 Poster: A snowHead
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The Snowheads community has been almost completely silent about Grand Targhee, so here's something to redress the balance based on my one-day visit earlier today.
Location
Targhee is the ultimate in-the-middle-of-nowhere ski resort. Near Wyoming's western border with Idaho, it's a stunning 75 minute drive across the Teton pass from Jackson airport. The nearest town Driggs, is a 25 minute drive away, and travel from the UK needs at least two flights in each direction.
The Resort
There's not really much of a resort in the conventional sense of the word. A couple of small lodgings, three eating places, a shop or two, a miniature ski school and, er, that's it. Definitely not a place for party animals.
We had lunch in the Snorkels delicatessen. It was pleasant and, by Jackson standards, reasonably priced. It offered the usual North American fare of wraps, sandwiches, chilli and soup.
Ski infrastructure
Three main lifts plus a beginner chair provide the uplift, although cat skiing is also available. Impressively for such a small resort, two of the lifts are high-speed detachable quads. The third is a seemingly ancient fixed-grip double chair with no safety barrier or side rails. Don't fall asleep riding it!
The slopes
Overview
The lift-served terrain rises a fairly gentle 2,212 vertical feet to 9,862 feet and covers around 2,000 acres. That makes Targhee a smallish resort which is definitely overshadowed in British eyes by its neighbour, the much larger, more glamorous and somewhat more accessible Jackson Hole.
Targhee's unique attributes are twofold: it is blessed with an extraordinary snowfall record (500 inches - yes, seriously - per year), and its isolation means that its slopes are marvellously quiet. Additionally, many of the slopes face North or East, so the rapid deterioration seen in Jackson when the sun shines doesn't apply here.
The lift-served terrain is reasonably gentle, and can mostly be surveyed from one or other of the chairlifts. There is little here that will set the pulse racing for lovers of seriously gnarly skiing.
In common with most North American resorts, the entire mountain is avalanche controlled, patrolled and open for skiing. The terrain includes a mixture of immaculately groomed runs of varying pitches, gentle bowls, open hillsides and extensive gladed areas with varying forest density.
Targhee's impeccable snow record and low skier density make it a fantastic destination for powder lovers. We arrived 24 hours after a light snowfall (3 inches in Jackson but somewhat more in Targhee) and found ample opportunity to ski fresh and lightly-tracked powder that was quite literally over our knees in many places. The snow met every stereotype of the American West, being extraordinarily dry and light. That was probably due to the low temperatures we saw: 0F when we started skiing, rising to 12F in the midday sun.
Beginners
I'm not a beginner so I'm not really qualified to comment. The resort seems to have a beginner infrastructure, but I'm not sure why any UK-based skier would travel this far to learn the sport.
Intermediates
Targhee is a brilliant destination for building intermediate confidence and establishing a firm skills base for moving beyond the intermediate plateau.
Maybe conditions were favourable today, but the piste grooming was to the highest standard that I have ever experienced. I didn't encounter any groomed trails that had any hint of iciness or anything more than superficial surface bumping, even at the very end of the day. The trails were almost completely deserted, so it's difficult to imagine a better place to get high-speed piste-blasting kicks.
Intermediates will also want to explore Targhee's legendary powder. Few of the slopes are particularly steep, so this is definitely a prime destination for anyone wanting to learn the basics of skiing in deep, deep, light, fluffy, forgiving powder. Despite the resort's small size, an ambitious intermediate who is keen to move beyond accumulating miles on piste motorways could easily lose themselves for a week or more here.
Experts
Targhee has little to obviously offer experts. The small number of double blacks are either short or not particularly challenging, and there is only one rock-band of any size to attract those drawn to chutes and couloirs. But even the most gnarly of experts needs a few days off, and the quality and extent of the available powder skiing more than makes up for this shortfall.
We're in Jackson for the advanced terrain, but we loved Targhee. I wouldn't want to spend more than a couple of consecutive days there, though.
Conclusion
If we're back in Jackson (we probably will be), we'll return to Targhee - and probably for two days next time rather than just one. We'll pick our time carefully, though, by watching the weather forecast and making sure we arrive on a powder day.
In my view, you'd be mad to visit Jackson but fail to take in a day at Targhee. If you're an intermediate, you'd probably enjoy Targhee more than Jackson - but Jackson probably isn't on your resort shortlist if you're a UK-based intermediate skier.
I'll try to post some photos when I return to the UK.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Jonny Jones, had a good day myself there many years ago, but it's nickname of Grand Foggy is well deserved!! The snow means vis ain't great at the top!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Had a couple of days there at New Year, escaping the touron crowds and limited openings at JHMR. I had 2 powder days and enjoyed the inside of a ping pong ball effect first run off the top. Never has a man skied an unfamiliar area so randomly and badly with more than one instance of clinging to a tree for a reassurance of vertical. Struck me as very like Whitefish/Big Mountain in setting/aspect, terrain and even the drive up, the sort of place the US does really well and completely different to a mega-resort. Locals were very friendly with a lot less of the bro-brah tude evident in JH. Cat skiing did look like a total waste of money.
Driving over the pass in snow pretty good test of bottle.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Jonny Jones, Thanks, interesting report. I may get over to Jackson and this was on the to do list if only to see what its like for a day.
Will deffinately watch the weather before I go though. 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Jonny Jones, Thanks, interesting report. I may get over to Jackson and this was on the to do list if only to see what its like for a day.
Will deffinitely watch the weather before I go though.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Jonny Jones, Thanks, interesting report. I may get over to Jackson and this was on the to do list if only to see what its like for a day.
Will deffinitely watch the weather before I go though.
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A few photos from my trip. They're not the best as I didn't take a camera and relied on my phone, and because the skiing was too good to faff around taking pictures.
First is a shot of the typical Targhee terrain:
This was a mid-morning shot taken during February half term, and the emptiness of the slopes and impeccable grooming was typical of the whole day. Apart from the piste (this was an easy Blue Square run), you were free to ski anywhere through the trees, and the powder just got deeper the further you explored into the glade. This was 24 hours after the last snowfall, so things were pretty tracked out by Targhee's standards.
This next shot shows the same slope, but you can also see the remains of a second powder field to looker's right. And you can enjoy the museum-piece chairlift with no safety barriers, even on the sides of the chair.
The final picture shows the terrain at the top of the Dreamcatcher fast quad. Again, the entire terrain is skiable, the snow conditions were fantastic, and the punters didn't seem to have turned up in any significant numbers.
The best skiing was on the other side of the mountain, but I didn't stop to take photos. The terrain was similar to the photos shown here, but much more powder remained undisturbed - literally up to my knees in places. If you're looking to ski the lightest, most abundant powder that you're ever likely to encounter, Grand Targhee should definitely be on your shortlist.
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