2.06.2010

Fallin' In the J-Hole


It's pretty easy to find satisfaction in the Tetons.  Explore casually daily, bullshit with free folks, steal the occasional cookie outta GOD'S JAR, and sleep hard every night.

I'd be writing more if the enjoyment it gave came close to comparing.
Pull pointless teeth or play in the powder?
The decision makes itself.

I mean, seriously, look at these pillows.


I'm healthy (knock on wood) and skiing perfect backcountry conditions daily.  I've got in about 40 days already and have slogged close to 100,000 feet o' vert.

My M.O. this winter is apparently sharing all my lines with anyone interested, this with intent to push myself to find new zones.  I'm jonesing to nab every ridge in the range and am currently eyeing obscure flanks off Teewinot.

A few days back I kicked off a three foot hard slab that stretched about 200 feet and ran about 1000 vert through steep trees and talus fields.  The debris pile at the bottom was at least 20 feet deep.  Here's a pic of the crown.


Had I been caught, odds favored a mangling and burial.  Fortunately, it broke just ahead of me as I traversed above a rollover that gave me the willies.

I haven't witnessed a slide like that since kicking off one my first winter in Jackson.  The experience didn't elicit the existential crisis one would hope for.  I got ten pumps of jello-leg and that's about it.

Phew.

I've got a few bigger projects on my mind and am just waiting for the right snowpack and weather window to make them real.  I've got competent partners lined up willing to take it as far as we can.

I'm still living (rent free!) in a shed but nary a Jacksonite, myself included, finds this inappropriate.  If anything, folks are endeared by the fact that I live in a shed, that I work 10 hours a week, that I don't have a car, that all my ski gear is second-hand and falling-apart.  I couldn't be bothered.

If this is a rut, I can see how I got stuck in it for five years.  Maybe it's not a rut.

Then again, maybe I'm just artificially enthused.  I never buy the stuff, but damned if I don't stumble across it thrice daily.


This is one of my favorite lines.  I call it the TOMAHAWK.


High Five!


Going winter camping with cool people.

Anyway, with all the amazingly awesome yet fundamentally stupid shit I'm doing and the complete lack of mental effort I'm putting forth, I don't have anything worth saying.

Additionally, I find it impossible to draw a bead on stateside-existence and drop that fucker in its tracks.
Do you really have it all figured out?
I mean, sure, there's always the obvious but the fleeting is so much funner.

Live it up.

Max