2008 May Archive at sagecattabriga-alosa.com

After a “all time” day at Targhee I headed off for San Leandro California where The North Face’s main office is located. I met up with a large portion of the ski and snowboard team and the designers from the snowsports line. It is always really cool and exciting to work directly with the people on the design team, trading ideas, fine tuning of the gear, and on this particular trip seeing the new line for the first time. The line was looking great, the designers at TNF are extremely talented, passionate and dedicated to making next level gear.

While meetings were going well, I had something in the back of my mind that was demanding attention. Days had been spent sculpting snow to perfection, and the potential for another epic session was high. TGR had plans to call in a heli to get some unique filming angles, sun was on the horizon, and once again Targhee was blanketed with a fresh batch of snow, this time twelve inches had arrived.

At 12:29 am I changed my plane ticket to a 6:00 am departure, awoke at 4:28 am moments before my alarm and caught the flight. By 10:45 I was rolling towards Grand Targhee once again, 12:pm I pulled into th parking lot to hear the sound of a heli lifting, and after a quick ride from a snowmachine I was standing at the base of jump #1. Realizing that I hadn’t made a turn in days I suddenly had apprehension about hiking right up to the jump and stepping into tricks right off the bat. Tate McDowell, who had given me the ride simply stated that the heli only had a short time to film before it would need to make a long trek to re-fuel, and so he started singing lyrics from the song “8mile”. With that I dropped my back pack and began hiking.

After some high fives with the fellow riders I slid into the rotation and fired off a huge fly-away front flip.It was a perfect way to start off another session in paradise. We continued to session kicker #1 and then slotted into a sunset kicker #2 session before calling it a night over beers and food at the Royal Wolf in Driggs.

At 5:30 am the next morning, some 19 hours after touch down, I rolled out heading back to Salt Lake where another plane ride was scheduled, this time to Portland Oregon.

Dylan Hood= super smooth.

Sammy Carlson floats one.

360 , Photo By Pete O’Brian

Jump #2

Todd Jones, and Cory Gavitt sit on the flying carpet cameras in hand.

Whiley Miller floats one over jump 2 while taylor felton looks on.

Grand Targhee resort is home to some of the best terrain in the west, long cliff bands stretch their way across the back side of Freds Mountain and along the Peaked ridge. While Most of the lift access terrain is fairly mellow the backcountry has some sick terrain. The massive faces of the Tetons loom in the back ground of one of the most picturesque views in the west. So when I found out TGR was planing a spring session there I was super pumped to get back to the home turf. The plan was to find some terrain that we could inhance with the help of a large digging crew and some snowcats. We settled on two build spots, one below the long cliff ridge on peaked, and the other in a west facing zone that captured the late evening light. The crew slowly rolled in throughout the week and included Dylan Hood, Sammy Carlson, Taylor Felton, Wylie Miller, Dash long, and myself.

On the road, Tetons in sight… barely, through the bug guts!

construction of jump 1

construction of jump 2

working on jump two with a fleet of snowcats.

Sammy Carlson rolled into town, I was stoked to ride with him he brings mad energy and is super sick. While the cat crew worked on the jump Sammy sessioned this sign tap.

After several days of weather, building and shaping the jumps a fresh blanket of snow rolled in and coated the mountain in a six inch blanket making landings soft and lines shredable. We warmed up in the morning with a pow session, I hit three lines with a air or two in each one. The fresh snow was on top of unfrozen corn so it made for perfect conditions.

This is a classic line at Targhee, because the snow pack is so deep I was able to send it as a triple line including a cornice gap up top. Photo by Adam Clark

After warming up with some lines we were ready to hit Jump 1. Sammy guinnie pigged the jump and overshot on his second attempt, he bit through his toungh when he impacted, but toughed through it and hit the jump shortly after. Once we got the speed dialed the jump went really well, every one stomped a bunch of different tricks into a pow landing. Photo by Adam Clark