• Teton Canyon - Drive up Ski Hill Road out of Driggs. The road will change names a few times but I don't think it is noticeable, (I never did) just stay on the main drag until about a mile after you go through Alta there is a turn right on Teton Canyon Road. drive down this road until you get to the parking area. This is a beautiful ski at The Grand Teton towers over you the whole way.

• Darby Canyon - This is an ungroomed multiple use trail. Between Victor and driggs on hwy 33 you will turned east on Darby Road it dead ends at Stateline road then turn right it will then turn left on Darby Canyon Rd and soon the road will end where the trail starts.

• Fox Canyon - This is an un-groomed multiple use trail. Between Victor and Driggs on hwy 33 you will turn east on and take it till it ends.

• Moose Canyon - This is an un-groomed multiple use trail. About a 2 miles east of Victor torn lift on Old Jackson Hwy go about a half mile then turn right on to e. Moose Creek Road and go to the end.

• Cabin Creek - is at the bottom of the west side of Teton Pass. park at the parking area on the north side of the road. At the bottom and on the south side of the road you will find the Cabin Creek Trail.

• Cache Creek - located on the southeast corner of the town of Jackson east of Snow King Ski Resort. This is a busy trail but it does provide a quick access out of the town of Jackson.

• Game Creek - travel south from Jackson on Hwy 89/191 approx. 7 miles, and turn left onto road #30455 9Game Cr. R.) toward Game Creek. Parking is on left less than a mile up this road

• Granite Creek Hot Springs - Go 12 miles south of Jackson and head south on Hwy 191 through the beautiful Hoback Canyon. About fifteen miles up turn on Granite Creek Road and right away you are at the trail head. It is a ten mile ski to the Granite Hot Spring but even if you make it a shorter trip you will still enjoy it. This is a popular groomed snowmobile and dog-sledding trail.

• Gros Ventre Road - go about 7 miles north of Jackson to the Kelly turn off and after go through the town of Kelly go about another 2 miles then turn right on Gros Ventre River Road, follow it until it ends at the parking area above Slide Lake. The exposed red cliffs juxtaposed against the snow is a beautiful site. This is Rocky mountain Bighorn Sheep wintering grounds and the chances of seeing some are about 90%. This is a popular groomed snowmobile trail.

• Shadow Mountain - is about 15 miles north of Jackson, look for Antelope Flats Road then turn left when the road ends and follow it till it ends. This Trail is about an 8 mile loop with about a thousand foot elevation gain that provides great views of the Tetons

• Harriman State Park is located 20 miles north of Ashton on Highway 20. There is a total of 21 miles of trails, and 10 of those are groomed, providing opportunities for all levels of skiing. Harriman is a wintering ground for the majestic trumpeter swan and is home to many other animals. A warming shelter and restrooms are provided at the trail head. The $3 entrance fee is waived if you have a Park N' Ski permit on your vehicle.

• The Fall River Ridge Park N' Ski area is located 10 miles east of Ashton on the Cave Falls Road. The various loops are suitable for beginner and intermediate use. The terrain consists of rolling hills dotted with meadows, and stands of lodgepole pine and aspen trees. A small plowed parking area is provided and is shared by snowmobilers and skiers. They also share one mile of trail. Nearly seven miles of trails make up this area, which is groomed periodically when funding and weather conditions permit.

• Bear Gulch/Mesa Falls - This ski area is located seven miles northeast of Ashton on Mesa Falls Forest Highway 47. The trail parallels the snowmobile trail out to the spectacular Lower and Upper Mesa Falls. The trail then branches away from the snowmobile trail and travels along the canyon rim, then returns to the trail head. This trail is recommended for intermediate and advanced skiers because of the steep climb in the first mile. The trail is nearly nine miles long and is groomed periodically when funding and weather conditions permit.

•The Brimstone Trail is located one-quarter mile north of the Island Park Ranger Station on Highway 20 near Ponds Lodge Resort. The terrain varies from gentle grades to downhill runs through tree groves. The nine miles of trail offer scenic views of the Island Park Reservoir, Box Canyon, and Buffalo River. The trail provides opportunities for all levels of skiing ability.

• The Buffalo River Trail - is 2.6 miles long, starting at the Island Park Ranger Station and winding along the Buffalo River through forests of lodgepole pine. The trail's gentle grade provides an excellent opportunity for beginners to polish their skills. Both trails are groomed periodically when funding and weather conditions permit.

• Palisades Creek - just east of Irwin turn left on Palisades Creek Road and drive till it ends at the trail head. This is a beautiful narrow canyon for the first mile and you will want to watch for big rocks in the trail early in the winter, a mile up after there first bridge the canyon opens up some for some beautiful views. There is a lake up about 4 miles.

• Indian Creek Trail - is about 15 miles south of Swan Valley Hwy26 drops into the indian Creek bottom there is parking on the west side for the road the trail starts on the east side of the Hwy. This is a also a snowmobile route

• Fall Creek Campground - is About 5 miles north of Swan Valley you cross the Snake River there you turn left on River Road and go up about 2 miles to the parking area on the left side of the road. Ski along the river to get to Creek Campground this parking is the same one for Fall Creek trail which is also a groomed snowmobile trail as is all of River Road. Bonneville county grooms Fall Creek Campground for cross country skiing.

• Bear Creek Trail - is about 4 miles south of Irwin. Go till you get to Palisades Dam an park in the parking lot at the top then ski south on the Groomed snowmobile trail. for the ambitious the forest service rents a cabin 12 miles up and makes a nice little destination.

• Fall Creek - About 5 miles north of Swan Valley you cross the Snake River there you turn left and go up about 2 miles to the parking area on the left side of the road. Ski up the Fall Creek Canyon groomed snowmobile trail as far as you like. This is a great wildlife viewing area.

Teton Pass • (Jackson Hole) Interested in maximum vertical with minimum approach? Try Teton Pass. Teton Pass is a popular backcountry skiing destination outside of Jackson Hole Wyoming and Teton Valley Idaho. You can easily access this area by driving west on hwy 22 from Jackson Hole or west on hwy 33 from Victor Idaho.

Towgotee Pass • (Dubois WY) Towgotee is a region more than just a pass and the whole region provides many skiing opportunities, many touring and some backcountry downhill. Towgotee Pass receives over 600 inches of snow annually and there are many around the touring areas I include where you can bushwhack some good downhill turns.

Beehive Basin (Big Sky, MT) Beehive Basin Ski Trail is a moderate 5 km single-track loop near Big Sky. The trail begins with a few switchbacks, which are a bit steep. The route then flattens out for about 1 mile before turning steeply uphill. Near the end is a very steep hill. The view is spectacular. Near the end of the trail you will find a shallow lake surrounded by vertical cliffs. Avalanche hazard areas are common. Ski route goes into Lee Metcalf Wilderness. In the fall and winter Beehive Basin and nearby Middle Basin are THE spots to get some early season powder turns in Big Sky. Skinning and snowshoeing are viable ways to travel through the snow, but often the trail is already boot packed most of the way. As a word to the wise, anybody who plans to hike Beehive in the snow should go only with others who have knowledge of the area. It's agreed that certain places shouldn't be hiked without avalanche gear. Avalanches are a reality at Beehive. According to the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center, on Jan. 20, 2008, a skier was buried and killed there by a slide. This trail is not groomed. map

Beyond the Grand -- The life of America's Most Influential Ski Mountaineer - Bill Briggs Biography By Louis Dawson • Bill Briggs gulped from his water bottle, laced his boots, and clicked his ski bindings. Standing at the apex of Wyoming's precipitous 13,770-foot Grand Teton, he caught his breath and took in the view. To his east, the Gros Ventre mountains rose from the haze like a Tolkien fantasy, while the plains of Idaho faded two hundred miles west. Below his feet, snow like a steeple roof dropped thousands of feet to the chasm. Briggs plan was to slice turns on that snow -- to be the first to ski down Grand Teton. On that day of June 15, 1971, as his skis carved arcs down to Garnet Canyon, his goal became reality.

Skiing the Grand Teton - Yes they do

Montana Avalanche Information • Gallatin National Forest

Bridger-Teton National Forest Avalanche Center • Official home page for the Bridger-Teton National Forest Avalanche Center. Avalanche advisories are updated daily around 7am from early November to late April.

www.csac.org - The Avalanche Center • The CSAC Snow and Avalanche Center provides global snow avalanche information. It is a comprehensive source for current conditions, education, incident reports, and more.

Jackson Hole Snow Observations • This site is meant to be a public forum in which backcountry users can share observations of avalanche activity and snow-pack conditions. By recording snow and avalanche Information , we hope to create a database that will allow users to track weak layers and avalanche cycles throughout the year. In addition, the Weather Summary can help you track changes to the snow-pack as they occur. If you find value in viewing these observations, please help perpetuate the site by contributing notes from your next tour. There is no technical standard required for submitting observations, however, we do ask that users adhere to our site guidelines when scoring stability tests.

Rendezvous Ski and Snowboard Tours • Established in 1986, Rendezvous Ski and Snowboard Tours operates three backcountry ski yurts high on the western slope of the Tetons near Jackson Hole and Grand Targhee Ski Resort. Our huts provide access to the Jedediah Smith Wilderness Area and Grand Teton National Park, where over 500 inches of legendary light, dry powder snow falls each winter. A variety of terrain from high mountain ridges and broad, low-angled powder bowls, to the steep and deep combine to make some of the best backcountry ski terrain in the lower 48.

Exum Mountain Guides • Exum offers group and private avalanche training, alpine and nordic ski tours, and ski and snowboard descents of the remarkable mountains of the Teton area. You will gain basic avalanche awareness, improve your skiing and snowboarding technique, and practice the use of avalanche rescue transceivers. Technical skills, such as steep skiing, rock and ice climbing, and rappelling are practiced during ski and snowboard mountaineering trips.

Yellowstone Expedition • Let us show you the finest way to experience a true Yellowstone winter, at a cross-country skier's pace from the Yellowstone Yurt Camp. Join our certified back country ski guides to explore the Yellowstone backcountry. Our multi-day cross-country skiing excursions are based from the comfortable Canyon Skier's "Yurt Camp" located only one half mile from the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Hellroaring Ski Adventures • Hellroaring Ski Adventures will help you create the adventure of a lifetime. Touring, Powder Skiing / Riding, Ski Mountaineering, the Extreme. Let us know what your dreams are and we'll make it happen.

Montana Backcountry Alliance • Montana Backcountry Alliance was formed in 2005 to build an organized community advocating for traditional, human-powered winter recreation. We have commented as a group and individually on forest service management plans, held ski movie premiers, and helped conduct citizen monitoring projects. We intend to build on our success and further strengthen the traditional winter recreation community by advocating for specific non-motorized areas with reasonable access for human-powered recreationists. The motorized lobby is powerful, organized, and well-funded. But we are motivated and dedicated to establishing a strong voice in this important debate. We are also hopelessly addicted to skiing and riding, and will be busy enjoying the wonderful opportunities Montana offers in the winter. Get out and enjoy them too!

Montana Mountaineering Association • Montana Mountaineering Association promotes the values of rock climbing, mountaineering, ice climbing and backcountry skiing by offering a variety of instructional programs. These diverse programs are taught by an incredibly qualified instructors and guides. We offer individual and group instruction in our local mountains around Bozeman Montana with one of our programs extending to the Andes of South America. Our goal is to give prospective alpinists the tools they need venture out on their own, whether it be mountaineering, backcountry skiing, ice climbing, or rock climbing.

Rendezvous Ski and Snowboard Tours • Established in 1986, Rendezvous Ski and Snowboard Tours operates three backcountry ski yurts high on the western slope of the Tetons near Jackson Hole and Grand Targhee Ski Resort. Our huts provide access to the Jedediah Smith Wilderness Area and Grand Teton National Park, where over 500 inches of legendary light, dry powder snow falls each winter. A variety of terrain from high mountain ridges and broad, low-angled powder bowls, to the steep and deep combine to make some of the best backcountry ski terrain in the lower 48.

Exum Mountain Guides • Exum offers group and private avalanche training, alpine and nordic ski tours, and ski and snowboard descents of the remarkable mountains of the Teton area. You will gain basic avalanche awareness, improve your skiing and snowboarding technique, and practice the use of avalanche rescue transceivers. Technical skills, such as steep skiing, rock and ice climbing, and rappelling are practiced during ski and snowboard mountaineering trips.

Trans Teton Ski Tour
By Matt Hart • Today was the final day of my AMGA Ski Guiding course. The last two days we spent crossing the Teton mountain range. This trip was amazing. Sunday morning we started the tour at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Our group of eight students and two instructors were on our way up the tram a half hour before it opens at 9am. It had snowed three inches the night before and it was extremely windy. I could feel the cumulative concern in the tram that morning. I think we all felt a bit worried as we heard the gusts at the top of the tram were reaching 50 mph and blowing the tram all over the place. It felt like an elevator to the arctic as we got off the tram at the top of Rendezvous... ding. We headed South West out of the ski area boundary above Cody bowl. After a short traverse we had to climb the top of Cody Mountain, it was a rocky and snowy face so we threw our skis on our packs and scrambled up.

From here Hans was our lead guide and he did a great job of getting us some pretty amazing knee deep powder turns in a lightly gladed area (here is a video of me skiing it). The weather was such that we were the only ones in the backcountry and on my own I would not have chosen a two day trans Teton trip in a snow storm and 50 mph winds. Our trip had started out pretty well. We all sort of helped navigate to our traverse. We traveled North West across the Middle and South Fork of Granite Creek and up a little ridge just before the climb to Housetop Mountain.

We had planned on camping around Housetop at 10,537 feet but that with the low visibility and high winds we decided to stop short. We camped below the ridge in a safe batch of trees. Here we ---------------------------->More

Winter in the Snow; Tenting and Telemarking in the Tetons
By David Noland • LEANING wearily on our ski poles, the three of us stood at the crest of Beard Mountain, a smooth, rolling, 10,500-foot summit in Wyoming's Jedediah Smith Wilderness. My friend Ted Buhl, an accomplished back-country skier, grinned like a madman in anticipation of a dream run: vast expanses of feathery, untracked, knee-deep powder and a brilliant blue sky with the jagged peaks of the Grand Teton Range as a backdrop. Best of all, there was not another human being within miles -- a just reward for the grueling four-hour climb on skis from our camp in the valley below.

I, on the other hand, could manage only a tentative smile. A novice back-country skier, I was a long way from the gentle, packed cross-country ski trails I'd happily shuffled along for years near my Hudson Valley home. I suspected that my usual technique to avoid oncoming trees -- fall down as quickly as possible -- might not suffice here. "Just stay crouched and bounce up and down a little to get a feel for the powder," said our guide, Glenn Vitucci. "You'll be fine."

Perhaps he was right. An expert skier, naturalist and an 11-year veteran of the Teton back country, Glenn had inspired confidence from our first meeting three days earlier----------------------------------> more

A Sawtooth Scene
by Jonah Cantor • There was this one picture that kept appearing on the tabletop throughout the months that I lived at Johnny’s place. A mountain with two summits dominated the 8x10. An impressive hatchet-split feature tore the saw-toothed summit towers in two. To this, Johnny would point and proclaim with reverence, “The Heyburn Couloir.”

It was his dream hatched during an internship two years before hauling sleds, stocking huts and skiing on the clock for Sun Valley Trekking (SVT), a backcountry hut and yurt operation in the Sawtooths and neighboring ranges of Idaho’s Sun Valley. The previous season, while recovering from a serious climbing accident, skiing the Heyburn had become an obsession.------------------------> More

Cowboy Corn - old boys and outlaws take on the Tetons
By Adam Howard • Piloting the land ship at a comfortable 60 miles per hour up the Wilson, Wyoming side of Teton Pass, Peter belts out a few lines of the Ian Tyson country track playing in the tape deck, while his hired man Patrick Gilroy points out some of his winter's skiing exploits on folds of earth south of the road. It's the first week of June and ample late season snow still lays in the shadows and wherever cornices grew big in winter. Both men are just back from a three-week hold up in a tent by extreme cold on Alaska's Denali, and I sense they're ready to cut loose.

  "What's cool about skiing in June," Peter says as he reaches to turn down the volume, "is when you're not skiing you're hanging out in your shorts."   He mashes his sneakered foot on the accelerator to get around a slow moving camper with Missouri plates and with that we crest over the pass and are now plunging toward Idaho.   "Plus," he adds. "With a fast horse you're pretty close to the bar if you need to re-supply." -----------------------------------> More

Chronology of North American Ski Mountaineering and Backcountry Skiing
By Louis Dawson • This chronology is always being improved and updated. Note that the focus here is ski mountaineering and backcountry skiing that involves climbing mountains and skiing down them. While less emphasis is placed on ski traverses, these are considered as well, provided such traverses cover mountain terrain and involve climbs and descents as an integral part of the route (other than ski traverses included for context). One of the most important milestones in this list of events is the first time a particular mountain is skied down from the exact summit or near. While many mountains in North America were explored by people on skis in the early 1900s, the actual event of a person climbing to the top and skiing back down may have occurred at a date later than the first ski exploration. I've attempted to note both events when possible. My picks for the most important ski mountaineering events in North America are marked with a yellow background. -------------------> More

Avalanche - Highland Bowl, Colorado
By Louis Dawson • Aspen, Colorado. For myself and John "Izo" Isaacs, the morning of February 19, 1982 dawned clear, calm and filled with excitement. At 3:30 AM we strapped climbing skins to our skis, and began the long climb via the Highlands Ski Area to the summit of Highlands Peak. We intended to ski Highland Bowl, the stupendous amphitheater formed by the north and south ridges of the peak. Hundreds of avalanches fall here each winter. Most of these grind to a halt on the low angled "flats" midway between the summit and valley. But during heavy winters, monster slides roar almost a vertical mile to the valley floor.
Back in 1982, Highlands Bowl was closed by law to most skiers (it is now part of the ski area's "extreme" terrain). The ski-patrol would take the occasional guided tour, but neither Izo nor I cared to deal with red tape, nor have someone tell us where to ski. ------------------------------------> More

Safety on steep snow - Ice ax, crampons, and self arrest technique
By Lou Dawson • Climbers and skiers die every year from sliding falls on snow. Thus, no discussion of safe snow climbing and steep skiing would be complete without a review of the self arrest -- the time honored method for stopping such falls.
For snow climbers and mountain skiers the self arrest has four forms. These depend on gear. While climbing, you'll need to know how to self arrest with your ice ax. While skiing, you can use specialized self arrest grips on your ski poles. These are less effective than an ice axe, yet skiing while holding an ice ax is dangerous and awkward, so arrest grips can be useful. If you have ski poles, but no arrest grips or ice ax, you can perform a self arrest with your pole tips. This is awkward and ineffective. Lastly, if you have nothing, you can try to arrest with your hands and boot toes. This is bogus -- but good to practice so you know why you need a tool for an effective arrest.------------------------------> More