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First day on a western trip so of course everyone was up way too early despite not getting nearly enough sleep the night before travel day. Pope was up from about 4am to 7 then managed about an hour more of sleep before breakfast. I was up from about 6 and stayed up. Not sure what time Homie woke up but he was awake on the living room sofa when I hit the head at 6. Took a look out the window and saw that there was about 3 inches of fresh snow covering all the chairs and tables down around the hot tub, a nice bonus. Breakfast in the room, we had ventured back out the night before for room provisions and a dispensary for Pops and Stephen. Stephen decided to make eggs and bacon and home fries for breakfast. Good, but much more than I typically eat that early, ski trip or no. While prepping all the gear for Day 1 the night before, gave Pops his lift ticket. Homie says “Oh yeah, where do I get my lift ticket?” Uhm, in the mail, at your house. Turns out he remembered that it did come and he even packed it — and then switched to a bigger bag, and left it in the other one. 🤦‍♂️Luckily he stopped by the ticket window first thing and they were able to cancel the old card and issue a new one. Didn’t even charge him $20. So with Pops feeling shitty enough that he wasn’t even coming on Friday night, we decided it would be smart to stay low on the mountain for the first day and ease into things. During the previous evenings excursions he was price comparing those Oxygen boost canisters. Funny enough, the mercantile at the WP base village was cheaper than Safeway so he popped in to get one. But it also got me thinking that renting an oxygen concentrator for him for the room could only help increase our chances for a successful week so I went ahead and ordered one for delivery this afternoon. At the base area there was a pretty decent corral for the gondola, but we bypassed it anyway and took the Gemini express over for a couple of short green runs to get the day started. Hopped on the Discovery double and skied down to the Prospector express. Made 6 runs off the Prospector hitting all the various green and blue groomers accessible over there, and mixed in a ride up the Looking Glass lift, first center pole no bar lift for us. It’s also a “passes over your head” after you disembark lift, thankfully no head injuries. After our trip up Looking Glass and down Mock Turtle, Pops was feeling alright to go a bit higher so we took a ride up the Olympia express so we could run Whistlestop to March Hare to White Rabbit. Where March Hare split to White Rabbit I elected to continue on March Hare while the others zagged to Rabbit. The bottom of March Hare ended up being a nice pitch, but short, filled with mild soft bumps so glad I was alone, but I enjoyed it. Took another ride up Olympia because I wanted to run Lonesome Whistle. Doodled in some super low pitch, wide spaced trees on the way down Hook Up to get to Lonesome Whistle. Very enjoyable run down Lonesome Whistle and it was about noon by this time, so we decided to grab a bite and get in to warm up. I knew exactly what I wanted to eat. The Bison chili at Sunspot. WP is having a promotion in Feb, they have 9 different spots that have chili on the menu around the mountain. If you eat 6 bowls you get a free celebratory beanie and sticker. (Also 25% off each bowl of participating.) As a big chili fan, challenge accepted. Where last years Jay Peak trip was the trip of poutine, this week will be a chili-fest. Took the Looking Glass up from where we were so we could ski down to the Explorer express. Went via the green Alan Phipps which was the most popular run of the day for Pops and Homie. Could really let them run down that trail and we all notched our fastest run of the day on it, for as much as the WP app can be trusted for that stuff. Explorer up to Sunspot and we went in for lunch around 12:25. Got my bison chili and it was quite good. Got my punch card to keep track of my bowls. Realized afterward that the cashier gave me my punch card and didn’t punch it. Now I have to eat 7 bowls of chili this week. Starting to seem unlikely. Spent about 45 minutes there and we decided we were about done for the day. I had been wanting to run Cranmer all day so I decided to take that to Larry Sale for a nice blue run down, and Stephen joined me until he took a wrong turn off Cranmer and went down Village Way instead of Larry Sale. Pops decided he wasn’t pushing any more and downloaded on the gondola. Overall a great first day. We put in 14 runs for 9300 vert, skied 10 miles. Got a bit of a late start with the side missions, and combined with staying low on easier slopes we didn’t get much use out of the fresh, but it made for a nice surface at least, and found a few small pockets to cover the tips in a few places. The fresh snow seemed a bit sticky, especially around the lift boarding areas, so Pops and I were looking to try to drop the skis off for a tune. But when I realized the only place in the village to do so was farther than I wanted to walk in my ski boots right then, we decided to just head back to the condo. We’ll drop them after skiing tomorrow Ended up just spending the rest of the afternoon and evening lazing around the condo. Didn’t even hit the hot tub today, though Its definitely on tap for tomorrow after skiing. Burgers and fries in the condo for dinner. NEXT - Ski day 2 or can you take me high enough?

Day 1 cont. - Landed at DEN and pulled out my phone and checked on the rental car while taxiing to the gate. Was offered a couple of Kia Sportage 2WD options, a couple of minivans, a 2022 Mitsubishi Outlander and a 2023 GMC Acadia. Looked at the differences between the Outlander and the Acadia and decided to get the GMC, but when I went to reserve it it wasn't available anymore. Refreshed a bunch of times while heading to baggage claim and saw a bunch of options. Always the Kias amd minivans, and several different Outlanders. The most interesting one was a 2022 Ford Expedition that popped up on about half of the refreshes. About 2/3 of the times it showed up it said "Upgrade $33 per day" and the rest of the time it was a free upgrade. Was ready to take the 2022 Outlander with about 16k miles, did one last refresh and there was a 2023 Dodge Durango with 1195 miles so snagged that. Took awhile to get luggage because the ski carousel was jammed and they were bringing ski bags out on a cart 6-8 at a time. Finally got the ski bag amd headed to the Avis shuttle. Got to the lot, straight to the car and after a longer line than there should have been (Preferred exit closed) we were on the road to Winter Park. No traffic to speak of and got to Winter Park at about 2pm. Can't get I to the condo until 4 so decided to cruise past the resort and get the lay of the town and nearby Fraser. We were also hungry so decided to keep an eye out for the Mexican good joint that PSUFly recommended to me 6 or 7 times. Okay, it was only 3x, but I figured when someone mentions you should eat somewhere that many times, it probably doesn't suck.I couldn't remember the name but I knew that it was short and simple and I would know it when I saw it, something like The Shack or The Dump. We drove through Winter Park and through Fraser and down the road awhile more and weren't spotting it. Spun around and headed back and figured we'd look some more and eat somewhere in WP. On the way back I asked my sisters BF Stephen whonis with us where he rented skis from so we could pick them up while we were in town. He didn't remember the name. Uhm, okay. Can you look for an email? Can't find an email. Has a text message from them confirming pickup for 2/5 and a price. No name? No name. No address? No address. Google the number. No good hits. Called it and it was a computer. Driving back through Fraser and WP amd Stephen is in the backseat calling like 4 different ski rental jawns off "Winter Park Ski Rentals" and asking if they have a rental in his name for pickup today. Can't make this shit up. 🤣 Almost back through Winter Park and still haven't spotted The Hut or whatever so pull the car into a garage to figure out where to eat and where homie's rentals need to be picked up. Walking toward the shops there trying to decide between the brewpub and a couple other places. "Hey, we should go to The Ditch. Right across the damn street, lol. Walk up and get seated amd now have the difficult decision of deciding between all the delicious items on the menu. The burgers all sounded awesome, including the sliders on the app menu. But going to a place like that and getting a burger would be like going to a cheesesteak place in Philly and ordering a hot dog. (A brother in law did that.) So I got the Murphy which was their basic burrito (which is anything but basic) but also stuffed with a Chile relleno amd topped with French fries and cheese before being smothered in their red or green chili sauce, or Xmas style, both. Went Xmas style, natch. It was phenomenal, with the relleno being the star. Smashed the whole thing and probably would have eaten another relleno if one happened to be present. Great food and a great rec by Fly. At some point during the meal I started helping Stephen track down his skis. I figured if I made started making a dummy reservation amd it was the same price it could help. First place I went to asked for renters name amd DOB, put his info in and got "Welcome returning customer!" Mystery solved, lol. Picked up his rentals and headed back to the resort just in time to get into the room. Very happy with the room and location vs price paid. Good view from the balcony. We were all looking forward to hitting some good snow in the morning. First trip out west for Stephen. NEXT - ski day 1 or everybody get low low low low

This was Feb 2. Another Headwall hike over to Casper into Beartooth. And always ❤️ a pic of Grand Teton

Crew who was there. my apologies I got roped into some work b*llsh*t Monday afternoon and went right back to town so they would not bug me rest of week. Yea Monday morning was about as cold as I ever seen it as long as I kept moving I was ok. These pics are from Headwall hike over to Casper into a line called Fremont Loved it, nice sustained pitch.

Another fun night there...Skied from 5:30ish to a little after 7....Great conditions again...No real crowds to speak off when I got there but just before seven the lift line got to be painful...Was gonna do a NASTAR run but didn't want to go through the pain of the lift line....Really having a good time going back there....

21 degrees at the bottom at 8, and 34 at 11. Razors was groomed and pretty solid. They appeared to do a quick pass with the groomer on NMDW then blew snow on it so you got slick spots and sticky new snow. A little better later in the morning when visibility was better. Freefall was pretty good, but the run out on Paradise was kind of an ungroomed frozen mess. Main Street was nice but had some marbles, ROTD was Curzi’s down thru Chute. Things should be pretty nice this afternoon when it warms up a little. Saw the back of JLaws helmet heading out from Main Street Express. Noticed yesterday that lift kept stopping for a minute or two several times a lift ride. Seemed to coincide with a large crowd hanging out in the unloading area up top. Wonder If the top lifty is stopping the lift to allow tings to clear out.

They didn’t have any available.Oyster crackers in today’s bowl, which also came with corn chips as one of the accoutrements.

But where is the cement mixer?

Great TR so far. Bison chili sounds amazing. I bet if you showed your unpunched card next chili bowl you get they would punch it twice. Why would you have a card at all if you didn’t already buy a bowl? You should definitely go to the Jane side and take the Panorama all the way to the top. Views are very nice and you can take blues all the way to the bottom. The last part of the cat walk is a quad burner trying to keep your speed up. WP seems to have a lot of cat walks. Deno’s restaurant in town has good food.

Safe travels @JFskiDan!

Always happy to see them blowing snow and challenge/particularly the top of switch have some serious piles but it did leave most of the hill with a nice topping of cookies. BFG has returned but otherwise it was pretty empty. Everytime the new lift stops and then immediately e stops they call down some master lifty who seems to be the only one who knows the magical buttons but 10 secs after he shows up and it runs.

Great topic on a terse Taco free Tuesday. I’ll start with the opening scene from serenade in Sun Valley. In the things gapers said thread on Teton Gravity, some lady on the chairlift at Sun Valley said that rich people ruined Jackson hole lol and sun valley is apparently a million dollars for a one bedroom condo SMH

Got stuck on Main St lift Saturday for a good 10 minutes. Kept an eye on it afterwards and noticed it was continuously shutting down so we skipped it the rest of the session. Saw a big guy head up to the machine room on one of the stoppages. Appears to me there are some start up / commisioning issues.

As of last season the sign for the bus is still on a pole on sidewinder

yup I rarely leave home without him.

What a great morning! CB reported 2” overnight but it skied like more. The only ungroomed run I did was the last bit back to the base. Legs got a workout today!

James Bond before James Bond? Sick day find ,this channel is awesome !

Between work, getting ready to go to Vermont and being in Vermont, today was the first day I skied Blue in 2 weeks😳. Lots of surprise ice patches all around. ROTD probably NMDW. Main Street and TCS not bad. I’ll be back tomorrow for more fun.

One more for now. One of the great ski scenes from better off dead, shot at Snowbird Utah.

Good: walking bare foot from my hotel building to NMSkis fireplace suite building down the icy wooden steps past the hot tub where I’d always catch a few sentences of conversation among Midwest ski club people. Somebody said they skied deep powder in Stevensons bowl off of apres vous(Saratoga)..maybe he saw Nazareth jay there. There was a younger woman in a bikini who didn’t have an ounce of body fat. She looked like a professional swimmer. If I had a chance to talk to her I’d tell her that if I was a professional swimmer I’d shave all my body hair in order to be more hydrodynamic in the water. She’d prob pelt me with snowballs and I’m alright with that. Yeah barefoot when it’s 5 degrees or minus 5 outside..maybe I’ll invest in some crocks for next years trip..I can put them in sport mode for walking the tree hundred and fiddy steps to the bagel place. Bad: when there’s 5 days left and you only have three clean shirts and three pairs of clean underwear left. Yeah I wore my Notorious BIG shirt like three or four times. Second time I wore it the waiter was calling me Big Poppy and I explained I only wore the shirt two hours the night before. I actually snapped this picture to send to my friend who gave me the shirt. I look faded

The liftees on the F chair like to blast music so I think it keeps some folks away LOL. Ran back up around 4:30 and was disappointed that Samsquanch bumps got a haircut . I wish I would have gone over sooner last night, my Son was having fun in the park so we hung over there .

Oh lord. Hopefully your in law is better skier than planner. Awesome view!!

Super fun time up there tonight..Firm with a top layer of Slurpee type stuff...Bumps on Sassy L side and bumps on Grizzly..Not the best but serviceable......It looks like they have decent coverage but it could just be a trick of the light...Decent amount of cars in the lot ..but the F chair side was pretty quiet...Only lift line was when they held the line for patrol sled...

I was chatting with a friend about Jackson hole and she was asking me about the temperatures. The temperatures were mostly in the single digits through the teens early in the trip and then when it snowed they rose into low to mid 20s in the valley, colder on the hill and then after it snowed it was Joe Biden in the basement temperatures Oh Come on Man and then last morning was single digits and felt like the northern part of Miami. On the first cold morning when it was -29 booting up and my balaclava was free of boogers and dead skin, I would guess there were 80-90% less skiers and riders than normal. Where were those other people?? Eating breakfast slower than Nazareth Jay, laying in bed watching the hourly temperature rise from -26 to -24, we all know @saltyantwas watching the webcams with his pecker out. As long as you’re moving it’s tolerable. No peeing in the woods those days.

I’ll be up Wednesday..looks like it’s gonna be a beauty!!

Really nice day on the hill today, good snow, hard to choose an ROTD. Stayed a little later than usual. Be back on wednesday.

NMDW, along with park features and you finish off the run by going thru a giant inflatable clown mouth. 😇😇

Quick little solo tour on Snodgrass to test out my new boots. They have a cool feature called the Hoji lock system. You buckle boots in ski mode like you will go downhill, then switch the back lever to walk mode and all the buckles AND the power strap loosen. So you don’t have to fumble with 4 buckles and power strap for transitions, just flip up the lever, pretty cool! Just went up a mile and came back down. Toes numb when I got back to my car, not sure if the boots need an adjustment or it was just cold out. Skin track icy as hell!

Great day today!

Looks much better, hopefully Phil’s right !

Scrapped, as of 2017 at the latest.

Sorry, you'll have to post it. I'm not allowed to post anything stupid.

@saltyant can you post the haters gonna hate video. That’s one of my favorite ski videos on YouTube.

It went down colder than expected..currently 20 degrees in the A and 98 degrees in my A..not the band weirdo the temperature

My son loved his Element until someone grabbed his catalytic converter which pretty much totaled it.