So I’ve got a few hours to kill. The snow storm that brought me the most fun six days of snowboarding I’ve had in my life is now holding me hostage inside the Jackson Hole airport. Scheduled departure time: 1:22 pm. Time at posting of this blog entry: 8:22 pm. I might be sleeping here.

Since I have a bit of time to kill, I thought I’d tell the story of this week’s trip through photos …

Starting with a shot from the contest site, the Casper Bowl. On Saturday, there was a natural halfpipe contest at Dick’s Ditch (which is maybe the most fun in-bounds run anywhere, especially after the snowfall we had earlier this week). Tuesday’s contest was held at this natural terrain park. I took this photo from what I thought was the best spot to watch the event. The cliffs at the top of the photo are where the riders dropped in. It was like watching a great big-mountain video—in person.

To the left is the most famous feature at Jackson Hole, a chute to a cliff drop called Corbet’s Collier. Those two dots on the bottom right are Steve and Lora. We traversed from where I took this photo to where they are, and then dropped in for a steep powder run. Mountain Creek this is not.

The neatest thing about Jackson Hole is that you can hop off the gondola, and take a warm-up run that has more trees and secret powder stashes than most out-of-bounds stuff at the hills in Colorado and Utah. But you have to know where to find it all. So we spent Sunday with guide Jeff Stein and Monday with guide Lisa Watson. On Monday, Lisa took us up a short, but steep, 20-minute hike to Headwall. The untouched powder run it led us to would have been worth an hour’s hike.

The start of the hike …

About halfway up, looking back at Mark and Lisa at the start …

Lisa and me, finally at the top …

It seemed like these signs met us at least twice a day throughout the week. Maybe it was the excitement of being at one of the best mountains in North America during what everyone was calling “the best week in the history of snow” (At Sunday’s Super Bowl party, Todd Richards said Friday was the best day he’d ever had at a resort. That’s saying something. I give that distinction to Saturday-Thursday.) or riding, as usual, with friends who made me ride better … but I started smiling when we dropped in near one of these signs. They usually meant “fun, below”.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, Travis Rice won the event. It wasn’t ideal to have the guy who created the event also win it, but it was well deserved and hard to avoid. He’s tough to beat, especially on his home turf.

And I finally made it out of Jackson Hole, at 9:15 Friday morning. Off to Tamarack, Idaho for the U.S. Snowboard Grand Prix. Stay Tuned …