I plan on writing at least one and probably two more articles on varmint hunting over the next two months. I have three upcoming varmint hunts scheduled in Texas and I don’t know how many here in Idaho. So if I wait to write one until after those hunts and just try to do one, it’d be a small book. I’d have to write a how-to segment, which would be a whole article and then who knows what is going to happen on the hunts. Surely two to three articles will pop out of those.

From when varmint hunting first started happening in a semi-organized fashion more than 55 years ago up until now there has been a ton of knowledge gained as well as gimmicks and gear to use. Back then we had an old wood Thomas dying rabbit call. You’d call for a few seconds and then wait five-minutes and then repeat.

Decades later we were told to call non-stop and more aggressively. Then suddenly a cult-like following popped up. It seems like everyone now breaks off on their own tangent and becomes super specialized. This is true in all outdoor fields. Bowfishermen buy $40,000 boats decked out with night lights and bowfish nearly year-round. I’ve got fly-fishing buddies that flyfish 24/7 and varmint hunters dedicate their whole winter to varmint hunting.

I guess it kinda makes sense. Outdoorsmen go so overboard in buying gear now. You can’t hardly rationalize spending $20,000 to $40,000 on a hobby and only doing it one week per year nor can you afford to spend that much on multiple hobbies so maybe it’s because of our spending habits that we end up being so focused and specialized on one tangent?

Getting into varmint hunting isn’t super expensive but to be successful it does help to have some special gear. Before I get into it, though, don’t quit reading this article if you’re a kid on a paperboy’s salary. You can varmint hunt with just your deer rifle and a hand call and still be successful.

OK, now let’s get into the big-boy toys! I’ll list out some items that I’ve either tested or am about to test.

CALLS: My old electronic call is falling apart, so I just ordered a Primos Boss Dogg. You can set it 200 yards away (I usually only put my speaker not over 40-yards from me) and electronically operate it. It also comes with an electronic wiggling decoy which can be set up to 30 yards from the speaker.

DECOYS: When varmint hunting, you’ll be running gunning and moving a lot so I use Montana Decoys’ Mojo Coyote and rabbit.

BLINDS: You can hide behind brush or along a fence-line but you won’t always have something to hide behind at every spot where you want to call. So carry a piece of camo burlap to lay over some brush. Or better yet, something that I really like are the Ameristep Throwdown blinds. They don’t even weigh 2 pounds and collapse into a small unit and are easy to carry.

SCENTS: You can justify using two types of scents. One to cover your scent and then an attractant scent of some kind-like a coyote in heat scent. So it’s smart to use an attractant scent and a cover scent.

GUNS: I just ordered a Mossberg Patriot Predator 6.5 Creedmoor rifle. I got the 6.5 because on the Texas hunts I’m also going to be hunting hogs and axis deer.

If you’re strictly going to be coyote hunting, the .223 ARs are popular for faster follow-up shots. But last winter my brother-in-law called in three coyotes at once and dropped all three with his old bolt action rifle. Bolt actions are not obsolete. And don’t forget your trusty old shotgun. If there are two or more hunters, I always have one carry a shotgun. Forty percent of my coyotes are within shotgun range.

I carry my Mossberg Pro Series 930 Waterfowler so I can rap off shots fast.

AMMO: Like with all hunting, use good ammo. I’ve had good luck on performance and for sure on accuracy with Hornaday ammo. Experiment to see what shoots good in your rifle. If you’re using a shotgun use some of the modern coyote loads.

CAMO: Wear camo according to your environment. Also wear a face net to cover your shining face and for sure gloves. Our hands are the source of 80 percent of our movement, so even if you just wear green wool Army gloves it’s better than nothing.

KNIVES: You might as well skin your varmints and sell the hides to pick up a little gas money. I could write a book on which knife to use. Here’s a couple of good choices. Knives of Alaska Cub Bear is a handy little knife to carry along or if you want a bigger skinning knife check out their Elk Hunter.

More to come soon.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.

POCATELLO — A mountain lion was killed after it fatally attacked a dog near Pocatello on Wednesday morning.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game, in conjunction with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services division, responded to a call Wednesday afternoon from a woman who resides on Buckskin Road just outside of Pocatello.

This full article is available on our website for subscribers only.

Even if you know the terrain, the avalanche danger throughout Northern Utah and into Southeastern Idaho is high, and forecasters are encouraging those without the proper training to stay off slopes.

Toby Weed, a forecaster with the Utah Avalanche Center, said the current snowpack throughout the region is unstable. Numerous avalanches have been reported after the recent storms.

“Everyone wants to get on the ski slopes, you want to avoid the slopes and especially stay out from under them,” Weed said. “If you don’t have the terrain knowledge, just stay away.”

Since Dec. 23, five avalanche observations have been reported in the Logan area through the Utah Avalanche Center website. Weed said one of those avalanches was nearly fatal.

On Tuesday in the Boss Canyon area of Franklin Basin, a party of snowmobilers triggered a slide that carried one of the members away, burying him and pinning him against a tree. While Weed said he’s not clear on all the details, the snowmobiler was either fully or mostly buried, and it took the party 45 minutes to dig him out.

“He was not injured, although it was a really nasty close call,” Weed added.

Photos of the incident published on the UAC website show the heavily treed where the avalanche occurred. Two of the photos show other riders working to remove the trapped snowmobiler from the tree well.

Weed said another incident took place on Tuesday at the popular Rodeo Grounds area near Logan Peak. The snowmobile tracks show that the avalanche was triggered from below. Weed said it’s not always the snow beneath you that slides when you set off an avalanche.

“You can trigger them across an area,” Weed said. “It can be from below or a long distance away.”

The Rodeo Grounds slide was estimated to be nearly 60 feet wide and approximately a foot deep and was situated on the west side of “Prov Lake” near an elevation of about 9,400 feet.

Most slides are “slab avalanches,” where a weak layer of snow breaks under the weight of newer snow that has fallen or drifted on top. The weak layer and all the snow above it slides downhill, picking up speed extremely quickly.

Experts and recreationists watch out for certain patterns in the weather and in the snowpack’s structure itself to predict avalanche danger.

“There is really bad snow structure right now,” Weed said. “The two storms we got over Christmas deposited quite a lot of snow with about 4 inches of water weight. It is now a slab that is heavier and sitting atop weaker snow.”

Weed said the snow stabilizes over time, but the process is so gradual that it is hard for those who aren’t equipped to evaluate the slopes to know where the danger of human-triggered events is still high.

In the daily advisory on the UAC website for the Logan area mountains, Weed has placed the avalanche danger in the “Considerable” range, which indicates that human-triggered avalanches are likely.

“All the ones we see in the next couple of days will be triggered by people,” Weed said.

While out evaluating conditions Tuesday, Weed witnessed cracking along a trail in Steep Hollow indicating how unstable the snow is.

“People should look for cracking, which can be about two feet deep. Another thing to watch for is collapsing,”Weed said. “It is hard to hear when you are on a sled, but you can hear and feel the snowpack collapse below you.”

As more storms come through the area and outdoors enthusiasts head into the Bear River Mountains or other areas of the state, Weed cautions recreationists to make sure they are familiar with the terrain and have the proper equipment if tragedy strikes.

Overall, Weed says one of the most important things is to get educated about avalanche danger.

“For lay people it is really hard to judge,”Weed said. “Take an avalanche class to become more savvy.”

A listing of classes and seminars can be found on the UAC website, utahavalanchecenter.org.

Hotel stays inside Yellowstone National Park appear to be up in the early goings of the park’s winter season.

Mike Keller, the general manager of Xanterra’s Yellowstone National Park Lodges, said there were 300 more bookings at the Snow Lodge at Old Faithful in the first 11 days of 2017’s over-snow travel season than in the same time period last year. Over-snow travel began on Dec. 15, making that the first day guests could get to the lodge.

Guests are also taking advantage of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, near the park’s northern entrance, which was closed last winter for renovations.

Keller said the holidays are often the busiest times of the winter season, and it helps that there’s plenty of snow for cross country skiing and other winter activities.

“Some years we don’t have enough snow,” Keller said. “We’ve had a very good winter start this year.”

That good start comes in the last month of a year that has lagged behind 2016 in terms of total visitation and seems likely to end the park’s streak of two consecutive record-breaking years. But visitation has remained well above levels seen just three years ago.

Through the end of November, Yellowstone National Park had counted nearly 4.1 million visits for this year.

It’s the third consecutive year to climb that high, but likely won’t touch last year’s record of 4.25 million visits.

No official visitation numbers for December 2017 are yet available, but recent totals for December have hovered around 20,000.

Although the year won’t set a visitation record, it does signify that the higher visitation numbers may be here to stay. The total number of visits for 2014 was a little more than 3.5 million, at the time the second-busiest year on record. It’s now the fifth-busiest.

When I started hunting in the 1950s, many of the people we hunted with were my dad’s age or friends of my uncles. Since they were born back in the 1920s or earlier, they often hunted with rifles and calibers that most of today’s hunters younger than 55 years old may never have heard of or seen.

The reasons they aren’t used much anymore are because ammunition-makers stopped making ammunition for them, they were considered obsolete as newer calibers were developed, they were never converted from black powder to smokeless powder cartridges, or their ballistic characteristics were similar to more popular cartridges, and newer, more powerful cartridges along with rifles to fire them were developed.

Still, I see some of these old timers from time to time lurking in someone’s gun case, or at the range, hanging on a wall for show, or in Cabela’s stores where collectors can purchase them.

The last time I checked, Olin Corporation was making limited numbers of several lever action rifles such as the Model 76, and calibers that were originally developed in 1876 or a little after for collectors.

Once the Winchester Model 94 was developed it became the platform for many early calibers that were popular with American hunters.

I thought it might be fun to do a little research and write about several rifles and calibers that I am somewhat familiar with, but never owned with the exception of one.

The .25-35 WCF was introduced by Winchester in 1895 in the model 94, and was probably the first cartridge we would call a “small bore,” to be loaded with smokeless powder in the United States. It was originally a smokeless powder round, as was the .30-30 in spite of the black powder connotations of the hyphenated names.

Both Savage and Marlin used the .25-35 WCF in lever action rifles along with Winchester. Since the 1940s the .25-35 WCF has been missing from the list of factory chamberings in this country. I don’t believe I have seen one in the field since I was in my twenties. However, reloaders can still load for it.

The standard factory load for the .25-35 WCF was a 117 grain jacketed bullet pushed along at 2230 feet per second (fps). That gives it less than 1000 foot pounds(ft. lbs.) of energy at 100 yards.

The .30-40 Krag is one of the more significant cartridges in United States history, and was given to me by my grandfather on my mother’s side when I was about 12 years old. It was the first smokeless powder “small bore” cartridge to be adopted by the U.S. Army when it replaced the .45-70 Government in 1892. It was originally developed for the Krag- Jorgensen bolt action rifle and was carried by U.S. Troops at the battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba.

Thousands of Krags were sold to the public and used to hunt deer, elk, moose and bear. It’s ballistics were roughly similar to a .308 Winchester, but it was loaded with a 220 grain jacketed bullet that provided reasonably deep penetration on most large game.

Unfortunately, I sold mine because I thought it was too long and heavy to carry around the mountains. Now I wish I still had it.

I have written before about the British Lee Enfield .303 which was adopted in 1888 and is still not only popular with many American hunters, but is the current issue rifle of the Arctic Rangers, an Inuit unit that patrols Canada’s vast Artic region and who have an extraordinary ability to detect threats on snow, ice and in bad weather. Most of the members of the Arctic Rangers are decedents of previous Members of the unit and the Lee Enfield .303 rifles have been handed down from father to son.

The Lee Enfield .303 was a bolt action, black powder cartridge converted to cordite in 1892. It has seen duty all over the world in places like Africa, India, Australia, and Canada.

Oddly, The Lee Enfield gained favor in Africa as a big game hunting rifle, even for the largest and most dangerous game.

Today, a 215 grain bullet is pushed out the muzzle of the Lee Enfield .303 using smokeless powder, at 2180 feet per second. Only a 180 grain soft nose is loaded commercially in this country and it is listed at 2460 feet per second.

The .32 Winchester Special, a black powder cartridge which was introduced in 1903 and is exactly as powerful as the .30-30 WCF, no more so and no less so. The .32 Winchester Special will do whatever the .30-30 will do in the same rifles and at the same distances. A 170 grain bullet exits a Model 94 barrel at 2230 feet per second. The .30-30 drives the same bullet out of the model 94 barrel at 2200 feet per second.

The reason the .32 Winchester Special was developed was supposedly because many felt that smokeless powder would never replace black powder in modern firearms. Of all the strange, cockamamie reasons for a caliber’s existence, the 32 Winchester Special has to be the strangest.

The oldest cartridge on this short list is the 38-55 WCF which was developed in 1884 as a black powder cartridge and was one of the original chamberings of the Model 94 lever action. I’m assuming it was changed to a smokeless powder round when it was chambered in the 1894 lever action rifle. It was a little better deer rifle than the .30-30, at least with hand loads. It was originally developed as a Ballard target cartridge and was used in many of the fine match grade single shot rifles of the day.

The 38-55 used a 255 grain bullet that had a muzzle velocity of 1285 feet per second. Various higher velocity factory loadings were offered at different times, one with the same bullet at 1550 feet per second.

The factory loading was dropped in 1970 and resumed in 1983.

The 38-55 WCF was a very accurate cartridge that was popular for quite a long time.

Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He was a member of the faculty of Texas A&M University for 25 years. There he taught orienteering, marksmanship, self-defense, fencing, scuba diving and boxing. He was among the first DPS-certified Texas Concealed Handgun Instructors. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.

2017 turned out to be a good year for the white sturgeon in the middle Snake River. In the section between Bliss Dam and C.J. Strike Reservoir, sturgeon took advantage of the rare, high spring-flows and spawned successfully.

It’s an exciting time because sturgeon might only reproduce successfully every three-to-five years, if that, depending on river flows.

In some sections of the Snake River, white sturgeon face an uncertain future because the habitat and river flows they need to reproduce have significantly changed as the river has been developed.

Sturgeon are found in the Snake River from Twin Falls to Lewiston. That’s a lot of river, but they only reproduce in two sections: below Bliss Dam and in Hells Canyon. The Snake River is one of the most dammed rivers in the country.

Dams provide many benefits, such as irrigation for agriculture, electricity generation and reduced flood risk. But the benefits also come at a cost to migratory fish, including white sturgeon.

Sturgeon thrive in long sections of free-flowing rivers that have a variety of habitats. To reproduce successfully, sturgeon need high spring-flows that cue fish to spawn and clean gravels to protect and incubate the eggs.

Because of these spawning requirements and historic changes to the river habitat, successful spawning usually only happens when there are very high river flows.

In most years, upstream dams capture most of the runoff, so flows in the middle Snake River don’t get high enough for sturgeon to successfully spawn.

But the big 2017 snowpack brought enough water to fill the reservoirs and still deliver big flows needed to clean gravel and help young sturgeon survive.

Idaho Power does most of the sturgeon research in cooperation with Fish and Game in the middle Snake River as part of the company’s license to operate dams and generate power.

In summer 2017, biologists captured newly hatched larval sturgeon as they drifted down the river. While that’s a good sign, finding larval sturgeon doesn’t necessarily mean successful reproduction.

In many years, adult sturgeon spawn, but the tiny larval sturgeon don’t survive unless river conditions are just right. Larval sturgeon are easy food for predators, or may starve if they drift into poor, slack-water habitat.

Surveys during fall showed this healthy new age class of young sturgeon survived and grew fast. By November, these young sturgeon were already 12-inches long, which is incredibly fast growth for a fish less than 6 months old.

Once a sturgeon makes it to this stage, their survival to adulthood is very high, so we expect to see these fish in the river for years, if not decades, to come.

After monitoring sturgeon in the middle Snake River for many years, biologists have a good sense for the recipe that sturgeon need for spawning. River flows of at least 15,000 cubic feet per second below Bliss Dam combined with the right water temperatures in May and June seem to be the ticket.

Unfortunately, this combination is happening less often. Idaho’s weather patterns are changing, and that is affecting the amount of snow and rainfall in the Snake River Basin.

Dams can capture most of the runoff, so the high flows needed for spawning only occur in years with really big snowpacks when runoff produces more water than the dams can hold. These changes mean the high spring flows needed to sustain sturgeon reproduction are happening with less frequency.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Federal officials have launched a two-pronged plan to stop a vicious cycle of rangeland wildfires in a wide swath of sagebrush country in the West that supports cattle ranching, recreation and is home to an imperiled bird.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Friday said it will create an Environmental Impact Statement concerning fuel breaks and another on fuels reduction and restoration for Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, California, Utah and Washington.

The agency said the documents when finished will help speed the process for future landscape-scale projects in the Great Basin by providing a blanket approval for similar areas that will likely just need minor additional environmental reviews to proceed.

“It saves teams from having to do the same kinds of analysis 10, 15, 20 times over the next 20 years,” BLM spokesman Ken Frederick said.

Giant rangeland wildfires in recent decades have destroyed vast areas of sagebrush steppe that support some 350 species of wildlife, including imperiled sage grouse. Experts say the wildfires have mainly been driven by cheatgrass, an invasive species that relies on fire to spread to new areas while killing the native plants, including sagebrush. Once cheatgrass takes over, the land is of little value.

“It’s not sustainable,” said Jonathan Beck, a project manager with the BLM working on the documents. “If we don’t take proactive measures to stop the fire cycle, we’re going to lose the sagebrush that we have out there right now.”

Details of the BLM plans have yet to be worked out. In general, the agency said projects in the plans “would reduce the threat of habitat loss from fires and restore habitat to maintain the rangeland’s productivity and support the western lifestyle.”

The agency is taking public comments through Feb. 20 as it sorts through uncertainties. For example, the agency notes that fuel breaks could become a barrier for small animals that would have no place to hide.

Matt Germino, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said fuel breaks are a paradox because it’s intentionally fragmenting the landscape to avoid the even worse fragmentation that occurs with wildfires.

“Fires, especially large fires, are so unambiguously damaging to wildlife habitat in general — that is the motivating factor for getting these fuel breaks out,” he said. “At this point, it’s really difficult to predict which animal species will benefit and which ones won’t. Sometimes you have to just act in light of the uncertainty.”

He said land managers adapting as they go with new information learned from the efforts will be important for success.

Success has been elusive for federal agencies trying to halt the advance of cheatgrass.

“We’re not winning,” said John Freemuth, a Boise State University environmental policy professor and public lands expert. “We’re holding it in check in some places. This is a long-term commitment. Decades, really.”

Millions of sage grouse, a chicken-sized bird that relies on sagebrush, once roamed the West, but development, livestock grazing and wildfires have reduced the bird’s population to fewer than 500,000. Most of the bird’s habitat — sagebrush steppe — is on land administered by the BLM.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to list the bird under the Endangered Species Act in 2014. But there’s concern that if wildfires destroy enough of the sagebrush steppe that remains, it could again be considered for listing.

“Some of those who want to gut the Endangered Species Act, they’re not always going to be in power,” said Freemuth. “So it’s in the long-term interest of everybody to make progress.”

REXBURG — The Idaho Department of Fish and Game is searching for whoever shot a young moose with an arrow in what authorities are calling an attempted poaching or a malicious wounding.

The moose was found near the Teton Lakes Golf Course in Rexburg on Wednesday with an arrow sticking out of its head.

Fish and Game personnel were able to sedate the moose and remove the arrow.

“Although injured, biologists thought the animal’s chances of survival were best if released on site, rather than transported to another location,” said a Fish and Game news release.

Fish and Game also noted that it appeared the animal had received other recent arrow shots to the head.

Gregg Losinski, regional conservation educator for Idaho Fish and Game, said the wounds appear to have been inflicted recently, according to the Associated Press. Moose hunting season in the area ended Nov. 23.

Conservation officers are asking for the public’s assistance in locating the individual or individuals responsible for the wounding. Anybody with information is asked to call either the Citizens Against Poaching hotline at 1-800-632-5999 or District Conservation Officer Andrew Sorenson at 208-390-0632.

With the Pebble Creek Ski Area’s beginner-level Aspen area set to open next Tuesday, the Inkom resort’s management has announced that ski and snowboard lessons will be held each day from Dec. 26 to 31.

“Christmas Stars” is for kids ages 4 to 12 who are just starting out or already skiing. The $40 cost includes a lift ticket and a lesson from 1 to 3 p.m. More days are available for $35. Rental skis cost $15 per day.

The Start Skiing and Start Boarding program is available for those 10 and up. This one-day ski or snowboard program includes a morning and afternoon group lesson, a beginner area lift ticket and rental equipment for $35.

First-time lessons are taught in the morning and afternoon. For those who would like to improve their current skill level, there is a morning lesson only.

For the morning lesson, check in by 9:15 a.m. to get the equipment, with the lesson starting at 10 a.m. For the afternoon lesson, check in by 12:15 p.m., with the lesson starting at 1 p.m.

Private lessons are also available at $70 for the first person and $25 for each additional person of the same ability level and includes beginner-area lift tickets. Rental skis and snowboards are $15 each.

Family lessons with two instructors are also available.

Reservations are recommended but not required. To make reservations, call Pebble Creek at 208-775-4452. Visit PebbleCreekSkiArea.com for more information about the lessons.

The Aspen area will be open to all skiers and snowboarders from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. starting Tuesday. Resort officials said the upper mountain will open once there is sufficient snow.

On Thursday, Pomerelle Mountain Resort in Albion announced that it will hold a partial opening today.

The mountain’s EZ Rider Triple Chairlift and the beginner-level Magic Carpet area will be open for daily operations from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Pomerelle lodge will also be open, including food service and ski and snowboard rentals. The snow school will offer group lessons at 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Kelly Canyon Ski Area in Ririe opened for the season on Wednesday.

Jessika Jenson of Rigby has never really had to go to work.

Well, she’s had some jobs at Kelly Canyon Ski Resort in Ririe. And she’s a part of the Dick’s Sporting Goods Contenders program that allows U.S. Olympians and Olympic hopefuls with demanding training schedules flexible employment.

But when it comes to the average, 9-to-5, everyday job? Jenson’s been able to skirt that.

“Snowboarding’s my job,” she said.

Jenson is in the midst of competing for a spot on the U.S. Winter Olympic snowboarding team. She first made the squad four years ago, placing 13th in the slopestyle competition in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

The U.S. will send up to four women to the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, to compete in both big air and slopestyle. There are 12 U.S. snowboarders, including Jenson, vying for those spots. Jenson sits in fourth place with two of five Olympic qualifying competitions left to go. The final qualifier is Jan. 17 to 20, and Jenson won’t know for sure if she’s made the Olympic team until two weeks prior to the Olympic Games beginning.

Jenson is straddling the line between confident and nervous as the competition leading up to the Olympics ramps up.

“It’s good to be a little bit nervous so you’re alert and aware,” she said. “We’re in a sport that progresses every single day, and we’re just trying to keep up with the latest tricks. I don’t know if anyone would say they’re 100 percent ready. You’ve just go to go in there knowing you’re putting in the hard work and you deserve to be there.”

Jenson has evolved as a snowboarder since competing in Sochi. She’s stronger, her bag of tricks has grown and she’s learned how to remain calm amongst the mental stresses and pressures that come with competing on some of snowboarding’s biggest stages.

“I think going into this Olympics, it’ll be nice to have the experience of knowing what the pressure’s going to be like and how to stay calm, confident and just live in the moment,” she said.

Jenson’s Olympic aspirations have their roots back in 2002 when the Winter Olympics were hosted in Salt Lake City. Jenson was 11. She remembers watching the women’s snowboard halftime competition on television and becoming inspired.

Jenson, who had taken up snowboarding when she was 10, would slice through the snow at Kelly Canyon. Her grandmother used to work at the resort, and her family would get free passes.

When Jenson was 16, she competed in a local rail jam at Grand Targhee in Alta, Wyoming. A coach out of Jackson Hole saw her riding and invited her to compete in the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association Intermountain Series.

“I showed up there and I didn’t really have much experience hitting jumps, but I figured it out and did pretty well in my age group,” Jenson said.

Jenson ended up competing at nationals that same year, where she placed second. Suddenly, she realized she had the talent necessary to turn snowboarding into something more.

When Jenson was 18, she started riding professionally and competing in pro contests. When she was 20, she made the U.S. women’s snowboarding team. Two years after that, she made the Olympic squad.

It was an honor, Jenson said, to make her first Olympic team. She wants that feeling again.

“It was such a surreal experience the last time around,” she said. “I’d like to have another experience and be able to say I got to the Olympics twice and add another Olympic ring to the hand. I’ve invested a lot in these last four years, and I’ve been trying my best and working my hardest. I would just be another dream of mine to make the next Olympics and have another shot of getting a medal.”