Conquering Mountains One At A Time.
Last winter I stayed in Wyoming for a week a good friend of mine. I traveled all the way from Georgia, 3 different plane rides! What a climate change that was. It was only my second time ever flying and my first time flying alone. The closer I got to Wyoming, the more snow I started to see, I couldn't wait to get there!
It took all day long to finally get there, but when I arrived I was completely blown away. It was about 45 degrees when I left Georgia. When I stepped off the plane in Jackson Hole it was like 13 degrees, that's cold to a Georgia boy! The mountains surrounded the small airport I had arrived at and my heart started to race at the thought of snowboarding. I was seriously pumped.
The first day that I got there, it hadn't snowed a whole lot just yet, so it was still a little sketchy on the mountain. We actually got cliffed out our second run down. It was pretty scary I have to admit, it was the first time that ever happened to me. For those of you who do not know what that is, it is pretty much when you run out of fresh powder to snowboard over and you get trapped by a huge drop off of rocks. basically a life or death situation.
It was really easy to get into this mess. I followed behind my friend, Elee, shredding in his trails until I noticed he had stopped a few feet in front of me. My heart skipped a few beats when I heard him yell back “Dude, I think it’s a cliff” to which I instantly thought “oh shit." After trying a few times to take one small step uphill, only to slide further back down toward the cliff, I realized we were actually in a lot of danger. Like I said, it was early in the season so there was no one around us to call for help. It was nerve wrecking trying to take my board off and not fall further down the mountain, but we managed to get our boards off and slowly started to hike back up the mountain. This was exhausting because the snow was literally 3 feet deep every where we stepped.
Elee looking back telling me to keep up.
After what seemed like hours, we finally managed to get back on trail. We had just gotten very lucky. If we would have fell in any further, we would not have been able to hike back out. Thank God we were that lucky. It was a wake up call for sure, but it didn't slow us down! We rode every single day, all day for the next week. It was probably the best week of my life. I have never seen more beautiful landscapes than I saw there. The tress all covered in snow, thousands of feet up these mountains. It was amazing.
We ended up having perfect conditions the rest of the week. Tons of fluffy fresh snow every day to ride on with no worries of getting cliffed again!
I have never enjoyed life as much as I did that week. I was so exhausted when it was time to pack up and fly back to Georgia, but I made some memories that will last me a life time. I took this my very last day there, can you tell how happy I was?!
It was bittersweet leaving and I can not wait to go back this year. Keep an eye out for our round 2 of the GRAND TARGHEE MOUNATINS. Here is a video I made of some gopro footage we shot.
Looks like you had really some great fun - awesome selfie-video ;-)
It was incredible! Thanks :)