100skidays

I headed west from the Teton Pass parking lot outside of Jackson into Idaho. I stopped by at Grand Teton Brewing just down from the pass, unfortunatly their fridge bonked earlier in the day and I wasn’t able to taste any beers.

Jackson Hole, WY

Tram at Jackson Hole, WY

Teton Pass parking

Teton Pass parking lot down below

Grand Teton Brewing Co.

I headed north through West Yellowstone towards Bozeman and slept in my car at a national forest trailhead outside of Big Sky, Montana.

Somewhere in that car I've been sleeping

The next morning I woke up and drove into Bozeman to find internet. Some other TGR posters (Sam, Allen, and Ben) were arriving in town that night, the plan was to car camp then wake up the next morning and ski Bridger Bowl. I had nothing to do all day, so I checked out some breweries (surprise surprise). Montana has some of the most interesting alcohol laws I’ve encountered. Brewery tasting rooms must close by 8pm, and you are limited to 48 ounces of beer per day. Also, up until 2005, you were allowed to have open containers in your vehicle (i.e. could legally drink and drive). (I actually didn’t know this open container law ban went into effect until just now, so the majority of the time I was driving in Montana over the four days I was thereI had a beer cracked) After visiting Madison River Brewing in Belgrade and Bozeman Brewing in Bozeman I met up with another TGR poster. Thanks for the beers Marc! Eventually the other Pathfinder of unemployed ski bums showed up in town and we camped at a trailhead just outside of Bozeman.

The first night we had no problems camping here, second night we got woken up by sheriffs at 2am

Hiking the ridge at Bridger Bowl

Imagine this terrain on a powder day

Sam, Ben, and Allen picking out their line from the ridge

Break for lunch

Back out there

Ben showing there's no better time for a beer then when you're cliffed out

2009.01.14: Posting from Montana State’s library in Bozeman. I found a nice trailhead to camp at last night just outside of Big Sky. I was able to get 11 hours of sleep and could hear the Gallatin River. Today I’m going to check out some breweries around Bozeman and Belgrade then meet up some some other TGR posters tonight. Big Sky backcountry tomorrow.

Here’s what I’ve been listening to -

Jane’s Addiction – Ritual de lo Habitual (1990)

Best Track: “Stop!”
Best listened to when you’re looking for something to turn up uncomfortably loud
Rolling Stones – Exile on Main Street (1972)

Best Track: “Sweet Virginia” (“Thank you, for your wine, California”)
Best listened to when you want to lean your seat back and kick your left foot up on the gauge cluster

The Magnetic Fields – Charm of the Highway Strip (1994)

After Stephin Merritt’s romantic Holiday, and before his 3-disc lo-fi pop 69 Love Songs, he realeased this country-influenced album. Almost every track mentions traveling or trains.
Best Track: “Born on a Train”
Best listened to when driving I-80 through Wyoming

Bad Brains – I & I Survived (2002)

Best Track: “Ghetto”
D.C. hardcore gone dub.
Best listened to when driving through the mountains of Western Wyoming after 9 hours behind the wheel, beer cracked, nobody on the road, an hour away from your destination

Thelonious Monk – Genius of Modern Music, Vol 1 (1947)

I’m not even going to pretend to know anything about jazz.
Best listened to at 6 in the morning heading into town after camping in the mountains alone the night before, ready to see people again

Leftöver Crack – Mediocre Generica (2001)

Take their name with a grain of salt, because that’s how they take life.

Best Track: Nazi White Trash (no disrespect to the state of Wyoming)
Best listened to when getting passed by hundreds of Ford F-150 farm trucks on a two-lane Wyoming highway slowing gaining elevation up to the mountains

Spacemen 3 – Recurring (1991)

Before Jason Pierce formed Spiritualied he co-fronted Spacemen 3 with Pete Kember. Recurring takes a step away from Spacemen 3’s earlier shoegaze/noise releases and begins to show the haunting side Spiritualized took on (listen how similar Spacemen 3’s “Billy Whiz/Blue 1″ is to Spiritualized’s “Cop Shoot Cop”).
Best Track: “When Tomorrow Hits”
Best listened to when driving through Yellowstone National Park at dusk and can’t see 100 feet in front of you due to blowing snow

Why? – Alopecia (2008)

Hip hop lyricist fused with almost Postal Service-style indie music – “Today after lunch I got sick and blew chunks /
all over my new shoes / in the lot behind Whole Foods / this is a new kind of blues” – “..or are you giving me a dirty look in the rear view / clicking the button on your U-Haul pen / don’t pretend you didn’t see me / coming round the bend / on my fixie with the chopped horns turned in / trailing behind your biodiesel benz.” Oakland based Why? is on Anticon, a label most commonly associated with underground hip hop artists such as Doseone and Odd Nosdam. “Wolf [Why?] often approaches his words from a hip-hop standpoint, concentrating on internal rhyme and enjambment, but his intonation and delivery are pure indie rock. As is the band, who layer keyboards, guitars, and electric and organic percussion into something simultaneously melodic and distant, tuneful and difficult, songs that you want to sing along to but then have trouble enunciating the hook to “The Hollows,” the first single (“This goes out to all my underdone, other-tongued lung-long frontmen/And all us Earth-growths; some planted, some pulled”). But that, in fact, is what makes Alopecia successful: it displays both crypticness and honesty, intellectualism and vulgarity in equal measure, challenging and placating its audience in the same drawn-out, undefined, nasally breath.” – allmusic.com