Jackson and race scouting

We came through Jackson on our way around to Pinedale, and it was a nice place to spend a few hours.  Jackson Hole Roasters was a favorite, and I was hoping our pre-race bus ride would stop there on the way to the starting line, but no such luck.  Ah well, I guess we just have to go back sometime.

Our first pass through town was before the race outline was released, so I played around with some guesses like biking on the nice paths through town.  One particularly excellent mural in one of the bike path tunnels:

Maybe we would packraft on Flat Creek?

Someone seems to think it's feasible to put a boat on the creek:

Or maybe that was just part of a film shoot of some type:

Maybe a climb up Snow King Mountain?  It's a nice place for a hike, with good view of town and the Tetons in the background:

Lovely trail:

This is about as close as I came to getting a relevant shot that day - a view to the south, toward the mountains we would hike during the race:

Wildflowers at the top of Snow King:

Ah the Tetons, so beautiful:

Aspens, yay!

Marveling at the bear spray for sale at the grocery store check-out line - we aren't in Texas anymore, Toto:

A random shot of me testing out my mosquito head net while biking up in the hills - yep, this should work (and again, yay for not needing it during Cowboy Tough):

Our second trip back to Jackson was much more productive.  It happened to coincide with the release of the race course outline, so I had some great info to work from.  The first leg was to be a 3-mile loop starting from the Jackson Hole Tram and returning to the same spot.  Excellent!  I hiked up the Wildflower Trail for a look around:

Looks like the perfect place for a starting line vantage point for the race photographers:

The trails around the ski area are great for summer hiking, very pretty and lots of flowers:

And great views of the valley (and the tram):

More wildflowers:

By this point I was further away than the race would probably send us, but it was interesting finding this fellow near the trail:

Leg 2 would be 7 miles on a paved trail to a river put-in, so it was obvious we'd be running beside Moose Wilson Road to the put-in at the Snake River.  I rode down it on my bike just for kicks.

Much more interesting was the Snake River itself - as soon as I figured out that we'd be packrafting 19 miles down the Snake, I found a way to check it out firsthand.  Many rafting companies in Jackson offer floats on a large section of our race course (the first 13 miles), and it took only a couple calls to get onto one of the trips on short notice.

Practicing for the pre-race bus ride  :)

Setting up at the put-in:

More gorgeous Teton views - and it was good we saw it in July, because by August the forest fire smoke from Montana had started to obscure the purple mountain majesty:

I took a camera down the river, asked a bunch of questions of the guide, and tried my level best to remember as much of it as I could.

Our excellent river guide on the float raft:

The river moves fast, but there weren't too many obstacles or things that worried me.  A few fun standing waves here and there:

More views of the mountains behind us:

Occasional strainers that were almost always visible with plenty of time and room to avoid them:

I figured the biggest challenge was avoiding the shallow parts that would drag the rafts over rocks and slow us down.  There are tons of braids/splits in the river, and if you pick the lesser path you could easily get hung up on something like this:

I took a gazillion photos so I could study pictures of all the splits to try to remember enough to pick the most efficient routes during the race.

Following the lead raft down the main river channel:

A bald eagle, yay!  We saw several on trees along the banks.  I never get tired of this:

Sometimes when two channels came back together, one was higher than the other and the water would drop back down in little waterfalls, pretty cool even though I didn't get a decent photo of it.

Further down there were sets of decent-size standing waves - those could be fun and maybe even slightly "interesting" in a smaller packraft.

Video from the float:



We took out at the next bridge, with the guide promising that the following section (the last few miles of this section of the race) are the easiest of the whole river - no braids, no major waves, just nice moving water.  Excellent.  I felt a lot better about this part of the race, knowing that the river should be pretty straightforward.

We found the probable trailhead for the start of the first big trek.  I would have loved to do some of that section beforehand, but it was long and remote, and we had a bike box to build.  Plus, it's just a trail from here to the other side of the mountains, how hard could that be?  (!)

We played around with possibilities for the river take-out, with John betting on river left, while I liked the looks of this spot on river right.  It was accessible from a large parking lot up top, and although it looks wavy, there's a big eddy at the shoreline just past here:

Over there is the likely trekking trailhead location:

The steep stairs up to the parking lot - except this would have been easy compared to what the race ended up making us do.  Oh well, I can't get everything right.

Scouting the Hoback Market where maybe we could stock up before the trek?  Again, this was assuming an exit on river right.  Bathrooms, colds drinks, clean water for the Camelbaks, sure would have been nice...

Nice elk sculpture outside the market:

Fun first scouting days!  It was neat having so much pre-race info and the time to check things out in person beforehand, quite the luxury.  And quite enjoyable for me.