My long-winded perspective of Summit '05 w/ pics
T-minus 4 days to summit and I’m feeling crappy. I decide to skip doing dinner with the ‘rents in favor of resting up. With the anticipation of a debauchery-filled week with hard-charging maggots, I want to do everything in my power to make sure I’m feeling okay for the summit. I wake up Wednesday morning, not feeling any better and decide to call in sick. Thursday and Friday morning are like groundhog’s day. I don’t feel any worse, but I don’t feel any better. I decide on Friday that I’m going to go the doctor’s, but not without some worry that maybe I shouldn’t even travel to Jackson Hole. With some encouragement from the maggots, I buck the fuck up and decide I’m going no matter what. Hit the doctor’s office and pay 15 bucks for a throat culture. It just doesn’t seem right that you pay for one of those. Get me some antibiotics with hope that they’ll work. I utilize all the energy I have to pack up my suitcase and ski bag.
Saturday morning, I make my way to the bus station, and from there to Logan Airport in Boston. By this point I’m aware of the cough I have developed, so I buy some cough syrup and chug it. For some reason I’m really sensitive to the stuff and I spend the rest of the day jittery, drowsy, and disoriented. Don’t ask me how that combination happens, but it does. I find myself in Dallas, Texas for a layover. Holy crap, there are a lot of people wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots there. Yeehaa! I read the monitor, finding my departing gate and make my way from gate A10 all the way to C27, which is about seven miles. 4 miles into the trip, I stop to refill my water bottle, and when I reach my destination, I fuel up with some extremely high quality Chinese food. I then find a laptop station, where I recharge my laptop while watching ‘Focused’. With about a half hour to board, I re-check the monitor since the gate I’m at doesn’t say ‘Jackson Hole’. I read the monitor, and lo and behold it says gate A12. WTF?!! High on cough syrup, I proceed to run to gate A12. My mile splits are 4:47; a personal best. Sweating, coughing, and breathing hard, I find my seat on the plane, only to find out that they need to replace an LED in the cockpit. They couldn’t have figured that out while they were telling me it was last call for boarding?!
A longer than expected cab ride from the Jackson Hole airport and I arrive at Hostel X. As I walk in the lobby I can tell immediately that the place bleeds skiing history. The owner for instance is the founding father of the Jackson Hole Airforce. I make my way up to room 417 and find ‘Snow Dog’. Almost immediately, in true maggot fashion, he offers a cold beer. I decline on grounds of being goofed up on cough syrup. The two of us join a then healthy ‘JoshBu’ and ‘Rusty Nails’, as well as ‘Up n’ Down’ for dinner at the moose. Great stories are shared and we see another maggot; ‘McWop’. I can tell already that the place is going to be overrun by maggots and I’m loving the thought.
I awake Sunday morning to comfortably cold temps and blue skies. After waiting on the wrong side of the tram dock, a few maggots and I make our way over to the correct side to find ‘Sherpastyle’ and some others. We get our stickers and vouchers, and grab our lift tickets. I hit the teewinot to après vous chair with ‘Up ‘n Down’ for some epic turns on the faaaaaaaast groomers. We then hit the casper chair for a lap on the race course. I’m so fast this particular morning that ‘UnD’ blows up a binding trying to catch me. The ski patrol at JHMR is awesome though. They get ‘UnD’ a loner ski to get down as well as a free demo for the rest of the day. We get some more groomers and top the day off with a run down Tower 3 chute, which has surprisingly good snow. With some fresh legs and improvements from ‘Str8line’s camp I rip it up with authority and come away pretty pleased.
Sunday evening we make our way over the steep and twisty Teton Pass to ‘Frozenwater’s’ Victor, Idaho abode. We’re pleasantly greeted by ‘Frozen’, sporting his TGR sweatshirt, and a pain-killer induced buzz. Having a username that no one can read, write, or understand; and a sub-thousand post-count, I’m quite apprehensive. I’m pleasantly surprised to find that many people know who I am. Watching the Super Bowl in the company of other maggots is highly enjoyable, especially being able to watch the Pats win with some “Iggles” fans watching and the TGR halftime show, which I don’t doubt was better than Paul McCartney or maybe even the Lingerie Bowl.
