skistories: 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.”