Christmas Tree

Bob and Jill and I went for a tour up on Teton Pass. Andy joined us as well, he is back in town for a job interview and hoping mightily to return to Jackson on a permanent basis. We dropped off a vehicle at the bottom of the old pass road as a potential exit strategy.

It looked like Edelweiss was seriously tracked up, so we decided to head for Christmas Bowl. The run down through Powder Reserves was okay but noticeably stiff snow, maybe cream-cheese-light. It has been very warm the last couple days (40F in the valley, upper 20s up high) and we were wondering whether it was heat-affected or wind-affected or both.

The laps on Christmas Bowl were good, the snow was in much better condition. After two laps, Bob and Jill headed out to cut a christmas tree (more on that in a moment), while Andy and I did one more lap and then skied out Chivers Ridge to the bottom. As we got into lower elevation stuff on Chivers, it was still skiable but very stiff; fortunately it had not been sunny, just warm.

Our next-door neighbor Mary has been the coordinator for the US Capitol Christmas Tree this year, being delivered from Jackson Wyoming to Washington DC. That 67-foot Engelmann spruce has pretty much consumed her life for the past six or seven months. Yesterday was the official lighting at the Capitol; Dave and Petra flew back there to visit and join in the fun. We decided they should have a Christmas tree to welcome them back home tomorrow. Hmm, Bob had a tree permit and a saw. So it's not the Capitol christmas tree, it's more like the lowercase Christmas tree.