Lotsa snow, long lines, good skiing?

Jackson Hole Chokes

By Chris Hansen, 1-08-08

Jackson Hole is a local’s mountain. It always has been and, as far as I can see, it always will be. There’s no doubt about it. Sure, it gets its fair share of repeat visitors, but they are usually of the more hardy variety, or else they’re first-timers who may or may not come back.

How do I know it’s a local’s mountain? Because when 14+ inches of snow pukes out of the sky on a Friday night, it’s the locals who are clogging the lift-lines on a Saturday morning. And how do I know this? Because I was one of them last Saturday, and I can tell you from first-hand experience, the valley choked on a lot of snow and Jackson Hole choked on the skier traffic.

It was one of those epic snow events: The night before saw one- to two-inch-an-hour snowfalls. The avy report and the snow report both reported 14 inches overnight up high. That was at 5 am, but by the time I checked the actuals at 7 am, another three inches had fallen on the upper mountain. That was right before I went to blow the foot of snow out of my driveway.

So I called my neighbor and (after he was finished blowing out his driveway) we got to Teton Village around 8:40. The Gondola line was long. It was the kind of morning where the line at the Gondola backs into the line at Teewinot (the only two lower chairs worth a damn that get you out of the base area these days—read: without a tram) and the whole place starts to look like a Phish concert.

Patrol was still bombing the bejeezus out of the mountain. I’d made the wrong decision a couple weeks before, standing in the gondola line for nearly an hour before bailing, so this morning, having a limited amount of time, we decided to go up Teewinot to Apres Vous so we could ski that until the upper mountain opened. By this time it was 9 am: opening time. The lift was loading and the line was moving. We were up this short high-speed quad and over to Apres Vous (aka AV) before we realized they weren’t loading it. The chair was moving, but bombs were still going off and the mazes on both sides of the lift were filling. The good feeling we’d had before of moving up the mountain was now immediately dampened by standing still in a snowstorm. At least everyone was in good spirits, knowing that the skiing was going to be the best any of us had had at this mountain in more than a year. It was quite obvious from the look of all the fat skis and Cloudveil clothing that very few tourists were in this line.

A good half an hour and several phone calls later (it seemed people in line were talking to other people on their phones as much as they were talking to each other: “I’m standing in line at AV. Where are you?” “Are they loading the gondy yet?” “What do you mean you’re at home eating breakfast?! This is awesome!”) they started loading AV and we knew the gondola wasn’t. Knowing that the upper mountain hadn’t yet opened, we took a run in Saratoga Bowl, and it was about as good as it gets: the kind of run where the bottom of each turn gives you a split second to contemplate the vision of nothing but white in your goggles and you’re very glad you stopped to put on the neck gaiter. A snorkel wouldn’t have been out of the question.

Once things opened up, getting to the upper mountain was an exercise in patience that many of us (spoiled skiers) here in Jackson Hole haven’t had to deal with in quite a while. It took some time, but the lines moved. However, the weather was still raging, the crowds were big, and lifts on the upper mountain were more than finicky by mid-afternoon.

By the end of last year, I was quite certain that the lifts at Jackson Hole had managed the crowds fairly well without the aerial tram. It was the first year without it. To help with traffic, they installed the East Ridge double chair in Rendezvous Bowl to access the top of the mountain plus sixteen additional cars on the Bridger Gondola. There were the usual lines on busy days, but all in all the lift system did a good job moving people around. We skied the mountain differently without the tram, but nothing too crazy. Sure, it now takes an hour (with no lift lines) and four chair-rides to get to the top of the mountain, but at least you’re skiing along the way.

Maybe I missed the really busy days last year, but I don’t think so. To my recollection, there weren’t any huge powder days last year—in fact, it was a pretty bleak season all in all—and so we never had to deal with the super-long lift lines that other ski areas are used to. But last Saturday was a different story.

It was just before noon, standing in the singles line at the gondola (which had been directed down the hill toward Nick Wilson’s, and was almost there), when someone said sarcastically, “Hey, they should put in a tram here!” “Yeah, right to the top of the mountain,” said someone else. “How cool would that be?”

Well, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, we know you’re working on it, but we’re ready to have our tram back. We’re trying to be patient about it. And I for one am pretty excited about the prospect of a lift that will deliver 100 skiers up 4,000+ vertical feet and two miles within about ten minutes. Yes, that will dump a lot more people at the top of Rendezvous Peak a lot more regularly than ever before, but it will really move people around the mountain and will alleviate lift lines lower down the mountain on crazy weather days like we saw last Saturday. And I may be speaking out of turn here, but I’m pretty sure a lift like that will run in far more inclement weather than any of the other lifts we’ve got at Jackson Hole, including the Bridger Gondola.

I had to leave early, so I didn’t witness the lines the rest of the day, but from what I hear it didn’t get much better. The Sublette quad and the Thunder chair on the upper mountain “blew down.” Even the Casper Chair suffered some kind of mechanical difficulty, sending everyone back down to the bottom to repeat a similarly insulting experience as the morning, if not worse.

By that time I was at home in the hot tub sipping a beer, so I didn’t really care. But it got me thinking about what we have here in Jackson Hole and the interesting point in time at which we find ourselves. This is the second of two years in a row (hopefully no more) out of the past 42± that Jackson Hole has been without an aerial tram. This mountain was founded upon the access provided by the tram and, despite the lifts that have been built since the tram, it’s days like last Saturday that make us realize just what we’re missing.

Of course, we’ll continue to ski the Village without the tram, and we’ll continue to bitch about the lines on big days like we’ve seen. But we’ll probably curse the new tram, too, and the fact that it will allow more people (or perhaps the same people more often) to cut up more beautiful powder more quickly. But it’s been a long time since there’s been any unskied powder the day after a storm anyway—you’re lucky to find freshies after lunch—so the opportunity to just get people up the mountain and out of the lift lines is enough to hope the new tram comes on time. Opening December ’08…right?

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