Day 047: 03/02/12 – The Gamplan

Written By: Stephen Williams

As I lay in bed trying to fall asleep the other night, I was going over my gameplan for the following powder day at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. My gear was packed up tight, my snowboard of choice was freshly tuned and I was ready to get up early and get to the Village. I haven’t had as many days to ride this season as in years past, and most of the days I have been up there, I have stuck to the upper mountain. Crushing Thunder, Sublette and Tram laps is always a worthy way to spend a powder morning, but I felt like I had been neglecting the rest of the mountain. Terrain north of the Gondola used to be my stomping grounds, and I feel like I know some of the best spots between Bridger Ridge and the north boundary of Saratoga Bowl.

When I arrived at the Village in the morning, both the Tram and the Gondola singles lines were longer than expected. I staked my spot at the Gondola and started planning out routes from the top. As the line began to move and we loaded into a box, text messages and calls from friends who were in the tram line poured in urging me to head south to Thunder. I began to question my choice of heading up the Gondola and almost varied from the routes I had drawn up in my head. But I stuck to my game plan, ducked off the Casper Traverse halfway down and found soft, untracked, knee-deep tunrs on the way to Air Bowl. I stopped at the top of the bowl for only a moment to stare down into one of my favorite features at the resort. As I ollied off the edge and landed into a half dozen turns in a bottomless pocket of untracked snow, I knew I had made the right choice.