rectangle on lightly floured surface. Roll dough up tightly starting with 9-inch side. Press with thumbs to seal after each turn. Pinch ends into roll and fold under to seal. Place seam side down in pan. Brush lightly with butter. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise for 35-50 minutes until dough has doubled in size again.




4. Move oven rack to low position so that top of pan is in the center of the oven. Heat oven to 425F.

5. Bake 25-30 minutes or until loaf is deep golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped. Remove from pans to wire rack. Brush with butter, cool.




Not bad for our first try! I'd like to try experimenting with different kinds of bread.

Website - Recipe Key

I found a cool website this afternoon: http://www.recipekey.com.

You can build a "pantry" with all of the ingredients in your kitchen. From those ingredients it will produce recipes that you have all or part of the needed ingredients. You can sort it by meal type and you can also create favorites or make a grocery list. Pretty cool concept.

* If you plan on building a pantry, make sure you create an account and log in first. I spent 15 or 20 minutes putting mine together...and then realized that it was deleted after I created my account. So I recommend creating an account before the pantry.

A walk up Cache Creek

Both Dana and I took the afternoon off from skiing. I wanted to go exploring, so Dana and I took a walk down Cache Creek. The trail head is probably about a mile from our apartment. It goes up the valley behind Snow King. We walked for about three miles total. Cool scenery and nice weather. We got back to the car just before dark.

[ Icicles ]

[ Heading up Cache Creek ]

[ Dana ]

[ Wagons on road? ]

[ Moose! ]

[ Aspens ]

I couldn't resist

JHMR received 13 inches of new snow in the last 24 hours...it was the first real powder day we've had since the beginning of January. My ankle was hurting a little on my way to the mountain, but I couldn't resist. I had to go skiing.

Sarah and Jacki picked me and Dana up around 8am and we carpooled to the mountain. Due to large tram and gondola lines, we made a lap in Saratoga Bowl first so the lines could die down. My ankle wasn't feeling too hot, but it wasn't bad enough that I wanted to quit. From Saratoga Bowl, we hit up the Gondola and worked our way up to the Expert Chutes. I was trying my best to take it easy and not ski hard, but that proved to be difficult. After Expert Chutes we made a couple out of bounds laps in Rock Springs. The snow was better on each run and Rock Springs proved to be the the best snow of the day. Mostly untracked and knee deep. It was so good that we decided to take the tram up and make another lap through Rock Springs before calling it a day. We were all so excited about the snow that none of us wanted to stop to take photos...sorry, nothing to show today!

Dana and I were only going to ski for a couple hours in the morning, but we ended up going until 1pm. The snow was too good and my ankle started feeling better as the day went on. It actually feels better now than it did before skiing. The new heel wraps in my boots definitely kept my ankles in place better than before.

I got a call from the shop today telling me that the new radiator had been delivered and was already installed in my car. I was surprised at how quickly they got the work done. Yesterday they told me that they probably won't even look at the car until today. The radiator ended up costing less than the original estimate, but they discovered that I also need a new water pump which will bring the cost up a little. I'm assuming the water pump is where my problems originated. The Benz should be back on the road by Friday!

I want to be out skiing

I've only skied once since my Pinedale Canyon experience last Wednesday. I took about three easy runs on Sunday, but my ankle wasn't enjoying it. I haven't been to the clinic, but I might stop by tomorrow. I think I probably sprained my right ankle. My left ankle still hurts a little too. We're getting the first good snow storm in almost six weeks so I'm kind of bummed that I'm not out in the snow. It's probably not worth the chance of hurting myself more though. I might try to go out for a little easy skiing tomorrow.

On a good note, I've been really productive today. Finally got around to bringing the Benz to the shop to get the radiator replaced. I haven't really been able to drive it since before Christmas, so I'm looking forward to having it back on the road. I also stopped in the village to get my boots worked on. I got some heel wraps installed so hopefully my ankles won't have room to play anymore.

[ Gettin' towed ]

[ Leaving the benz at the shop ]

No plans for the rest of the afternoon, but I think I'll put some time into contacting engineering firms about summer employment here in Jackson.


A few photos from last week...

[ Dana saying hi to mom ]

[ Can't ski...might as well lounge out in the sun with Julie at the top of the gondi ]

[ Snacks ]

[ Dana came up to join us ]

[ Last week was the JHMR Employee Olympics - Zac mentally preparing to kill it in the cardboard derby. The rental shop obviously won. ]

Pinedale Canyon

Today's adventure was to ski Pinedale Canyon. Neil was our guide. Pinedale is a 30-45 minute traverse/side-step/bootpack from the resort boundaries. To get there, we first traversed over the top of Rock Springs to Green River and then after a short ski, we bootpacked to the top of Four Pines. From Four Pines, we traversed a little further to get to the top of Pinedale. It is amazing how easily you can get to whole new areas within a short hike of the resort.

This is an image of a JHMR backcountry map I bought the other day...I dug it up online, so the quality is pretty bad, but you get the idea. The yellow dotted line is the resort boundary. Pinedale Canyon is two valleys to the left of the boundary. You might be able to make out the name on the map.


Today's crew was myself, Neil, Owen (they are brothers), Phil, Jacki, and Julie (a friend of Neil).

[ Julie & Jacki making the traverse to Green River ]

[ Top of Four Pines ]

[ Phil reaching the top ]

[ Julie, Neil - Traversing to the top of Pinedale ]

[ Jacki posing while "scoping her line" ]

It was exciting to get out and explore a new area with new terrain. Getting out to the top of the canyon was an adventure. Skiing down was another story and made me pretty mad by the end. Mentally I wanted to charge on my skis, but physically my body wasn't letting me. I double-ejected out of my skis twice and lost a single ski once. It just wasn't my day.

[ Phil ]

[ Owen ]

[ Owen ]

Both of my knees are sore and my right knee hurts from one of the tumbles, my right ankle aches and my left ankle doesn't feel good either. My left arm is also pretty sore. I'm taking a few days to hang low and recover. Hopefully snow continues to fall and things will soften up by the time I get back out there.

[ The icicles on our roof look pretty cool ]

27 hour road trip

Jacki and Julie picked me up at 9 last night. We left Jackson at about 9:30pm after making a quick detour to the Village to pick up equipment.

[ The crew getting on the road at 9:30 - Jacki, Me, Julie ]

[ Me ]

[ Jacki ]

[ Julie ]

After driving through the night in crazy snow storms, we finally made it to Salt Lake City. We filled up on gas and continued up Little Cottonwood Canyon before the road closed for avalanche control. We made it to the base of Alta at about 4am and crashed in the car.

[ It was snowing hard the entire way to Salt Lake City ]

[ Fillin' up at 7 Eleven in SLC at 3:30am ]

[ Bed time! ]

We were woken up at 6:45 by a loud siren warning for bombing. This is when we realized that "interlodge" was in effect. Everybody must be inside a building and all doors are locked to prevent people from going outside. It was too late for us to leave the car so we hunkered down for about an hour until it was over.

[ Waking up ]

[ Can't see much out the windows ]

[ Let's go skiing! ]

[ I think it snowed a little... ]

[ Excited ]

[ Breakfast? ]

[ Gearing up ]

Today was epic. Snow was knee to thigh deep everywhere and over-the-head blower. We saw a good amount of blue skies and sunshine. I had never skied Alta before. It was a great mountain and a cool place to visit, but I don't think I would want to live in Salt Lake City. I'm happy in Jackson.

[ Photo shoot - Jacki, Sarah, Julie ]

[ Jacki - spraying snow ]

[ Shot 2 ]

[ Julie - all you can see are her hand and black helmet ]

[ "come towards me and ride off that mound. that wasn't quite what i had in mind..." -Julie (after i went mached straight down the line) ]

[ Me - coming through the trees ]

[ Me - whiteroom ]

[ bluebird powder day ]

[ Only in Alta... ]

We skiied all day and then had an incredible sushi dinner at Naked Fish in Salt Lake City before making the drive back to Jackson.

Approximate time breakdown of our trip:
12 hours driving
3 hours sleeping in a cold car
1 hour stuck in car during interlodge
1 hours gearing up/down
7 hours skiing
2 hours breakfast/dinner
= 27 hours total


* Julie took most of the photos with the exception of a couple from myself and Jacki.