Making it to the Century Club

This truly epic winter will not quit! We eclipsed 700" long ago, the tram opens this weekend at the Village for the summer season and there is talk of top to bottom skiing, the ice is still covering all of the lakes on the valley floor, and, it's freaking Memorial Day Weekend! The snow above the 9,000ft level hasn't melted at all and the rivers are already exploding. This will certainly be a winter and spring that years from now we will look back on with some awesome perspective.

As usual, I always set out to ski 100 plus days a season as a goal. It took me longer than normal this year, mostly due to snowmobiling lots, but I finally got to 100, and it naturally, was a powder day in the middle of May! Here is the video of day 100, last week up on Teton Pass, after work, solo, with pretty decent powder for May, rather fittingly.

The Price is Right

The price on filling up the commuter doesn't hurt nearly the same as filling up my truck right now! I have been riding around town on the bike for the past few weeks to the tune of $6.48.

May.....

Hwy 89 south of Jackson is still closed. It has been 10 days now and the slide has only just stopped moving. On Saturday Chels and I took advantage of the closed highway and cruised down to check it out on the bikes.

Any rumors indicating that the highway might open anytime soon can't be true! There was only one loader moving debris on Saturday, and, as you can see, there is a ton of dirt to be moved. Supposedly they are waiting for the debris to stop moving before they really try to tackle the mess.

Went over to the Links, in Idaho to play golf a couple of times too.

Madison Bound

While Chels was down in SLC last weekend, me and a crew from Jackson headed in the opposite direction up north, to Montana. We spent the weekend up there camping, floating, and freezing our asses off on the Madison!

Sitting by the fire trying to stay warm.

Jason on "the barge" trying to avoid the insane winds.

First float of the year, despite how cold or windy it might have been, always is awesome and makes you look forward to July days when the fish are rising and it's 80 degrees out!

Yep, weenies and beans, that's living....

The second day it actually wamred up and got pretty nice. Teddy, in his element.

By the way...

Anyone looking for an amazing cup of coffee, look no further....my friend Shannon (yep, the awesome one with the pink hair) and her husband Matt own Silver Bean Coffee!


You should definitely support them because they are wonderful people, they have great coffee AND they even have "Athlete Blends" where there is a pic of your fave athlete on the bag (and yes, there is a Marco Sullivan blend) and part of the proceeds go to the athlete's charity of choice. Pretty sweet, huh?

Now go show Silver Bean Coffee some love! Cheers.

Yay for friends!

First of all, I want to give a huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY shout-out today to our wonderful friend LIZ! This past weekend I drove down to Salt Lake to spend a girls' birthday weekend with her and our friends Shannon and Matt.

We did yoga, went shopping, got makeovers, ate lots of good food, went on a great hike, did more yoga and had a lot of laughs...successful birthday weekend for sure! It was so much fun, thanks girls (and Matt) for an awesome weekend!

Happy birthday beautiful Lizard!

We went hiking, after a morning of yoga, so of course we were still feeling the yoga groove on the trail.

And jumps!

Love this one, it looks like Liz is riding on Milo's back.

Me and Shannon...swaying trees.

And of course the balancing whatever this is called.

Agghh...this one is hard!

Back at the Happe's...hanging with Jinx.

You guys are the best! Shannon, Matt and Jinx family photo time.

After dinner at an awesome Indian food restaurant...I mean, if they don't want people to play the instruments, they shouldn't have them out, right?

Shannon and I re-living our middle school band days and surprisingly the restaurant staff was very encouraging, all crowding around us and egging us on...the other diners? well, not so much.

Ahhhh, spring, I love you. You haven't quite made it to Jackson yet, but I know you will one of these days!

Ooops..

Well, when you get over 700" of snow in a winter, and then compound that with an April and May that have been 3x the "normal"precipitation, these types of raw events happen!

These are shots taken yesterday down in the Snake River Canyon by our bud Jason who is a geologist for the State of WY. They are taken on HWY 89 which runs along the Snake River Canyon flowing from Alpine to Jackson.

The highway has been closed since Saturday. Jason said it is almost 40 feet deep in places and has now started it run into the Snake River. Amazing!

Crews are literally working around the clock with this massive landslide, however, best case scenario, they are saying in might be a couple of weeks before it is cleared up.

Some of the WYDOT crew assessing the slide. Jason mentioned you could feel it moving underneath you in addition to hearing it slowing move too!

The natural bedrock layer to the right, and the insane mass of twisted trees, rocks, and soil to the left, as taken from the middle of the closed highway.

Some of the obvious worry is that it could slide all the way down into the raging torrent that is currently the Snake River, thus causing a massive build up. Scary.

After 5 days of rain...

All I can say is YAY FOR (a little) SUN!

Meeting In the Middle

The drive between Jackson and Coeur d' Alene, ID (where I grew up and my parents still live) is a little over 8 hours. Luckily, the cool town of Anaconda, MT happens to be smack dab in the middle of the 8 hour drive. So, at least once a year my folks and I try to meet up there for a weekend of fishing, hiking, and golf.

My dad at Old Works Golf Course..... One of the only Jack Nicklaus designed courses in MT, even more unique in that it was built on the former site of a huge mining operation that was once an EPA "Superfund" site.

The whole fam, my sister Sarah included, playing golf together. This last happened close to ten years ago!

The weather was pretty cold the whole weekend.

The county building.

Overlooking the Old Works Golf Course from above while on a hike.

First for Everything....

Toward the end of last week I got to take a bud up Teton Pass skiing there her first time. Francesca, who, along with her parents we met while skiing in Europe a couple of winters ago is living and going to high school here in Jackson. She had been wanting to get up on "The Pass" all winter.

Francesca and her bud Morgan booting up. The snow was pretty rugged, but it was awesome to have skiers stoked, no matter the conditions. From the "it's a really small world" chronicles......Morgan used to live in Telluride and her baby sitter there for years was my cousin Linsley! We managed to put that connection together during the hour long hike up.

Pumped to almost be at the top!

Manfred and Andrea, this shot is for you! I know you both are viewing this in Germany with huge smiles on your faces! Francesca crushed it up the hike and now wants to go more, especially when the conditions are prime!

Lins and Jeff.......wow huh! Morgan and I had actually met at my cousins wedding 8 years ago, but she was a lot younger, and I had taken a liking to the libations....

Francesca and myself getting ready to brave the re-froze ice conditions back to the truck.

No, I am not a "motorhead"

While my parents would let you believe that I am now an official "motorhead", not true......! I just like having fun, so, if that involves engines, ohh well!

I took the new bike on a ride up to Slide Lake (frozen mass in the background). It was a really cold ride, but fun to get out nonetheless.

From the "only in Jackson" files............., Bison roaming along the highway on the way back to town.

This winter's massive snowfall is starting to melt ever so slowly on the valley floor. We still have record snows up high in the mountains though. I love the way the valley looks when there is a mix of brown and white like in this picture.

Right....remember that, "I am not a motorhead" comment, well, I went snowmobiling with Tim over the weekend too. We shot up to Togwotee for a morning of riding. The snow was pretty firm, so, we could ride just about anywhere without the worries of getting stuck.

Me, getting ready to drop into the Breccia Cliffs Area. This was the first day of May, and, rather fittingly, it was snowing and cold.

Tim finding one of the few soft pockets of fresh snow.

Tim climbing up from the depths.

Needless to say, much of the sledder community seems to be "over" this winter. We were making fresh tracks the whole morning.

If things continue to go like they are right now, we will be riding sleds up on Togwotee easily into July!