Trans Teton Ski Tour
By Matt Hart • Today was the final day of my AMGA Ski Guiding course. The
last two days we spent crossing the Teton mountain range. This trip was
amazing. Sunday morning we started the tour at the Jackson Hole Mountain
Resort. Our group of eight students and two instructors were on our way
up the tram a half hour before it opens at 9am. It had snowed three inches
the night before and it was extremely windy. I could feel the cumulative
concern in the tram that morning. I think we all felt a bit worried as
we heard the gusts at the top of the tram were reaching 50 mph and blowing
the tram all over the place. It felt like an elevator to the arctic as
we got off the tram at the top of Rendezvous... ding. We headed South West
out of the ski area boundary above Cody bowl. After a short traverse we
had to climb the top of Cody Mountain, it was a rocky and snowy face so
we threw our skis on our packs and scrambled up.
From here Hans was our lead guide and he did a great job
of getting us some pretty amazing knee deep powder turns in a lightly
gladed area (here is a video of me skiing it). The weather was such that
we were the only ones in the backcountry and on my own I would not have
chosen a two day trans Teton trip in a snow storm and 50 mph winds. Our
trip had started out pretty well. We all sort of helped navigate to our
traverse. We traveled North West across the Middle and South Fork of
Granite Creek and up a little ridge just before the climb to Housetop
Mountain.
We had planned on camping around Housetop at 10,537 feet
but that with the low visibility and high winds we decided to stop short.
We camped
below the ridge in a safe batch of trees. Here we ---------------------------->More
Winter in the Snow; Tenting and Telemarking in the Tetons
By David Noland • LEANING wearily on our ski poles, the three of us
stood at the crest of Beard Mountain, a smooth, rolling, 10,500-foot summit
in Wyoming's Jedediah Smith Wilderness. My friend Ted Buhl, an accomplished
back-country skier, grinned like a madman in anticipation of a dream run:
vast expanses of feathery, untracked, knee-deep powder and a brilliant blue
sky with the jagged peaks of the Grand Teton Range as a backdrop. Best of
all, there was not another human being within miles -- a just reward for
the grueling four-hour climb on skis from our camp in the valley below. I,
on the other hand, could manage only a tentative smile. A novice back-country
skier, I was a long way from the gentle, packed
cross-country ski trails
I'd happily shuffled along for years near my Hudson Valley home. I suspected
that my usual technique to avoid oncoming trees -- fall down as quickly
as possible -- might not suffice here. "Just stay crouched and bounce
up and down a little to get a feel for the powder," said our guide,
Glenn Vitucci. "You'll be fine."
Perhaps he was right. An expert skier, naturalist and an
11-year veteran of the Teton back country, Glenn had inspired confidence
from our first meeting
three days earlier----------------------------------> more
A Sawtooth Scene
by Jonah Cantor • There was this one picture that kept appearing on the
tabletop throughout the months that I lived at Johnny’s place. A
mountain with two summits dominated the 8x10. An impressive hatchet-split
feature tore the saw-toothed
summit towers in two. To this, Johnny would point and proclaim with reverence, “The
Heyburn Couloir.” It was his dream hatched during an internship two
years before hauling sleds, stocking huts and skiing on the clock for
Sun Valley Trekking (SVT), a
backcountry hut and yurt operation in the Sawtooths and neighboring ranges
of Idaho’s Sun Valley. The previous season, while recovering from
a serious climbing accident, skiing the Heyburn had become an obsession.------------------------>
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Cowboy Corn - old boys and outlaws take on the Tetons
By Adam Howard • Piloting
the land ship at a comfortable 60 miles per hour up the Wilson, Wyoming side
of Teton Pass, Peter belts out a few lines of the Ian Tyson country track
playing in the tape deck, while his hired man Patrick Gilroy points out some
of his winter's skiing exploits on folds of earth south of the road. It's
the first week of June and ample late season snow still lays in the shadows
and wherever cornices grew big in winter. Both men are just back from a three-week
hold up in a tent by extreme cold on Alaska's Denali, and I sense they're
ready to cut loose.
"What's cool about skiing in June," Peter
says as he reaches to turn down the volume, "is when you're not skiing
you're hanging out in your shorts." He mashes his sneakered
foot on the accelerator to get around a slow moving camper with Missouri
plates and with that we crest
over the pass and are now plunging toward Idaho. "Plus," he
adds. "With a fast horse you're pretty close to the bar if you need
to re-supply." -----------------------------------> More
Chronology of North American Ski Mountaineering and Backcountry
Skiing
By Louis Dawson • This chronology is always being improved and updated.
Note that the focus here is ski mountaineering and backcountry skiing that
involves climbing mountains and skiing down them. While less emphasis is
placed on ski traverses, these are considered as well, provided such traverses
cover mountain terrain and involve climbs and descents as an integral part
of the route (other than ski traverses included for context). One of the
most important milestones in this list of events is the first time a particular
mountain is skied down from the exact summit or near. While many mountains
in North America were explored by people on skis in the early 1900s, the
actual event of a person climbing to the top and skiing back down may have
occurred at a date later than the first ski exploration. I've attempted to
note both events when possible. My picks for the most important ski mountaineering
events in North America are marked with a yellow background. ------------------->
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Avalanche - Highland
Bowl, Colorado
By Louis Dawson • Aspen, Colorado. For myself and John "Izo" Isaacs,
the morning of February 19, 1982 dawned clear, calm and filled with excitement.
At 3:30 AM we strapped climbing skins to our skis, and began the long climb
via the Highlands Ski Area to the summit of Highlands Peak. We intended to
ski Highland Bowl, the stupendous amphitheater formed by the north and south
ridges of the peak. Hundreds of avalanches fall here each winter. Most of
these grind to a halt on the low angled "flats" midway between
the summit and valley. But during heavy winters, monster slides roar almost
a vertical mile to the valley floor.
Back in 1982, Highlands Bowl was closed by law to most skiers (it is now
part of the ski area's "extreme" terrain). The ski-patrol would
take the occasional guided tour, but neither Izo nor I cared to deal with
red tape, nor have someone tell us where to ski. ------------------------------------>
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Safety
on steep snow - Ice ax, crampons, and self arrest
technique
By Lou Dawson • Climbers and skiers die every year from sliding falls on
snow. Thus, no discussion of safe snow climbing and steep skiing would be
complete without a review of the self arrest -- the time honored method for
stopping such falls.
For snow climbers and mountain skiers the self arrest has four forms. These
depend on gear. While climbing, you'll need to know how to self arrest with
your ice ax. While skiing, you can use specialized self arrest grips on your
ski poles. These are less effective than an ice axe, yet skiing while holding
an ice ax is dangerous and awkward, so arrest grips can be useful. If you
have ski poles, but no arrest grips or ice ax, you can perform a self arrest
with your pole tips. This is awkward and ineffective. Lastly, if you have
nothing, you can try to arrest with your hands and boot toes. This is bogus
-- but good to practice so you know why you need a tool for an effective
arrest.------------------------------> More |
