Ace in the Hole

Jamie weeks watched us initial the I UNDERSTAND THAT DEATH MAY ENSUE fine print, and then nodded and started drawing on the back of the paper: two long lines, with a squiggly mess near the bottom and two stick people near the bottom and two stick people at the top. "This is you guys, in the sage spot," he said, indicating the stick people. "I'll always start down first. If you see me get avalanched, you stay in the safe spot and watch. Because where i go under"-now, with pen, pointing to the squiggly mess--"is where you start your search."

We were sitting around a table in a place called Corbet's Cabin, built from cedar logs at 10,450 feet, and-peril be dammed!-preparing to launch out of bounds above Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We'd arrive on a gondola after taking two chairlifts, rising on at a time over the great sweep of Grand Teton National Park. From the cabin deck, we should have been able to see for 200 miles. But low clouds were pouring fresh powder like confetti on New Year's. We were an exuberant if oddly matched trio: one middle-ages, knee impaired alpine skier enabled by a brace and ample ibuprofen; one college-age hotshot on a black snowboard emblazoned with the words SEEK AND DESTROY; and Weeks, a 35-year-old former snowboard racer who seres as a backcountry guide at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, our new no-run-or-luxury-barred Grand Slam package.

Jackson Hole, and audacious, glorious place, is home to arguable the country's best skiing. The Tetons jut straight up from the valley floor, not bothering with preliminaries like foothills, and the ski mountain sits a snowball's throw from Teton Village's jumble of western opulence and frontier funk. there's some nice beginner and intermediate down hilling in the Hole, nit the area's top attraction is "the high testosterone thing," as one local called it. I n most ski areas, the steep and wild back country terrain is fenced off with go-away signage. Jackson hole, on the other hand, uses its extremes to lure an intrepid clientele. case in point: the Grand Slam, which assembles three high testosterone temptations- snowcat skiing, backcountry guided skiing, and heli-skiing, plus two days on the mountain lifts- into one five day hedonistic powder trove.

Grand Slammers can wither bunk up at a Teton Village condo or opt (at an additional cost) for the refines elegance of one of the Valley's numerous resorts. We close the Four Seasons for its base of the lifts proximity: After polishing off our breakfast of egg-white omelette each morning, we spent maybe 20 seconds walking between the hotel and our first ride up. Ski concierges attended to ever detail, which Seek and Destroy tolerated with bemusement until one overzealous attendant tried to snatch her board at the end of a run. ("If I can't carry it myself," she snapped,"I don't belong on this mountain.") There was no such kvetching, however, about the spa's out door whirlpools, nor the restaurant's preparations, like bison-wrapped foie gras with caramelized pear tarte tatin.

The day we climbed to Corbet's, Weeks had spent the morning showing us bowls and gullies of Jackson Hole's inbounds territory, which we'd plummeted down, whooping and jumping off stuff. (S&D to Weeks every five minutes or so:"Can i huck this??" Weeks: "Sure.") Now Weeks was about to take us through on of the access gates that links The Village's 2'500 patrolled acres to the cast land around it. These gates are marked with advisories about the nature of the terrain out there: You don't have to ski it with a guide, but it's not avalanche blasted, and the ski patrol doesn't cover it.

I's never used avalanche beacon before Weeks lead us through our back county tutorial-- reading a beacon, assembling a shovel, using a probe-- and the through the gates. There were trees, there was that luminous, floaty sensation with no sound at all, and then there was a huge open vertical, like an upended football field two feet deep in powder, with a cornice curling seductively over the top.

"Can i huck this?" S&D asked, predictable.
"No," Weeks said.

We sailed down, one by one, The clouds had lifted, and unfurled beneath our feet. That night, i had an hour long massage and ate something delicious involving wild mushrooms and balsamic vinegar. I sighed deeply over dinner. It simply couldn't get any better.

The next day it did. After breakfast, Weeks took us snowcat skiing at a reserve called Togwotee (Grand Targhee is in the 2008's package), an hour drive north east of Jackson. Togwatee has snowmobilers, but by the tradition they stay a long way from the downhillers-all eight of them, that is. That's the maximum number of visitors allowed on the reserve's 750 acres on any given day. Do the math: one mountain, foot-deep fresh powder, eight people-- thats almost 100 acres per person. We sailed up and down pristine wilderness snow all day long, never crossing another set of tracks.

The plan was to set out heli skiing the next day, but by mid afternoon at Togwotee my knee had started its warning throb, We headed back to Jackson with the Tetons silhouetted around us in the sun set, and for a brief, deranged period I felt cheated because I'd have to skip the Heli-skiing. Then I came to my senses. Four out of five days of Grand Slam glory is still domestic skiing's high ace in the hole.

"Hey!" I said, poling s&D with my knee brace and holding up the Togwotee flier which features a lone skier carving undulated tracks down a handsome sweep of vertical. "that was us."

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