Today it was too cold for outdoor construction, so Maestra and I got to ski perfect bottomless pow on Ferry Peak instead.  Yeehaw!

A balmy -17*F is what the thermometer read as I drove to work in the twilight this morning.  Miraculously my boss pulled the plug at 8:35 and told me that negative double digits overnight tonight means no show tomorrow yo:  Fuckin’-A-Right!

I bartended downtown JXN last night and slept in my car to avoid the even more senseless act of driving the canyon at midnight so I can drive it again at 6:30 am.  Despite the cold temps I was melted cheese between four toasty old sleeping bags.  Defrosting a night’s breath from the windows this morning demanded that I break JXN’s “no idling” ordinance for a few minutes: safety first, right?

Smog certainly sucks, but chemtrails cause climate change.  Today we had neither and the stunning sunrise alpenglow on the Teton Range portended a better day than expected.

Maesta and I left Banana’s at noon and headed up Roman Nose.  Our tracks from last Sunday were barely visible in the foot of fresh that fell on a previous two feet of fresh.   Lucky us: Alpine got hit harder than most in the last storm cycle and coverage is adequate for fat, floppy skis on most aspects at all elevations.

Only a handful of people had skinned up Roman Nose and none to the summit ridge.   It was a bit of a slog from halfway up, but now it’s in and cold temps combined with light winds are keeping snow tasty on all aspects.

Mellow weather today: inverted, light variable winds.  Not a cloud (artificially induced or otherwise) in the sky.

We (the dog and I) made it over to point 9,329 and dropped the bridge of Broken Nose.  The skiing was very good and the snow felt stable.  The only recent slide activity were a few small point release sluffs below rime dropping trees.

We stayed on the ridge until the broken bit where we decided to follow the new guidebook’s recommendation of going to skier’s right around the rocky knob.

Dropping North we found ourselves staring at a long, steep slab of snowy rock barring a traverse back onto the nose and were forced into a big terrain trap.  The slab is probably buried when there is more snow.

I think I’ll try the left option tomorrow before tending bar downtown JXN New Year’s Eve: looking at another profitable day in Paradise thanks to -15*F temps currently registering in the TOJ and hordes of drunken revelers who tip well.

To anyone who actually reads these: sorry for neglecting to issue any trip reports recently.  I’ve been kooking it up a bit with first forays into new zones with no tracks.

Bojan and I went to wrong side of the River.  Dani and I went there as well a week later.  It was good.

We attempted Prater on Christmas Day with a lot of fresh snow: the Gauntlet we should have heard about turned us around.  Lately it’s been Ferry solo, Ferry solo, Ferry with Dani, Ferry with Dani and Ceronsky, and now Ferry solo.

Hopefully tomorrow is a Ferry with Dani sort of day.  TOJ is now reporting -18*F and JAX is reading -20*F.  Stay warm out there!