Conditions Report
Brought to you by Grand Targhee Resort
Report from Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2021
The 3″ of new snow that fell last night at Grand Targhee Resort in Wyoming skied way better than it should have.
It was fast and forgiving, allowing you to ski quickly and aggressively without that classic dust-on-crust feel we’re all way too used to by now.
I was pleasantly surprised. I just kept thinking, “Wow, the snow is really friendly today,” as I kept pushing it harder and harder down the mountain…
It was very light, low-density snow.
You could really lay an edge because the snow was soft and smooth, even allowing you to properly float in spots like it was deeper than the 3″ they reported.
Grand Targhee I think you lie! That had to be more than 3″. Or maybe your snow is just pretty good this season…
Because 214″ for the middle of January isn’t half bad for a current season snowfall total.
I just kept finding suave turns all day—lots of them untracked.
It made no sense to me how there was terrain right in plain sight that no one skied all day. Turns directly off the chair in the trees that people skied right by on the groomers, leaving it waiting there for opportunists like me and Cezar to go snag.
Perhaps there are some things we just don’t need to understand.
Today was mostly sunny, with a few low-hanging clouds and beautiful snow flurries that sparkled like hell in the sunlight.
We started off the day surfing a high-speed gully that ran right under the Dreamcatcher liftline. My legs were burning on the first lap.
The most-lapped run of the day was probably the off-piste terrain directly in between Dreamcatcher and Wild Willie on the skier’s left side of the chair.
Good luck trying to get Cezar to ski anywhere else once he finds a soft, flowy run with a nice steep-ish pitch.
In the afternoon, we went exploring and took some laps off the Sacajawea Chair once our legs started singing.
We found some playful lines with mildly spicy cliff drops in Bobcat and some smooth, surfy gullies in the trees off the Powder Reverse Traverse.
You go a little off the beaten path on any run at Grand Targhee and BOOM! you lose sight of tracks and your mind as you slash light, delicate snow all over the place—all by your lonesome.
I think I love this place.
To cap the day, we started sending cliffs over by The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly—three steep, mostly shaded tree runs that don’t see a lot of traffic.
I stomped one small-to-medium size cliff with a real soft landing that just made me smile as I jammed the Black Keys on Spotify. (Song of the day: “Have Love, Will Travel” – The Black Keys)
I even popped into the park for a lap because why not? Grand Targhee has a great little terrain park with some jumps and a few rails.
We then lapped our favorite run on Dreamcatcher until we couldn’t lap it no more, watching the sky turn a more brilliant shade of orange with every lap we took as the sun slid down towards the horizon.
We left hungry for more, knowing we’d be back.
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Forecast
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people are not skiing the runs because they are waiting in their cars on the road to park. Yup, this mountain can not park people because there is NOT ENOUGH PARKING!!!!! Teton Valley’s is at the critical Covid rating because of all the people who have come here to visit. Fingers crossed they do not shut down the schools due to tourist’s sharing their germs. Sharing is caring!!!!