Jackson WY, Snake River

Took Peter, a colleague and visitor from Scotland, to Jackson for the weekend and Garrett and Sarah met us there too. Garrett and I got out to fish the Snake for a few hours. It was overcast and warm with the occasional view to north to the Tetons clearing enough for a nice view. The fishing was not great, we each caught a whitefish, not the big trouts were were hoping for. There was a small hatch of midges, I took my fish on a Griffith's Gnat and Garrett fished small nymphs.

We drove home Easter Sunday by heading north through the park and then down to Dubois and through Lander where we had lunch. East of Lander, at Sweetwater Station. is a rather amazing bookstore variously know as Mad Dog and The Pilgrim Books and the Sweetwater Book Barn. I've passed it before but it was never open. A faded sign out front on the highway says "Fresh Eggs Old Books". Rather amazing bookshop and worth a visit. After we left I was rather disappointed to realize I did not take any photos inside ... next time.

Jenny Lake Ski

We skied up to Jenny Lake along the base of the Tetons and back on the main trail. The weather started fantastic. By the time we reached the lake it had started to deteriorate. Clouds came in and the wind picked up significantly gusting to 30 MPH or so. By the route we traveled, the trip to the lake and back was about eight miles.



The parking lot was almost full when we arrived and filled up quickly while we geared up. There were a number of baby sleds (just visible in the right side of the photo above) being set up to tow babies on the groomed trail -- which pretty much looked like a highway.





With a population of just a hair over half a million people, Wyoming is geographically large but socially small. When we had just about reached the lake, we ran into Bronwyn and her husband. Bronwyn was at Art school with Penelope in San Francisco. This chance meeting four miles from the nearest road was a bit of a surprise.

Bronwyn and her husband skied back in the trees to avoid the wind. We'd skied out to the lake that way and so we returned to the parking lot on the main trail. The short video below shows Penelope skiing back to the truck in the weather. By the time we got out, the trail was quickly filling with windblown snow and the parking lot was nearly empty when we got there.

Skiing Chimney Park again.

Six inches of new snow (finally) and it's still falling. We skied Chimney Park again today with the snow coming down. Bumped into Carlos and Teal in the parking lot. The video shows Carlos breaking trail. He passed us and disappeared into the falling snow. We only saw two other people besides him, Abby and her dog and an another woman we didn't recognize. After a while living here you start to get the feeling that you should know everyone you see.

We skied the Jelm loop, about 4 miles. Made a mistake at one point (forgetting the map seems to be standard procedure) and ended up coming back on our own tracks and missing what promises to be the best part of the loop. Next time.

The air temperature was, I guess, around 22°F. I waxed up about the middle half of the Tuas with Swix Extra Blue which proved to be too soft a wax and too much wax, I guess. I was OK to start, but as we skied farther along the trail they performed worse and worse. Little or no glide at all and occasional sticking. This can be pretty frustrating. We stopped and I scraped the bottom down and re-corked which made them a bit better, for a while. Then the sun came out for a while and the skis started picking up even more. I don't really know what was going on, seemed like the Blue should have been just the ticket, but I do not have a thermometer to measure snow temps, just looked at the outside thermometer before we left. The snow buildup on the bottom of the ski continued so I stopped again and scraped a bit more off and rubbed some glide wax on, things worked much better after that. Pen's skis were picking up some snow too. The moral of the story is that there may be an advantage to the waxless fish scale skis like the Rossignol Randonees Pen is skiing on, but the mystery of alchemy is not there with a waxless ski. For now, I'll stick with wax and play alchemist. Lesson learned: when in doubt, go with the harder kick wax.

Skiing Chimney Park

Penelope and I skied Chimney Park today in spring temperatures. There's a decent base of two to three feet and we skied the five mile Porter Loop.
Chimney Park is about six miles from the house, at much higher elevation and in the forest so, while the snow is pretty much gone down here in the sage country at around 7600 feet, there is still plenty of snow up at almost 9000 feet.

Our ski touring equipment is all 15 years old or more. Penelope is skiing on a pair of 200 cm Rossignol waxless skis with a fish scale pattern which do pretty well in the warm conditions. They have a beefy old Chouinard 3 pin binding and she is wearing leather Asolo Snowfield boots. I was on a (borrowed - thanks Joe) pair of Tuas that have a Rainey Superloop cable binding and I'm also wearing a beefy pair of Asolo leather boots. The Tuas were waxed with Swix Red Silver for the warm conditions. This worked incredibly well until the end of the loop when temps were up around 47° and the snow in sun was getting slushy. But by then the fishscales weren't doing that much better.

The trails are cut through some gently rolling country in Medicine Bow National Forest near Fox Park. This is lodge pole pine forest and it is just starting to get hit by the pine bark beetle. I expect that within a few years all the trees here will be dead. You can see some of the red/brown trees in the background of the photo of me on the trail.

The great thing about Laramie (as opposed to more popular and chic places in the mountain west) is that there are no people. Skiing midday on a holiday weekend, we ran into eight other skiers total. Of course, if you don;t want to see anyone, you are not restricted to the trails and can ski just about anywhere up there, but it is nice to not have to break trail, and easier for the dogs; we had Erdos with us (and Aldo was visiting too.) There is more spectacular skiing up in the Snowy Range but that is a 20 mile drive. We'll save that for after we've more firmly got our ski legs under us.

We saw a few squirrels and a rabbit. The elk and deer move down out of the forest onto their winter range which is more open. The moose don't seem to mind the snow and although we did not run into them, there is a cow moose and her calf living in the Chimney Park area whose fresh tracks and droppings are everywhere.

Skiing is an ancient mode of travel dating back to prehistoric times; men have been skiing for 6000 years. Moving through the forest on skis is very special. When conditions are right you glide over the snow and at moments seem to just fly.