Jackson Chronicles – Day 3

Good to see the informative comments from Jackson, as I didn’t have time yesterday to get all the facts about recent local ski descents.

After the race yesterday I stuck around for the whole Blues Traveler concert. Nothing hardcore about that (so don’t think I’m starting a middle aged party life), as they didn’t play very long, and it was over at a family friendly time of about 7:30 PM. Hearing these guys live was a treat. I don’t listen to their music much, but have always appreciated their unique sound and creativity — when they’re live the true essence of what they do comes on strong: Unique layers of style and melody, tempo changes, wild vocals, astonishing solos and of course that wild harmonica playing that’s a band signature. The crowd of locals and tourists looked to be truly appreciating having such a big act show up. I was amused by somewhat unique aspects to the event. Wyoming has liberal open container laws, so the concert carry-in scene was something to behold, we saw a least two beer kegs in the crowd, along with just about every kind of 6 and 12 pack you can think of. The liquor store was maxed, at dinner we saw one guy buying a “case” at the bar, for single bar-beer prices! Crazy. In honor of being in Wyoming (and so I didn’t feel left out) I had a Pabst (Tecate is better).

One of the highlights yesterday was meeting Reiner Gerstner, the “Brand Manager” at Dynafit (read “top guy”) who lives in Munich, Germany. Reiner is about as enthusiastic as a man can get about ski mountaineering, and the gear the makes it happen. I must have spent three hours over the day talking with Reiner about equipment. Dynafit is coming up with some amazing backcountry skiing gear over the next few years. More later, heading up to Teton Pass for a bit of the real thing.