The Mail Plane
With skis, ski stuff, and coffee in hand I headed to the “local” Jefferson County airport this morning. Or as we locals more lovingly refer to it, JeffCo. This little trip to Jackson has been scheduled for well over a month, as I had been invited by my good buddy parker and his dad to jump onto their snowcat trip on the west side of the Tetons at Grand Targhee. I had originally been planning on driving up, a thought which generally makes me cringe from the sheer number of times I’ve done that drive. But this time I decided to hitch a ride on the “mail plane.” My uncle Jim, whom has lived in Jackson for over 30 years, had told me about it a few times but I had never actually used it before.
So, I set out this morning to Stevens Aviation and met up with the pilots. They loaded their various cargo, mail, blood, bank deposits, then explained the features of the flight. Because it was an unpressurized plane, and we would be flying above 16,000 feet, we had the amusing opportunity to wear oxygen masks. The flight was a good time until we were pulling into the Snake River valley and they “lost” the runway in the fog. We had to circle back around, which was a little bit nerve wracking to me seeming as though there were jagged mountain peaks to the east and west of our current trajectory. But, they pulled it off, came through the 900 foot ceiling and pulled us into our parking spot at Jackson Hole Aviation. I picked up my uncle’s extra truck he had available to me, and headed over to his place.
Parker and his dad came in on United at about noon, and swung by and picked me up. We headed over to Jackson Hole mountain and scalped some tickets from a few people leaving early and headed for the tram. Standing in the tram line at Jackson is one of life’s simple pleasures. Knowing that in 10 minutes you will have risen 4000 vertical feet, and that you can ski about another 10 minutes and do it all over again. There aren’t many other ski areas in the world where in 3 runs you can rack up 12,000 vertical feet of skiing. So, we spent the rest of the afternoon skiing the wonderfully steep Jackson terrain and ended the day at the infamous Mangy Moose. More tommorrow…
