Gondola!

Locals stand in line anticipating the opening of the gondola at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort

I woke up yesterday with a big surprise in my email inbox. I regularly receive the JHMR snow report, which comes at 7 a.m. every morning. This time, it announced the opening of the Gondola on Thursday. You can bet that David and I hurried up to the mountain this morning to get the goods.

Snow just waiting to be ripped.

The ride up greeted us with views of untracked powder. We were all stoked to see that they hadn't really groomed anything. We flew out of the car at the top and strapped on our boards as fast as we could. Before we knew it, we were floating down Sundance, looking over the valley of Jackson Hole.

There were definitely some good powder turns to be had. You could even go through the trees in some sections. We had to be pretty conservative though, because rocks were in abundance, just barely covered by the thin layer of powder. I think I was pretty lucky to leave the mountain with only a couple of fresh scratches on my board. After five hours of pretty hard riding, my legs were burning and I decided to call it a day. It was awesome to see everyone stoked about riding again, and I can't wait to see what else the winter brings.

A fairly clear Village Road.

My daily ride.