The Run of the Bowls, Teton Pass, WY

This took place on Thursday, the fourth day of the week of epic skiing which included Chute the Moon, Albright, Wimpy's Ridge, Snow King, and the Pyramid. 

My legs were very tired, but there was another tour to squeeze in before the low pressure would swing through this afternoon. The avalanche danger had dropped to its lowest point of the season, so the tour would need to take advantage of this.

The temperature at home in the morning was –17. At 9:30, I was riding up the Pass in the back of a truck with Evan.  Peter and Loren were not far behind. It gave me satisfaction to repeatedly hear from Evan, “It’s fucking cold today!” because he grew up here. But on the top of the pass, above the fog below, the sun was warm and it was windless. A beautiful day of inversion.  As Evan predicted, it was nearly 25 degrees up top.

We hiked up Glory and skied down the Chicken Scratch chutes to the amphitheater below, affording us beautiful views of Little Tuckerman's. Then it was a quick skin up to the shoulder of Unskiabowl. I had never had a good look at this bowl but knew it was highly unskiable due to the numerous cliff bands. We had to find a line that we could see all the way down so we knew it wouldn’t be cliffed out. Evan and I went down a spectacular steep chute, one of two that cut through the rock face. And we made ourselves remember to come back for the one next to it. 

Peter, who operates on impulse instead of foresight and judgement, had a different method of skiing the mountain, as he had on Chicken Scratch before.  He and Loren, who is new to backcountry skiing, had gone further up the ridge and further from the good routes, but managed to pick their way through. 

Then the four of us skinned up the ridge that connects to the Great White Hump, boot packing the top, exposed section, and skiing the north face of Horseshoe Bowl.  Peter did not join us on the bootpack, deciding it would be easier to just skin up and across the huge avalanche face.  As he said afterwards, "Well, I'm alive so I guess it was OK."  I like to tell him he has no prefrontal cortex, the neurological center for rationality in the brain.

The whole day, we just went down a bowl, up to the next, down again, up, and down again.  A hell of a fine tour, skiing the steep lines when they’re safe, the snow is good, and the skies sunny.

Our plan was to ski the Wilson Faces down to a car we had dropped off below, but the day was getting dark and the ominous low-pressure system was sweeping in, so we skied out of Phillips Canyon and back to Trail Creek again, where it was damn cold.

The first batch of bowls

The Second batch of Bowls

Chicken Scratch Chutes

Evan admiring his line, Little Tuckerman's in background

Evan's lawn dart in Unskiabowl

Horseshoe Bowl

Chute the Moon, Jackson WY

When three young men are in the best shape of their lives and can climb to the high mountains to ski in solitude, great things can be done. We can now participate in the highest form of winter sport. We had been building up the strength of our legs all winter so we could put on a pack and skin 6,000 feet in a day in Grand Teton National Park.

It had snowed the past 42 out of 49 days and now the skies cleared and the avalanche danger lowered. It was a weekday and we were the first ones to pull into the parking lot at the Death Canyon trailhead. Being with Tim Barker and Rob Backlund, two guys in incredible shape, I was worried I would not be able to keep up on the skin track. I had not been out skiing more than a couple times a week lately because I was helping run the Alpinist Film Festival, which just ended over the weekend. I had also been lacking adequate sleep for the past week.

The skin to Mavericks was cold. The temperature was –15 and Rob, who always says you should start cold, was just wearing his capilene shirt. He later said he was on the verge of vomiting because he was so cold. I’ve been getting softer as time goes by and I wore a down jacket with the hood and face shield up, so it was just my fingers feeling the cold. When we got into the sun, it made a world of difference. We entered the wide meadow below Mavericks and all the white jagged mountains were sharply contrasted by the cloudless blue sky. We stopped and stared: Death Canyon, Albright, Static, Buck, Peak 10,696, the Grand. It was going to be quite a day.

We continued on, and my legs were a little sluggish from lapping Wimpy’s ridge yesterday. I had also been a bit “backed up” for a number of days because I’ve been too busy to drink my Italian pressed coffee in the mornings. But near the top of Mavericks, about 3,000 feet above the valley with spectacular views of the mountains, we stopped for a bite to eat, and I felt a rumbling, a rumbling I dreaded out in the mountains.

I climbed up to a flat part of the cornice and had an epiphany. I punched a hole in the snow with my boot, and laid my skis with the skins, snowless, parallel above it, making quite a pleasant toilet seat, and, well, enjoyed the view from my high mountain perch for half an hour, occasionally giving my two cents in the conversation below. The wind-packed cornice snow next to the toilet broke into very useful tools. Afterwards, I exclaimed, “I feel five years younger!” and was never again tired on the tour.

We kept going higher; when we had to go near avalanche terrain we went one at a time. Then we boot-packed straight uphill when we had to stay on the fine edge between avalanche terrains, and got to the top of Chute the Moon, a big north facing couloir on Peak 10,696. The views from the top were again spectacular. The chute provided an excellent view of Avalanche Canyon and the Grand Teton.

We ate some more, changed into downhill mode, and ski-cut the couloir, zigzagging across the top, jumping on our skis. Rob and Tim had already skied it before a few weeks ago, and wanted to give me the honors of skiing it first after they both ski cut it, which was a mistake. Only one person should ski cut it at a time.

It was an honor of mixed value: nothing rivals skiing such an aesthetic line when it’s a blank slate. But few things are as dangerous too. The first person is most likely to trigger the avalanche. So I was apprehensive, but shot down the couloir, hugging the left side to keep room for my mates to have a partially blank slate before them, and also for better positioning in case an avalanche struck. After half a dozen turns, I knew the snow felt good, it was safe to ski and it was very good. I could relax and turn.

At the bottom I found a place to take pictures from and yelled up that I was ready. The next five minutes, my gloveless hand was getting incredibly cold snapping pictures in the shadow. Then we headed back uphill to the notch between Buck Mountain and Peak 10,696, where the sun was. We ate some more, then changed back into downhill mode, and had a great 4,000 foot run down Stewart’s Draw to the Wimpy’s trail.

Except for the skin up Mavericks, we never saw another track. And the whole day we never saw another person. We were completely alone up there, exploring the wide mountains. Never before had we enjoyed such clear, sunny weather with such miraculous mountains, perfect skiing conditions, with the best of company, all to ourselves. It was agreed that it was the best ski tour of our lives.

Back at the car, we slipped our down booties back on and drove to Dornan’s for our customary chocolate milk and cookies, looking back up at those huge, rugged Tetons from the front porch. “Yes, it’s quite a day.”

In a Canuck accent: "The root goes oot n aroond da peek dere."