Conditions Report
Today was my first day at Grand Targhee Resort at the foot of the Tetons, and it was full of good turns, trees, faces, pistes and all kinds of great terrain. What could possibly be better than that?
Grand Targhee on a full blown powder day, that’s what. And that’s exactly what’s about to happen folks. To make a short story even shorter, you need to get here. We’re looking at four feet over the next four days, and with an established base, it’s about to go off. Better yet, it’s the work week between New Years and MLK: there’s nobody here! Lift lines, and even those pesky tracks of other skiers, only exist in far away imaginary worlds like Jackson, that other resort in the Tetons.
Forecast:
The forecast is smokin’ hot right now. There’s powder on the menu all week, and then clear weather for some epic days on Teton pass. We’ve got moisture streaming in from the Pacific, but with nice continental temperatures for that lovely, creamy, floaty powder that we all crave. It’s already started: several inches over the last 48 hours has already got the snow spraying in all directions:
It’s not just 500 inches of annual snowfall, zero lift lines, and the fact that Targhee is 100% a local’s mountain where a skier can let it hang out. It’s the terrain that seems like it was personally molded by Ullr. The trees are immaculately spaced. There are countless wide open faces and alpine zones. The pistes are wide and smooth. The fall lines are generally perfect. Perhaps best of all, much of the mountain is a consistent pitch, which also happens to be the ideal pitch for skiing. There are three, straightforward lifts and you won’t be wasting your time traversing around looking for stashes in weird places. You won’t be scratching over rocks or tree stumps. You will be lapping the best turns of your life until the lifts close.
See you out there!
Photo Tour:
There’s plenty of adventure skiing to be had, however, with the Mary’s Nipple hike-to terrain and the cat-skiing terrain that serves as slackcountry for us plebians:
While I would refer to Targhee as the ideal “advanced” skiers mountain, there is plenty of ultra gnarly inbounds terrain to be had, like these cliffs accessible off of Mary’s Nipple:
