My long-winded perspective of Summit '05

[shmerham]

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.

[shmerham]

Monday is a Targhee day. Six inches of dust on crust is the rule. Some people are floating a bit, but my machete’s are sinking right through to the icy bumps. I want to fly through the powder, but the bumps are either stopping me from doing so or causing me to be out of control. A group of ten of us head straight for a cliff band only to be “cliffed out”. ‘Sherpastyle’ and ‘Treerat’ take the air and sketchy landing while the rest of us gape and finally make our way through a couple exit chutes. On another run a nasty fall jars one of my bootwarmer battery packs loose and on the next two turns I lose it. A quick search turns out to be unsuccessful. After lunch we make the hike up to Mary’s twice for a foot of powder, with some filming courtesy of ‘Spanky’. On the second trip ‘JoshBu’ and I accidentally take the Targhee “pain train” on the way out, a gully with nasty bumps that goes on way too long for our tired legs. One more run yields some serious gaper turns.

Tuesday is a big surprise. I’m expecting more hard snow and dust on crust. Some places are certainly that, but with continual snow and the expert guiding by ‘The Suit’ we find tons of great north facing slopes for some turns in nice snow. Alta Chutes, Bivouac woods, and mushroom chutes are the winners of the day. Good snow on Tensleep Bowl, but the exit run on the “icy field of death”, otherwise known as the cirque is rough. After a long day on the slopes, I take a bus ride solo to town for the “Mardi gras pub crawl”. It is here where I learn of the maggots’ collective disdain for punctuality. I arrive at the brewpub fifteen or twenty minutes late only to find that there is no group of maggots there. After asking a bartender, I learn of one other maggot looking for the group. While waiting at the bar for a drink, EPSkis identifies himself, and minutes later a few more maggots arrive. By 8:00 the maggots have infested the upper level bar with our own private Mardi Gras party. The crawl continues on to the famous Cowboy Bar where ‘Kellie’ and I are unsuccessful at satisfying our “beer munchies”. To our dismay the bar doesn’t serve ice cream sundaes, cookies, crackers, or even ramen noodles. We end the night by heading on to another bar. This last place is too smoky, but it redeems itself with some local chicks earning beads and a bouncer that cards everyone short of senior citizen status.

Wednesday turns out to be the real winner. Clear skies and a healthy dose of snow from the previous day and night give us a huge-smile-inducing run on rendezvous bowl. The best snow is found on Tensleep Bowl and on the last run of the day we take the skier’s left line for some hoot-worthy knee-deep powder that’s practically untouched.

[shmerham]

Jackson is a killer mountain and by this point it’s nearly gotten the best of me. I’m sore and my muscles and joints are tight, but I’ve got nothing else to do so I decide to ski again on Thursday. Leaving my room I discover negative temperatures and frozen beer. I head up the tram fully geared up and arrive at the surprisingly mild summit. By the time I reach the cirque I’m sweating my ass off. I head to the base, shed a layer and continue my day. It’s kind of a lazy day, with long breaks. I finish my day in the mushroom chutes with ‘VTSkiBum’ and ‘Gin’. On each run I vow that it’ll be my last. The good snow and a bit of peer pressure keeps me out for an extra three runs however, capping the end to a pretty good ski day that almost didn’t happen.

Thursday night I join a large crew of Maggots for the ‘Avalanche Party’. I make an effort to stay sober, in hopes of giving my muscles a chance to recover. A healthy bit of peer pressure though from ‘Karl Stall’ and I’m hittin’ the keg. ‘Frozen’ gives a touching description of “Newt”, the reason we’re having the benefit party, and then ‘Karl’ nicely summarizes the resume of Theo, an expert ski guide. Theo launches into his presentation like Nobis on an AK line. No intro, no pretense; straight to info on the Teton snowpack. Ten minutes in and I feel like I have enough info to do a documentary on the 2004-2005 season. It’s as if he has crafted his presentation specifically to satisfy my interests in both skiing and geeky science stuff. He shows some video and slides, the most dramatic of which is a clip of him breaking off a 100 foot section of cornice and narrowly escaping death or injury. Following Theo is a short video presentation and a Q&A session with Corey Gavitt and Todd Jones of TGR. I note Corey’s Sox hat and afterwards ask Todd Jones if they knew each other before moving to Jackson. Interestingly enough they were both born on the same day in the same hospital in Cape Cod. Todd and I shoot the shit for about 15 minutes, mostly talking about New England stuff.

On Friday I return to Targhee. The voyage this time is a bit more demanding, involving a long wait outside in the sub zero temps and a ride on a cramped bus with a broken heater blowing cold air at my feet. It ends up being another inversion day with above-freezing temps on most of the mountain. Conditions are mushy in some spots, but great on the north-facing slopes. I hike up Mary’s twice. Once to the top for an amazing view, and once up to score a pretty sweet line on an adjacent peak. A friend of McWop’s friend points out some great snow, on a slope above the traverse out. We slog through the knee to waist-deep snow to get some awesome turns in untracked. The second run is responsible for maintaining ‘Mrs. Mit’s highly contagious perma-smile and a most excellent way to end the day.

[shmerham]

Saturday is my last day of skiing. I take the opportunity to part ways with the mountain that’s provided tired legs, plenty of challenges, and big smiles. It’s another relatively lazy day on mostly north-facing slopes. I get a chance to ski a few runs with ‘Karl Stall’ who had been spending most of his time BC, while I was spending all my time inbounds. ‘Doug W’ and I are amongst the few survivors who make it past noon that day. We wrap it up with a run on expert chutes after a fall on Alta 3 made me realize I had pretty much had it.

The ‘Powder to the People’ tour intersects the summit at the Moose that evening. Slowly as the après-ski crowd leaves, the maggots take over table after table. As the snow softly fall outside the windows, the awards video provides some oooh’s, ahh’s, and some bleeding ears from the sound system. The Maggots clean house in the raffle, with coolest prize of the night, a really slick tech’s apron going to ‘TeleDave’. The maggot congregation sticks around for some more beers and laughs. ‘Ubersheist’ makes a suggestion to get “ripping drunk”, which at this point sounds really good to me. We both slam shots of JD and I continue to sample the very tasty “Moose Drool”. Plans to move the maggot gathering to the Cadillac Grille are made. Only 4 of us plus one non-mag make it though. After dinner we make our way home for my final night at the Hostel X. I realize I’m the only person who’s drunk, but I don’t care though, as I’m in a completely euphoric state, reflecting on the good times had at Summit ’05.

[shmerham]

Damn, that was really long. It was much too awesome to summarize succinctly. Apologies. Pics coming soon.

[Big E]

Great writeup, shmer...

[bad_roo]

So it was Flyin' Ryan who was the vector of the disease!

STONE HIM!!!

[Karl Stall]

Great report - it was good to meet and spend a few moments and runs with you.

[VTskibum]

Nice write up it was great skiing with you, i'll post a few pics tonight.

[DougW]

So it was Flyin' Ryan who was the vector of the disease!

STONE HIM!!!

new board name should be Typhoid Ryan. I skied with him and feel fine, maybe you sick guys should have done less of the hugging and kissing and more of the skiing and washing hands.

[shmerham]

You want the truth? I'm in cahoots with a militia from Western Canada. I was sent to the summit to infect Quebecois, Americans and Brits with the Shinjuku Angry Whelk flu. If you noticed, Weibo was the only non-Quebecois Canadian to get sick, and that's because the slower American speech pattern was wearing off on him. Also worth noting is that Mr. Stinky didn't get sick, with his speech pattern being interdeminate.

[warthog]

Nice getting cliffed out with you Shmerham. Though I didn't even know you were with us. That was some sketchy stuff. Props to those who dropped it. With the little snow they had, everything under me looked like lightly dusted boulders. Better to gape and ski another day.

[shmerham]

And finally some pics:

TR brought to you by these guys:



Lotta history at the Hostel X. Even the host of the 'Daily Show' has stayed there:



Bunch o' Maggots:



A Trio of Bros on Bros:



Mr. Stinky whispering sweet nothings; and by nothing, I mean nothing that Roo is going to understand:

[shmerham]

All from Grand Targhee:

Looking at the Grand Teton from Mary's Nipple:



Some other mountain that looks pretty cool:



JoshBu and I both agreed that these lines would be pretty sick if they got 600 inches of sierra cement and if we were Michah Black.



McWop is killin' it on the photo ops. Gotta be the Bros:



This safety poster is about smart style, but I thought it was smart steeze. Whoever did this one can't even spell 'here' write:



This one is about shipping dates or something:

[Mtn Man]

Nice write up Shmer! Definitely captured a lot of it. Good skiing with you over the daze. Drop a line when you're in K!

B)

[Mcwop]

Awesome meeting and skiing with you. Thx for the pic. Good TR.

[shmerham]

A couple gimps (Kellie and Plakespear):



The lovely maggettes (SkiGuide, Kellie, Mrs. Mit, and Mrs. Roo):



Kellie trying out the frenchbeaters on their proud, new owner:



Maggot infenstation:



Summit leaves its mark at Hostel X:

[gincognito]

Nice report and pics! Great skiing with those couple days.

SaAaH (and vid will come tomorrow),
d.

[VTskibum]

2 pics of Shmerham skiing Mary's

[Mit]

You want the truth? I'm in cahoots with a militia from Western Canada. I was sent to the summit to infect Quebecois, Americans and Brits with the Shinjuku Angry Whelk flu.

You bastard !!! I'm gonna save some phlem and launch it your way during the EC summit.

Thanks for the TR and pics. It was really fun skiing with you.

[gincognito]

(psst, just so you know, shmerham, I put the video in bad_roos thread. Filming is a bit shaky on your line, but not toooo bad.)