Dean you must, must, must get to Grand Targhee. Cliff city. Wonderful snow. Looks like amazing cliffs from very small size to you'll die without some sort of deployable. Can't say we did any.
@FairToMiddlin ,
@Chris Geib , and i went out an access at the top of the Sacagawea lift. Our intent was to ski some woods before the cliffs. We go past the pole with a little ( tiny!) "Cliff" sign. Of course we figured that was the other spot, not where we're going! We followed some tracks out in the powder. (Did I mention Targhee has incredible powder??)
Well we kept going trying to see below but couldn't. Just the snow stopping and tops of trees. Was it just steep or a cliff? I should mention this wasn't totally an unknown. You could see the ridge we were on from the trail we cane down on from the other mountain. But at some point the cliffs started.
So we start slowing and stopped trying to figure it out. You couldn't tell, but we had a bad feeling. So we turned around and traversed out even though it involved some walking. Turned out from later scoping the cliff was 10-15ft into a very steep landing.
Don't have a good photo, but this is looking out the back of Targhee. Grand Teton is the peak. Upper right, if you zoom in you see tracks from cat skiers or hikers. That ridge though, goes to the rightfor quite a ways.just to the right if the tracks are big cliffs. They get progressivly smaller. That's the ridge we went out on.
I've heard they do some extreme comps on that ridge.
Here's a map. The ridge in question is that shaded cross hatched area.
Just a note for people going to Targhee. Do not duck a rope unless your absolutely sure what you're getting into. Some are quite close to the point of no return free fall. And cornices break. Someone last season was killed ducking a rope near the top to take photos.
A few weeks before we were there in March 2015, an Australian was taking photos on the long traverse trail. (Headwall traverse I think) It turned out he was actually inside the rope and not taking photos but sitting. The cornice broke and he fell over a 250 ft cliff with the slide. He survived and was rescued by helicopter. Ironically the cliff was called the Aussie Drop.
http://www.tetongravity.com/story/s...ls-off-250-foot-cliff-trying-to-take-photo-of
Targhee is a gorgeous area. Simple too. Everyone loved it, some electing two days there instead of one over Jackson. The snow is key - they get near Utah levels of snow. More than Jackson. Outside of the cliffs they don't have the steeps of Jackson or the difficulty. So nice though.
