It finally started snowing in Wyoming and I was there as the storm began. It started a week and a half ago and the flakes didn’t come singularly, they came in the hordes dumping over 30 inches on Targhee over four days. Thankfully my buddy Rudy had the Chalet, an early ‘90’s rustic truck camper, parked on the ridge a mere quarter mile from the Ghee’s lifts. With plush ski in ski out accommodations and the first true storm of the season puking on us it was sure to be a killer few days of pooter hunting. The first day of the storm the Targhee ski patrol and lift crew battled to get the Dreamcatcher, the center point of Traghee, spinning and finally did mid after-noon. While they battled the elements we were farming low angle powder off the Sacajawea lift and dipping into the Toilet Bowl for some faceshots and cliff drops. Once the Dreamcatcher was spinning the Headwall offered up free refills all day thanks to Mother Nature and the fact that most already retreated to the Trap bar for nachos and pints. For the next two days the routine continued; the flakes fell, the ski patrol bombed, the lefties desperately tried to get lifts spinning and we skied. Unfortunately my camera passed on the trip due to high moisture content in the ol’jacket caused by a few  to many tomohawks in the deep pow.  Thankfully a few of the shots survived the ordeal. Here they are! –Ryland Mauck-Duff/MHF

Mountain High Freeride's Travis Elquist is fresh off a three week adventure from Alaska where he worked on the safety crew for the World Extreme Freeriding Championships and survived a gnarly crash while competing in King of the Hill (the snowboarding portion of the WEFC). Check out Mountain High Freerides blog for the full story of his adventure and a video of WEFC.

This past week over my spring break I adventured south to Mammoth Lakes, California to catch up with my good friend Chris Nelson of Highanxiety Films and shred some powder. Over the course of the week it dumped over 4 feet making the yearly snow fall creep past 600 inches. Most of our time was spent storm riding chasing chest deep powder on the lower mountain, but we lucked out and it went blue tuesday. There was just enough time left in the day for them to open the gondola to the top of the mountain and the rest of the day was spent shredding the upper bowls of Mammoth Mountain under blue skies. I had hopes of checking out the sourounding backcountry on my southern adventure, but due to the heavy snowfall the avalanche conditions reamained high all week and we were confined to the resort. Despite having to battle for first tracks we still managed to snag a few good shots, here are a couple of my favorites. For a full gallery and trip report check out Highanxiety Films site. -Ryland

The Mountain High Freeride crew, including myself, headed into the Caribou National Forest this past weekend to check out the Jackson Creek Yurt. Located off the backside of our local ski hill Pebble Creek, it’s ideal for a quick overnight backcountry adventure. The snow conditions for the trip were looking bleak over the last few weeks, as the end of January and better half of February were dry here in southeastern Idaho. Thankfully a storm rolled in late last week blanketing the mountains with well over a foot and the conditions started looking up for our weekend trip.

Saturday morning started off at the MHF headquarters with a quick gear and pack assorting session. Once we had our packs dialed Travis, Troy, Nate and myself departed for Pebble Creek, the starting point for our tour to the yurt. After a quick jaunt up from the ski area to the backside of Pebble we stashed our over night gear before dropping in for some laps on the backside. For our first lap we headed to the Enchanted Forest, a well-protected grove of fir trees that collects the snow. As expected the trees were filled with snow providing face shots for all. The snow was to good to pass up a second lap, so we dropped in again before heading down the ridge to the yurt. With a mid-day arrival at the yurt we dropped our gear and grabbed a snack before heading out for an afternoon tour. Travis had been eyeing the northwest face of Fig over the past few years and with it just one ridge over from the yurt there was no better time to check it out. We gained the ridge above Fig just as the evening light was lighting up the face. The snow, much like in the Enchanted, was waist deep blower. With smiles on our faces we headed back to the yurt to relax and grab some dinner.

It's luxury camping at the Jackson Creek Yurt. With a fully stocked woodstove were able to dry all our gear out and warm up for an evening shred session. The kitchen, while very humble, is more then adequate for a solid backcountry meal. We enjoyed some Natural High dried foods for dinner before heading back out to make some laps under the stars. The slopes off the ridge above the yurt provided us with star-lit powder turns well into the evening. With sore legs and a solid day of skiing powder under us we made it back to yurt just past ten o'clock.  It was time to settle down for the early start in the morning that was ahead of us. We rose early to a cold yurt, a half dead fire in the stove, blue skies and a lack of motivation.  Our motivation began to rise once the stove was stoked and the yurt began to warm up. We grabbed some breakfast, organized our gear and headed out for some morning laps before heading home. We trekked over to Strawberryfields the area off the backside of Fig to score some more powder. With two laps on Strawberry we figured we should save some energy for the ski out and headed back to the yurt for lunch. With slightly rested legs we shouldered up our full packs and headed out down  to the Jackson Creek road. We managed to find a couple good turns on the way out, but it was mostly bushwhacking until we got down to the farm fields. As we rolled through the fields down to the road I could just sense how stoked, yet tired we all were, a sure sign of a killer weekend. Here are a few shots we snapped! –Ryland Mauck-Duff

Paul Kimbrough has been shooting with photographer Garrett Grove out of Revelstoke. Where can you find poutine, the Columbia River, and 6,000 vertical feet of powder turns? To view more dreamy photos check out Garrett Grove’s blog.

At home I was usually the kid coming up with the bad ideas, but here at the PW’s in Utah I can barely keep pace. Noah and Andy are always up to something and when Andy rushed off with my brand new sticks and bindings to mount them at 7:00pm I didn’t exactly know what I was in for. It turned into a bit of mission, but Andy was kind enough to go on a wild goose chase and wrestle my bindings into submission just so I could share the pain. Waking up in the dark and meeting at 7:00am, we planned to get an early start on the day. Much to our dismay, the shitshow Andy started the night before (he said it was the longest hardest mount he has had) was continuing. My boot was at Rosenberg’s where the mounting went down so we started our day with a little morning drive while the other boys headed up to the hill. As we parked at Pole-line trailhad I realized I had forgotten my gloves, but luckily Andy had an extra pair (typical poncho), so we flipped our heelthrows and started the trek. We planned to head to Cardiff and lap until we dropped, in which case that forsaken soul would have to stand back up and finish the 10,000 vert. T’was bound to be a Gigaling good time.

Lap One! It was a perfect day to play in the mountains, splitter blue skies, perfect powder and a determination to “just keep hiking.”

Lap Two. Andy’s smiling, the legs are feeling good and about to enjoy some silky turns.

Pumping out another one! Noah feeling the burn, I had to give 'er a little to keep up with these folks.

Lap Five: Andy started wrapping his skins around his body to keep them warm and sticky. I don’t know how Andy was feeling but I sure felt like I had rocks strapped to my ankles.

Darryl, Jacobsen and Noah at our gear cache, melting some snow and staying fueled. I liked to get a little head start up the climb if I could.

There’s a Half moon rising and I’m probably about 3/4ths depleted.

(Dramatization). 9000-vert landmark, still have to hike out of this biatch, legs like lead, hips are hurting and the gas tank is empty.

Darkness approached, looks like it is going to be black to black from car to car today.

Andy hallucinating and psyched to have hit 10 gi-ga GRANDE! First time I have gotten so fully drained and even a little ataxic from a day of skiing.

Twice as much vert means twice as many burritos! The smile says it all. Can never say no to an adventure, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to hauling those super fat boards up the hill for 10,000 vert anytime soon. But if the snow is deep enough….

Last week we polled out facebook fan base as to what their favorite beer to carry in for hut trip weekends is. We got lots of different responses, and picked one lucky winner of a Flylow belt with a bottle opener.

The responses inspired this chart, which you can refer to next time you are trying to decide what beverage to weigh yourself down with on the skin in.

by Jake Sakson

With the van down and out, I have been on the two bag ski trip, which I plan to continue for the next 5 months or so, made possible by the kindness of my friends and a little suffering here and there. Traveling without a car is proving to be both liberating and troublesome. Amtrak is a great way to get to the ski hill, depending on where you are going and call your winter home. With no weight limit on bags, no annoying airport security, and no rushing for the connecting flight the train provides what is probably the most stress-free way of traveling. You can pack your own food and bring your own beer. Don’t drink to much though because if you plan it right you should be arriving in the middle of a snow storm. Try doing that on an airline, or driving. There are no slippery roads, no traffic, and no canceled flights. Just walk on the train, stash your bags and keep on keepin’ on.

The train-rate system is a little funky but if you can plan ahead good prices can be had. The train works similar to airline seat hierarchy, the first half of the seats go for one price, and then they go up after that. The least expensive ticket (between SLC and Truckee) is $67, then $84, then $105, and then all the up to $138. You can see how important it is to get that low fare. You can book your ticket online but if you are buying your ticket the night before you will need to call in and get a confirmation number, a very important number to have if you are planning on riding the train. Also if you go about it this way, you can book your ticket days in advance, get the low fare and not pay upon getting your reservation. That means if it starts snowing you don’t have to leave! But if the plan is on, you can hop on the train. I usually was able to buy my ticket the day before or two days before and hit the lower two price points.

We just received the following update from Jake Sakson who has been touring around the Wasatch before he heads up to Revelstoke for much of the winter. This provides some good inspiration for going out on a real adventure every once in a while instead of sticking to your go-to touring areas.

“You know how to rappel right?”

“Um, well yeah,” I answer. And in that instant our day changed from a peaceful romp in the mellow Silver/Days fork area to a long slog. A no-fall zone ski into epic bushwack. This was my tenth day straight of touring and the early season legs were starting to feel the effects of my perpetual snow hunting. Here is a google earth screenshot of our route. My guess is that it was 8-10miles. Red is up and blue is down. I don’t have the strongest sense of direction so I checked out Google Earth afterwards to better understand the terrain we traveled through that day. These are obviously very easy canyons to follow, but I see it as good practice. The top of the map is South.

This is Andy heading up the shoulder of the Pfiefferhorn. The skinnning was rough here so I resorted to boot packing while Andy was able to skin the slippery traverse seen above.

This is the bootpack up to the shoulder, with Andy in the distance. With the winds howling and the legs burning this is where we start to realize that we might be a little late to set up for the Powderwhores premiere and that we were on a bit of an adventure. Luckily for us the wind subsided enough for us to summit and we decided to continue on our mission.

Me bootpacking to the summit.

The entrance to the chute was not 100% filled in and while it looked marginally skiable it was still pretty thin and we took the safer route of rappelling into the entrance.

Entrance to the chute, Andy setting up the rope.

This is me rappelling down the entrance.

Andy coming off the rope. This is where we put our skis on laboriously. Clipping the heel clip on teles on a steep face is always an exciting time. We both had Megawatts for the day, my 178′s didn’t do bad chopping down the chute, but I can’t say Andy’s 188s liked it too much.

There were places where it was a little gnarly and narrow for me to do tele turns but the snow was actually pretty quality and dropping the knee felt good. Just out of sight, where the chute curves right, the first rap awaits.

Andy ripping the tele down the upper snowfield.

Andy clipped in and getting ready for the second rappel. Don’t drop anything!

Me coming down the rappel, this was my first time on a mission like this and it was definitely a different aspect to skiing that I would like to explore more. Skiing above exposure has a way of bringing complete focus. It is similar to charging freeski lines, where it is absolutely required to stay on your feet and keep a strong head.

This is me chopping some turns down the narrowing chute above the rappel. The snow in the apron was of good quality, and we most certainly enjoyed the final pitch. The deeper we got down the drainage, the more heinous the skiing became. This photo is pretty representative but does not do full justice to the rock skipping and bushwaking that just got thicker (brush) and thinner (snow) until we ended up taking off our skis and walking to the road, during which time I slipped into the creek on the stream crossing, Good times! But I must say I will probably not be heading down Hogum’s for awhile.

Check out what Backcountry Magazine had to say about the Quantum Jacket in their December issue: