Jackson Hole Clip

Some footy from our last trip, check it out sometime. you should definitely do that.



Clip: Skiing Pow in Jackson Hole on Vimeo.



Pray for Snow!

The S-Jenk

Of days past and days to come...

The morning darkness is broken by pairs of headlights,
illuminating the rain going back the two nights,
from the west it had come bringing with it moisture,
falling hard from the skies and holding with it tenure.

Sitting in shotgun my friend stares stone cold,
we both say our prayers yet words we withhold,
the tunes play aloft of Chris Stolz and TiredEyes,
right below it the temperature a depressing 45.

Passing through town as White as the Fish,
home to a cult all sharing our wish,
headlights appear first slow but for sure,
and follow our path heavy rain we endure.

A sip of warm coffee to keep me awake,
a we get ever closer I tap the car brake,
right blinkers flash as we make that direction,
driving through sleet at the intersection.

Thick odors of OJ, toast, eggs, and crisp bacon,
hang in the air since we had awakened,
the path of our headlights appear as a blur,
as the changing of state begins to occur.

We drive through the switchbacks gaining more height,
as the color of the road changes to white,
raising the volume, a deep breath of air,
knowing that God has answered my prayer.

Heavy the snow falls and my friend shows a smile,
enjoying the moment all for the while,
dialing the phone and hearing Big Dave,
he lets out a laugh to words he was gave.

The only words he says are "14 of new",
the level of stoke now I cannot subdue,
pumping the tunage abuzz is my mind,
a thought from before that just came to mind.

I say a quick something to which we both know,
to thank God today for the blessing of snow.
with God we are blessed for the ability to ski,
and with God on a pow day, I truly am free.


Pray for Snow!

The S-Jenk

Busy days, powder days

This may be more of a photo journal than a story but I like it actually. Personally, I think photos speak louder than words.     

    Wow, what a February. Sorry I've been out skiing. A lot. I ended up missed a good chunk of school with the succession of 3 ski trips in February. My grades ended up taking a little bit of a hit from my time spent having fun in the snow, but hell, I wouldn't trade it for much anything else. After my trip with Conway to Big Sky, I spent the week gearing up for my next trip down south again. This time it was Jackson Hole and Grand Targhee, and wow what a trip! Best skiing of the season without a doubt.
    The trip started on the Wednesday after our trip to Big Sky. When my teacher were finally done complaining and ranting about how much school I've been missing for skiing, they signed the pre-absence form and soon afterwards we were in car heading down to Butte to meet up with the rest of the crew. On our way there, we met one of the local policemen of Anaconda who was kind enough to start our trip off with a speeding ticket. Nevertheless we sped the rest of the way to Butte, where Mike, Tom, Elliot, and I met up with John, Dan, and Nathan.
   Now on a quick note, John and Dan have always had moustaches. I swear I have never seen them without the lip-brooms, and I've always assumed at a young age that they were born with them. In truth, I find them to be more entertainment than an annoyance. Sure it may seem a little old fashioned, but they know how to ski the hell out of any powder day. Never have I seen a more perfect combination of powder and moustaches, and shaving them off would be like desecrating church......well, maybe not to that extreme.

John and Dan

and this 2 years ago, sexy huh?

  
      The trip took around 9 hours, not too shabby. Arriving in Driggs is like driving to the base of big mountain, I mean that is has the equivalent snow depth of that of Big Mountain. Truly a place blessed by snow, and thats only at the valley floor. Anyways we ended up staying 15 minutes from Grand Targhee at a local condo place, which was generously equipped with a set of hot tubs which we conquered the first night of our trip, but thats another story.
  
"...we ended up just eating in the back of our trucks with the tunes cranked up..."


 First day: 5 inches of new, and snowing at Targhee. Our breakfast was an array of sausage, bacon, eggs, and toast, cheap and totally filling. Skiing there on a thursday is just like having the whole mountain to yourself, everyone is either working or in school, so you ended up just exploring for most of the day in a place so lost in time, it seems hard to forget that we were there only two years ago. The storm had not fully hit yet, so the ended up being a hunt for the powder stashes that been overlooked. We found it where we always had; right underneath the chairlift. Normally people are timid about riding underneath the chairlift but thats where the leftover pow can be found. The end of the day and the incoming storm set spirits high for tomorrows trip to Jackson Hole.

John gettin' in balls deep.

    Jackson is probably the craziest mountain I've ever been to, and it doesn't surprise me that some the worlds best have come from there. Armed with a plethora of cliffs, technical terrain, and the "Big Red"(tram) it seemed to be the highlight of our trip so far as we charged through the caches of 3 feet of blower hiding under the accumulating snowfall. Mike and I, armed with our cameras documented the day, always volunteering to go take photos in order to go first through the pow. Lunch can be pretty expensive there, so we ended up just eating in the back of our trucks with the tunes cranked up. Why do they always insist on putting banana peppers in my lunch? I told them I didn't want it my sandwich, thanks Elliot. The afternoon ended up being pretty much the same as the morning: ride the tram to the top, ski hard the bottom, laugh when one of you crashed, cruised the groomers to the empty tram line, and repeat! I thought this place was supposed to have large crowds? Im thinking some people have been lying to us here.

From flexing the lats, to being lost in snow, what more could you want?

    Each day ended up being the same; we would get up in the morning eat and be out the door at an early time, ski pow in the morning, go each lunch, go out and ski pow for the rest of the day. Occasionally we would take turns flying off catwalks and lips to catch as much air as we could, and someone would always eat it. Whether it was john getting his skis stolen by trees, Mike and his curse to look bad in front of the camera, Nathan getting sucked underneath the snow, or me how i would fly off something and rag-doll the landing. The end of the day wouldn't be much different; try and sneak me into bars, get me kicked out, go eat a huge dinner, and then invade the hot tub area until closing time.
    

"Sometimes I like seeing Noaa mess things up..."

Woke up in the morning to snow on the car. 18 inches in the past 24 hours, and blue skies. Given that this was a saturday, we loaded up early and drove through the valley fog towards Targhee. Almost in an instant we broke through the fog to near clear skies. Cranking up the rave music as well pull in the parking lot for another epic day.
     Our group ended up trying out the blackfoot chair area. While most people will skiing the main quad, the Blackfoot can become an alternative on a busy day. It was our last day, so most of us skied a little more confidently today.

Powder? yeah we had some of that too.

     Sometimes there is nothing more I hate then to wave goodbye to an amazing trip. Food, friends, the snow, all of it came together perfectly, and just before our trip we were expressing doubt about the weather reports negative outlook. Sometimes I like seeing Noaa mess things up, hey I can't complain about it, and neither did anyone else.
   So now I'm back in Montana, writing this. If I had posted this a few weeks ago, I would've ranted on about the warm weather and bad snow conditions. Now with a dump of 10 inches in the mountains, it's starting to look positive again. This el Nino has left our mountains near 60% of normal. Hopefully god will be gracious enough to grant us some more snow soon, the mountains need it, the glaciers need it, and the forest fire season needs it. Yeah I may be dreaming pipe dreams right now for all of us, but right now I could use just one last powder day for the season.

Pray for Snow!

The S-Jenk

The "sketchiest" skiing in North America...

      My friend Conway and I took a trip down to Big Sky last weekend, and it was nothing short of a good time. We enjoyed the sun, ate some good food, shot a little video, and enjoyed some of the sketchiest skiing I've ever done in my life.
    I'm surprised at what they call a "run" on that mountain. You could call it a giant mound of rocks for short, and in short, that's pretty much all it is. Snow on rocks, and that can be one hell of a recipe for disaster.
    Depending on where you live, the trip there can range from just a couple hour drive, into one long -ass drive. From when we left, it took us about 6 1/2 hours to get there. Not exactly what I call a fun trip, but it's not as bad when you have your friends dad with you who can't stand 5 minutes of silence in the car. Always something to talk and do with Steve, whether it's boring or interesting. On our way there we managed to kill close to an hour with ou search to find a Subway for lunch. It really happened by accident; we were all craving 12" of goodness, and so we decided to stop in Deer Lodge for lunch, Guess what? No Subway. Next we tried Anaconda, which is a bit out of the way for us. We managed to get there right after school had gotten out for lunch, and every student managed to be there in line at Subway. Nonetheless, we were still hungry, and finally stopped in Butte to eat at the Subway there. Mmmmm, Sweet Onion chicken teriyaki on monterey cheddar bread roasted to..... oh sorry, I should get back to the trip.

           

    Anyways, we arrived there around 4:30 in the afternoon at The Lodge at Big Sky. Honestly, that place was one of the most legit places I've ever stayed. The attitude of the place was so laid back in everything, making it "fun" to stay there. Everything ranged from local barbecues every week, to liquorice jars that required you to sing for a twizzler, to the fact that the owner of the place himself was the driver of the morning shuttle to the base area. Unbeknownst to us, we didn't know about the last fact until our last night there, but more on that later. 

    Now I didn't shoot many photos of the trip, and most of the video we got is still being edited. I did however to get a small compilation of helmet cam footage up for now.

Helmet Cam at Big Sky from Mount Clements Media on Vimeo.

  The skiing is amazing there. Simple and to the point. You really don't grasp how massive the terrain is unless you've been there, it had been close to a week since the last dump there and we still were skiing fresh lines for the most part of our first day. Luckily for us it was a friday, and the tram line was almost nonexistent that day. Did I mention they have a tram? Oh go look it up, I'm not explaining all of that to you. We rode the tram twice that day, and that was all that we could really handle then. While Lone peak tends to get more snow than the rest of the mountain, it also gets a lot of wind. Skiing up there was more of trying to avoid hitting rocks on you way down, which was impossible i might add. You almost need to wait for a good snow year to charge that terrain with much confidence. We made do with what we had, which was perfect for a first day. That night we played the hell out of Jenga, and managed to beat it. Twice. I'm serious, ask conway if you don't believe me. 

  

     Last day: we wake to 3 inches of new snow and decided to try some of the tree skiing today. I was actually surprised at the amount of cliffs and pillows that we had found, and made for some creative  skiing too. The best tree skiing I found was underneath the swift current chair, and the challenger quad. Most people seemed to overlook these areas, which left plenty of lines for us. We skiied hard until lunch, which we ate at the same place every time. The market there knows how to make some pretty delicious chili dogs, I'm not going to lie. It is cheap too, and we both ate for around 6$ each day. A great place of you are on a budget. For breakfast? If you are staying at a place that does not offer breakfast, then try the breakfast place right across the market in the mall area, good coffee and good proces too. Filled with a slurry of pork and chili, we began planning to try some of the A-Z chutes that afternoon. 

      Now these chutes are some of the sketchiest skiing I've ever done, but was hella worth it. Depending on which chute you wanted to ski, the hike time ranged from 10-45 minutes in length. Note: the hike is not for those with fears of exposure, because at times one slip with land you at the bottom of Moonlight Basin, so be careful when you do it. 

This is only half of the A-Z chutes. 

    I ended up skiing the Drunk Men chute, honestly the second scariest line of my life. The first 100 feet force you to either hop turn it or point it out, since there were plenty of rocks present, i decided to play it safe. Third turn in I caught an edge and ended up tumbling 20 feet before stopping myself. Luckily I didn't lost any skis during the fall, at that point I ended up just getting the hell down the face. Scary? Yes.  Worth it? Absolutely. 

   It ended as the sweet note to the end of our trip. 6 1/2 hours later I was home for the week. Relaxing, and licking my wounds the mountain of Big Sky left me as a souvenir. 

Pray for Snow!

The S-Jenk