My Grand Targhee Adventure- 12/8/04
Sounds like a 3rd graders story title, huh? I left the house at 0630 after digging my truck out of the driveway...again. Surprisingly, it stopped snowing for a couple hours in the morning, which made the drive much more pleasant than we were anticipating. Turns out we left about an hour earlier than we needed to as we rolled into the Targhee parking lot at 0745. We found some patrollers and asked how conditions were and how much snow they'd gotten last night. 1 inch... WTF! It dumped all night in JXN...Targhee always gets more snow than JH! :cussing: The troller told us conditions were variable as winds had been steady at 30mph with gusts to 50.
After sitting around the lodge for an hour we headed out with a game plan to stick to the trees. We got first chair! Wasnt too hard seeing as we were the only people there before 0900. Apparently the rest of the world checks snow reports before they get amped for powder days. The wind was howling and it started dumping again soon after we got on the chair. We found some good pockets. Nothing to write home about, but good turns all the same. A few face shots here and there and a good crew from JH. We skied until the bitter wind and poor visability started to bring us down around 1430. The visability was too bad to take any pictures...Sorry!
We headed down the road as it continued to dump and presented us with concerns that the pass would be closed. After a few miles, we came upon an Explorer buried in a ditch on the side of the road. There were 6 guys wandering about with a few shovels looking a bit disheveled at their circumstance. I pulled up, rolled down my window, and asked if they needed a tow. Turns out only one of the guys was in the vehicle and the others were just passers-by trying to lend a hand. The driver looked up between drags on his cigarette and said condescendingly, "Do you have a tow rope?" I made a sarcastic comment, turned my truck around, hooked up the tow rope and waited for the guys with the shovels to finish digging out the wheels. When it came time to pull him out, I reved, jerked, pulled, gained some ground, and then started to get pulled backwards toward the ditch. I stopped with one tire threatening to go over the bank and create more problems than we started with. I had the guys unhook me so I could straighten out and start over. I threw it into 4 low. Started er off in first and once I'd gotten traction punched the accelerator. I was still getting pulled sideways, but the Explorer was coming out. I had to pull it 15 ft before it made it all the way onto the road. Once it broke onto flat ground my truck spun it around like it was a tin can. It was entertaining... I hopped out to retrieve my tow rope assuming the driver of the other car would thank me for my services, but he didn't. He sat in his truck, finishing his cigarette without giving me a bit of acknowledgement. It made me want to hook the tow rope back up and spin him back off the road so he would have to wait around for a tow truck for a couple hours which would've cost him at least $100. Ungrateful little prick... I'm sure it just hurt his pride that a chick towed him out of a ditch on a flat, straight road where all his buddies were driving by.
So, we continued on our way. Once we got a radio signal again we found that Teton Pass was closed. We decided to make the detour down through Alpine because my friend had to be at work by 1800. It was a long, shitty drive. White out conditions the entire way. We came upon another truck off the side of the highway, so I flipped a bitch. My buddy pulled out the tow rope and hooked me up. This one wasn't buried too deep, so pulling him out was easy. We only held up traffic for about 2 minutes and were then on our way again. 3 1/2 hours later we finally made it back to JXN. We were debating whether the 4 1/2 hours of driving was worth the skiing. I think it was...at least for the adventure aspect of the trip.
Anyone know what kind of insurance you need to start a towing company? I got use a little side income...
