Find out where to stay and where to eat with our Jackson Hole: Insider Advice.
On my second morning in Jackson Hole, I stood at the top of Rendezvous Mountain with my ski instructor, Echo Miller. It was 8:45. We had caught the first tram, with other early birds, to get a run in before the area officially opened for the day.
In front of us, an expanse of untracked snow dropped steeply toward a cat track. From there the mountain spread out in a series of ridges, gullies, bowls and chutes, dropping thousands of feet to its base. In the distance, Wyoming's Snake River Valley stretched north toward the Gros Ventre Mountains, where the Sleeping Indian, a distinctive granite outcropping named for its resemblance to an Indian chief, was sharply silhouetted against the cloudless blue sky.
Behind us the light on the small warming hut, Corbet's Cabin, flashed from red to green, giving the all clear. "Go ahead," Echo said. "Jump on in."
"Anywhere?"
"Anywhere."
In that moment, faced with the tantalizing prospect of that massive, empty mountain literally at my feet, I felt like a kid who, after years of dutifully coloring inside the lines, had been given permission to, well, smudge a bit.
Pointing my skis downhill, I gave in to the forces of gravity and made big swooping turns through the soft, wind-scoured snow. It was an exhilarating warm-up run that left me eager for more. I wasn't used to skiing off designated trails, but with Echo's encouragement and lots of her helpful tips, I followed her lead as we explored some of Jackson Hole's vast and varied terrain. We dipped into the trees off Bivouac Woods, plowed through powder on Cheyenne Bowl, and let our skis run on the splendid corduroy of Gros Ventre. By the time we met my husband for lunch at the Casper Restaurant, I was exhausted, hungry and content. As we sat down to large bowls of turkey chili in a room full of apparently equally ravenous Gore-Tex-clad skiers, I couldn't help but wonder why I had waited so long to come.
