New Year's Day - Jackson Wyoming Style

What do you do on New Year's Day? Well in Jackson the tradtion seems to be... to get up uber early and go to the pass (which is the dividing line between Idaho and Wyoming), hike up even higher and then ski down the pass. Mind you, I have not been skiing in about 10 years so this was not something that I was going to do. However I did make it super convienent for Amy and Mike.

On our way up to the pass we drove by many fields with horses.

It was beautiful to see them in in the white snow and morning sun light.

I played taxi driver. I drove Amy and Mike to the top of the pass, dropped them off... while they were hiking to the top of a ridgeline, I drove down to the bottom. Straped on my borrowed cross country skis and started up hill. I was to meet Amy and Mike by a lake or something. Not sure how far I went, but possibly a couple miles. Never saw this 'lake' they talked about, but soon enough Amy and Mike came speeding down. I turned myself around and skied all the way back to the car only falling 3 times :D.

This did not end our new day at all. We took a short break back at home, switched out our skis to downhill skis and headed to Snow King. Here I got a 2 hour ski pass and had Mike and Amy re-teach me how to downhill ski. I used a lot of snow plowing, but managed to get about 4 runs in and then I was exhausted.

Morning view at the top of the pass looking down on to Jackson, Wyoming.

I'm having a hard time remembering what happened after we finished skiing. I think we went home and I fell asleep on the couch, had dinner then went to sleep again. All in all it was a great day of skiing and bringing in the New Year!

View photos and read about my snow shoe hike to Taggart Lake!