Top of the World: Grand Targhee's Dreamcatcher Lift (Jan '05)
It's a warm, sunny Thursday morning at 11,000 feet. And I'm pretty sure I went down a rabbit hole instead of up a mountain. After all, this Thursday is located in January, and I'm located at Grand Targhee, Wyoming. An average daytime high temperature would not exceed the mid-teens, and usually a vision field above 50 feet is pretty good. But I have my coat unzipped, and I'm wearing just a t-shirt beneath it. The sun is picking diamond lights off every brittle crystal, and I can see from yesterday to tomorrow.
Our family has come to Grand Targhee for years, seeking a quiet resort with amazing powder snow. We're here with several friends again, but I wonder if we didn't hit a time warp from January to May somewhere during the drive last night. The sky is beautiful, but the snow beneath my feet is frozen into a single massive unforgiving sheet. It's like trying to ski across poorly finished concrete. Really lumpy concrete. Frictionless concrete. Okay, it's not really like concrete at all, except that it's painfully hard. And at 49 I've become a soft-surface snowplay kind of guy. But hey, you take what the mountain gives. And though the snow may not be what I was dreaming of, the days are about as beautiful as I've seen anywhere. So I'll ski (and snowboard) a little more cautiously, wear some padding, and enjoy the sunshine and the great company.
What's not to like?
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