At the end of the day, we met up with my buddy Josh and took a lap deep into the sidecountry.  The top half skied excellently, with lots of deep and untracked snow.  As we got lower down, things were a bit more tracked out (and therefore more icy with a stiff crust underneath), and the woods needed a bit more coverage (it was schwacky!), but overall the skiing out there was awesome!

Josh enjoying some day old pow!

Being a day late isn’t always a bad thing .

Krysta proving a little schwack can’t hurt that bad.

Tearing it up.

Josh getting deep!

She sure loves pow.

Sometimes I get a little bit narrow minded (thanks to Josh for the following photos of myself!).

But really, it’s hard to think straight when you’ve got pow on your mind.

Yehaw!  What a day.  Now hopefully the weather cooperates through the next 36 or or hours, because I’ve missed zipping through tight eastern trees quite a bit .

With tons of people out to enjoy the foot-o-fresh and the mountain being a bit slow to open up due to avy hazard reduction work (really can’t blame ‘em there), things got off to a slow start, but once the ball was rolling, the skiing was awesome.  After a quick lap or two at Thunder, we managed to be some of the first through the Cirque, and hot damn, it was awesome!

My father enjoying the goods of the Cirque underneath Snag Tree.

He seemed pretty stoked that we were some of the first ones in there.

Ok, maybe very stoked!

Later in the day, with the snow continuing to pile up, we even tried out some of the lower faces (here we’re on Colter Ridge).   We haven’t skied any of the lower faces yet this trip due to marginal conditions (not enough snow/frozen solid crud).  This time, however, it was decidedly not marginal!

My father was disappearing into the snow on his way down.

It’s hard on days like these to stop and take out the camera, especially with the snow blowing every which way, but we stopped for a few more shots on our last run of the day, another lower face (this time Sublette Ridge).

I dig deep snow!

Such great fun!

Wow!  What a day, and the snow shows no signs of stopping!  It’s about damned time too – I just wish this had happened a week and a half ago when I had just gotten out west, not soon before I’m leaving.  Still, no complaints at all about this kind of snowfall!  We’re looking at another foot or so overnight, so let it snow!!

Between with the cold weather (~5°), howling winds (40mph with 75+mph gusts) and knowing this storm was going to last a few days, we had a late start, but by the time we were up on the hill, things were already lookin’ good.

This shot underneath the expert chutes was so good on my first go around, we just had to do it again.  Here’s my father going through some deep and light Teton pow.

And good enough to go even one more time!  I like gettin’ deep

There was a lot of snow flying around – it made for a good ice beard.

Later on, we skied through some nicely wind buffed powder in an all too obvious spot .  Maybe not as deep here, but man it skied just wonderfully!

As the day went on, the skiing only got better.  Here’s my father coming down through some more deep snow.

Likewise, I enjoy the deep snow (and my Gotamas)!

Yehaw!

What a fun day today was!  I can’t wait for tomorrow, especially since the snow is only supposed to fall harder and harder through tonight and tomorrow!  Yehaw, here we go!

I don’t have too much else to say, so here’s a nice shot of my brother kicking up a nice cloud of snow high above the valley floor in the late afternoon.

Pray for snow!!

Here’s a quick one of my brother, Marc, ripping the groom.

Do your snow dances and pray for snow!!

After getting suited up, my father showed my the streamer technique that had been working on the Gunpowder of late, and I headed upstream to start swinging flies.  A few minutes later, I hear him yell out “holy shit!”  Excitedly, I ran over to see what he’d gotten himself into…

And found he’d caught a tiger trout!

Tiger trout are an infertile hybrid of brown trout and brook trout, and they’re quite rare in the wild.  But I guess there’s got to be at least a few of them out there.

Looking sly with his solstice tiger trout.

Although not a great shot, here’s a close-up of the fish.  They’re pretty damn cool lookin’.

We had another half hour or so of fishing before it became too dark, and although I had a few hits, I wasn’t able to connect with any fish.  Seems to be about right given my luck on the Gunpowder this year…  Suppose I’ll be out and back at it again sometime in the next few days, especially since there sure isn’t any skiing to be had around here.

I sure do wish it was snowing, but hey, since it’s not, this wasn’t a bad way to spend the solstice.  Now LET IT SNOW!!