Best Runs of the Trip (January)

This post is part of our 2018 Winter Road Trip.

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On our travels so far, we’ve been lucky enough to sample a ton of different terrain on a bunch of different mountains. As we look back after a month on the road, we’ve tried to distill all that riding down to our very best run at each mountain. It’s not necessarily the steepest run, or the deepest snow, or the best view. It’s the run where we had the most fun.

Grand Targhee: Fallen Timbers/Steamvent off of New Blackfoot. Our days at Grand Targhee brought some new snow but hadn’t really reached full powder day status. These runs did the best job of collecting snow being blown in by the northwesterly wind. Views weren’t bad either.

 

Jackson Hole: Rendezvous Bowl/Wally’s World from the tram. Every time riding Rendezvous was a white-out adventure, but our Friday experience – second tram after 10″ of new snow overnight and 30″ in the preceding three days – brought the best turns of the week.

 

Sun Valley: Surviving whatever the hell this was. They were seriously hurting for snow.

 

Bridger Bowl: Close Call/Boundary Chute from the top of Schlasman’s. This was in the Ridge Terrain at Bridger (ski patrol does avalanche mitigation but a beacon is required and riding with shovel/probe/partner is strongly recommended) and required a 15 minute walk along a wind-raked ridgeline. We went to bed the night before expecting 2-4 inches of new snow. We woke up to 11 inches of fresh stuff and picked up another 5 during the day. We ate lunch standing in the lift line. It was that good.

You must pass a beacon check to ride the lift.

To the clouds!

SO HAPPY!

 

Sunshine Village: Mother-in-Law in the South Chutes from Goat’s Eye Express. We were pleasantly surprised when a forecast of 1-2 inches turned into 6+ inches overnight. A combination of continued heavy snow during the day and the consistent wind whipping through the resort meant that we found stashes at least a foot deep. After spending the morning hitting some drops off of Standish lift, we caught this area soon after it opened around 2 pm and lapped it until close. 

 

Lake Louise: E Gully in the Back Bowls, accessed via Summit Platter. On our last day in Banff, we rode the rope tow all the way to the top of the Back Bowls. While they hadn’t picked up more than 1-2 inches of new snowfall, the wind had been pushing fresh snow into this area all night. E Gully is one of the closest runs to the top of the rope tow, but we found it hardly tracked on our first descent. When we got back for another lap, it seemed like there was a force field in place: other skiers and boarders continually traversed right past the entrance while we helped ourselves to seconds (and thirds).

 

Revelstoke: Separate Reality from the Stoke Lift. Our three days at Revelstoke were basically one big storm, so some of the terrain in the North Bowl never opened up for us. For the most part, we stayed out of the wind and rode the trees in the Tally-Ho Glades and the Conifers of Gnarnia. However, ski patrol dropped the closure for this area just as we were offloading from the top of the lift, and we joined the mad dash to score first tracks. Worth it!