Powder Hound!

Yesterday I went snowboarding again. It was the first time since I had been back in TX, so figure that was at least two months without riding the board. My friend, Dusty, and I were supposed to head to Jackson Hole and Grand Targhee. As luck would have it a huge snowstorm blew in and turned the roads to crap. Now, this is not like the "blinding white outs" we get in Texas. This is a true snowstorm. Not a blizzard, mind you, but far more snow than you have ever seen if you haven't gotten out of the south.

Dusty and I drove about 60 miles into the storm before deciding not to go. We figured with the dump we were getting that it would take us at least six hours to get there (normally about a four hour drive) in the dark, the roads would freeze, we could save money by not going, and it should be pretty good at Moonlight.

Turns out, the day was borderline epic. We got there right after the lifts opened. The first thing we noticed is that neither of us had ever seen that many people at Moonlight. That's fairly significant when you consider we went religiously for two years straight. But the sun was out, it wasn't too cold (in fact, we were getting hot), and there was fresh powder everywhere!!!!

Needless to say we spent plenty of time playing back in the trees on the sides of the runs. It's amazing but we found plenty of "snowfields" even late in the day that had NO tracks at all!! So Dusty and I still cut fresh tracks, and even on the runs the powder was soft and fluffy, not crusty.

The worst part was the long lines at the main lift. Let me explain that Dusty and I are spoiled. I timed the lift line (longest I had ever seen at Moonlight) and it was less than 10 minutes. Some lift lines at major resorts are over 30 minutes. We ended up flipping over to the other side of the mountain just to avoid them and found plenty of good runs and powder, without the wait at the lift lines.

At lunch time, I even found Jorge's twin brother Juan. We had a nice lunch and played in the powder until our legs were so shot we just couldn't safely board anymore. What a great day!