lunch yesterday

So here's my forecast (on the left) next to the illuminatti pow board I rode for a day.  Notice how far back on the tail the stance is set (that's neutral stance)...hence some sketchy handling on hardpack i think.

after moving out of the hotel room i did some cruising, looking primarily for a nice southern exposure where I could park, eat lunch, and enjoy the sunshine.  

I found a goose pond, which was very pretty but also shaded, and eventually parked in a church parking lot.  It had a decent view of the tetons:

And as the sun started going down the moon came up:

very pleasant and warm.  a good way to spend an afternoon.

send me packages and money!

David Perry

General Delivery

Jackson, WY 83002

be sure you tell me that you've sent goodies so I know to go to the post office to get them.  No size restrictions I'm aware of!

tidbits

I didnt make it to any cafes before closing today, so this is a brief one written from my truck outside a hotel poaching internet.

One of my dad's old law partners has a son out here, Randolph, so i gave him a call, left a message.  he got back to me last night with some good news--i can take his job in two weeks!  It will be interesting to work in a liquor store...good pay and probably benefits that will help me find couches.

I am still looking for engineering jobs, but it would be nice to have some way to pay the bills while i'm here.

I jammed my thumb yesterday so I'll probably take it easy until the snow comes (early this week!).  I'm stoked, hoping very very much that it snows.  

I'm also considering a new board.  Mine is sluggish in powder, especially tight trees, and it's causing me troubles as I start riding steeper, tighter terrain.  the dude at the board room told me to find a lib tech t.rice with banana technology--in other words, reversed camber.  t.rice boards (designed by jackson local travis rice) also have very coarsely serrated edge profiles.  check the board out here

i rode an illuminati pow board yesterday, and while it was tight and light in soft snow, hardpack was a nightmare.  really stiff and really hard to control.  it was gorgeous though, with a bamboo topsheet

things are well, although my thumb is a little stiff.  I moved out of doug and steels hotel room, but now i'm back on the street for a bit (maybe).

oooh an avalanche!

So I've spotted one big point release, and a couple of other smaller ones, but no slabs until a couple of days ago.  It's very small, the slab doesnt look more than 4 or 6 inches, but it's a slab avalanche nonetheless.  this is one of the hills right next to town.

You can see the fracture on that wind loaded cornice thing, and the runout is in that little valley.  What happened is this:  Lots of wind loaded up that cornice.  However, it was relatively stable I guess (saw tracks on top of it a few days ago which I thought was dumb).  It kept being windy, and the snow hardened into what is known as wind crust.  Wind crust makes a great sliding layer for a slab.  So then one day (when I first went to the village) it snowed and was windy at the same time.  As before, this small amount of snow collected on the existing cornice thing.  It solidified a bit and became what folks call wind loaded.  then something happened.  Either an animal walked by or it just got heavy enough or something and it fractured and slid.

fiddlin

I went to open mic at south side pizza and pub last night.  It was a pretty small showing, mostly of guitar singer/songwriter types that needed some stronger rhythm.  

Met Bryce, who would later add some rhythm to an act by beating on a guitar case like bongos, which he did well.  We played the "ring on the string gotta get it on that hook over there" game, like the one in Florida.  I won two bucks.

He had some ideas about green energy stuff...including storing light in a fiber optic network and using fiber optics as lights (damn expensive) and harvesting the energy of the earth's core (to help cool down the climate too).  he talked a lot.

Met Marta, a oceanographer who works in Alaska and took a three month break from work to come to Jackson.  She, too, thought that there was a ton of energy in the ocean that we are missing, which is true.  lunar gravitational energy i suppose?  

open mic ended and I talked with folks about playing and where to go to find musicians, etc.  There are no jams in jackson (as far as I can tell), just open mic stuff.  I'll definitely check out this one big open mic (where I'm told you need to have your shit together) called the hootenanny.  It's supposed to be more bluegrass oriented.  It's on Monday.

I grabbed my fiddle and played in the dining room after open mic until the nerve in my thumb started to hurt.  

Ha I also managed to get three offers of couches!  Good timing, too, I think it's time to move out of this hotel room I'm crashing.  Too crowded, and kind of nasty...

powder turns

I think I mentioned my plan to do some hiking today.  Unfortunately my plan was foiled by some areas that are closed for wildlife  management.  Apparently winter is hard enough for the animals without some dudes ripping through their feeding grounds.

so I climbed up to the same ridge as before, this time with a fully loaded daypack and snowboard.  I took a different route that someone had kind of tracked, so it was easier, and it put me on a lower spot.  Once on top of the ridge I noticed a sweet, mellow bowl composed of the ridge, the back of snow king, and the ridge across the valley from me.  The backside of my ridge is a southern aspect, so the northern aspects was directly across from me, and to my right was a mostly southern aspect, shown below.

So I hiked the non-evergreen treed portion in the picture above, which was pretty mellow.  Nice soft snow and not too heavy.  Then I hiked back to the top of my ridge and rode down the backside (into the bowl shown above).  A slightly longer run but heavier snow due to the more southern aspect.  The north aspect across from me looked sick but not something I'd ride by myself.

How could I not take a picture of the tetons.

So then I hiked back up to my ridge and hiked the ridge towards where I crested last week.  I didnt ride the first section because it's so damn steep, treed, and has a tricky cliff/down tree maze at the top.  The picture below is where uphill from where I stopped to strap in.
and the picture below is downhill from where I strapped in.  notice the more mellow slope and less tree density...er....at least the trees are skinnier.
This is a northern aspect, and it made a huge difference.  Still light powder even after more than a week without snow.  And the only tracks were my own from the other day.  This last run was awesome.  Perfect pitch, great snow, and great tree density.

All in all today was 5.7 miles with 3000 feet of climbing.  So I'd say probably 2500 feet of vert on the board.

Got back to the truck to find myself surrounded by tacomas:
cooked some food and split.

ways to tell the temperature

1) how hard I have to squeeze to get toothpaste to come out

2) are the beers slushy, popsicles, or did the bottle cap pop off?

3) how many times the engine turns over before it catches.

4) how frozen the reused peanut butter container is in the morning.

5) how hard it is to spread the real peanut butter.

6) contact lenses are slushy or frozen solid?

7) how unpleasant putting on deodorant is.

8) how quickly the instant oatmeal gets cold

9) what sort of frost develops overnight

10) what the truck says