Southern Wind River Winter Adventures: Vianni's Hole

Vianni's Hole
Absaroka Range, Bridger Teton Wilderness
February 11th, 2007

A view from the bottom of Vianni's Hole.

Skinning up near the wilderness boundary.

After a 10 minute, three mile snow machine ride on a freeway of a trail, we parked the machines at the base of a ridge that marked the wilderness. From here we skinned up and started up to the ridge. Our initial plan was to get on the ridge line and drop into National Bowl. The weather was iffy and visibility was low. This was new terrain for both Matt and I, so we kept our options open.

Took us about 10 to 15 minutes to reach the ridgeline, from there we tried to follow it up. Most of it was shrouded in clouds and weather though, making it hard to predict was really was above us.

It wasn't long before we ran out of ridgeline. Since we couldn't see what went up, we decided to go down. We opted to make the plunge into Vianni's Hole and explore the terrain from the bottom.

At 9:30am Matt de-skins and prepares to make the first run of the day. It weren't no small run neither!

Matt follows my line down our first run.

Not too shabby for a breakfast run!

Matt on a small peak above what would be our second of the day.

Once in the hole, we head NE back up the ridge we had dropped, but quite a bit further down towards some good looking slopes.

Matt gets first dibs on the second run.

My turn.

My line down the last half of our second run. Not exactly a short run.

Matt makes his way to the top again for a third run.

Looking down on run number three. I think it was about lunch time (noon).

Considering a cornice drop for lunch.

Mmmmm, mmmm good!

Matt gets his cornice launch of the day on run #3.

All that thumpin' around seemed to be enough to trigger an interesting surface slide on a neighboring slope.

Matt got some similar avi action while hucking the rock to the looker's right of my line. The bigger more obvious slide was to the left of my line. It cracked and settled a bit as I slipped through the rock band, but never went. None the less, it seemed reason enough to snoop out another hill.

A closer look at our avi of the day.

The weather lifted a bit as Matt heads into different area of the hole.

After run three, we headed more NW back towards couloirs and ridges that would drop off into National Bowl.

As the weather lifted a bit, it became apparent just how spectacular the country surrounding us was.

Looking down into Vianni's Hole from about half way up our fourth run of the day. We entered the hole from the low point in the ridge, central in the picture. Our first line was to the looker's left on the ridge above and just left of the cliff band. We put two runs on the peak to the far looker's right after that.

Matt looks back on alot of country while heading up for #4.

I got the honors for number four.

It was even deeper!

Matt follows my line.

A look back on the first half of our fourth run.

For the fifth run we used the same skin track and worked our way around the mountain a little more to top of some awesome tree shots.

Matt starts into the fifth run. Steep and deep!

Matt cruises out of number five, wearing an ear to ear pow grin.

A look back on our fifth runs. I dropped the right one, Matt decorated the middle one. There were many more. Too bad we were out of time.

After our fifth run we started the trek back to the machines. After climbing back up the ridge, out of Vianni's Hole, we still had to drop down to the machines. The drop turned out to be much longer than we expected. It was our sixth run of the day!