When I lived in Jackson in my early 20's I didn't know squat about ski mountaineering. The stinky, fit gods and the rare goddess in polypro wore their transceivers to the bar and huddled in a tight knot around pitchers of local brew talking about 'The Gnar'. The Gnar, as well as I could figure it, existed in a changeable location somewhere above 10,000 feet and was an alchemist's brew of steepness, inaccessibility, and length of vertical drop guaranteed to create social-status gold among the local hardcores. These backcountry bro-bras held the allure that the drenched hikers with huge packs coming out of the White Mountain trailheads once did to the 8 year old version of me. They had been out there, and were back. Like a plume of cold air that follows you inside on a subzero day, the wildness of the terrain they had travelled over clung to them, followed them into the heated haunts of civilization where lesser mortals chugged beers and talked about how sick they had been in-bounds at the resort.
I was a college dropout with hundred-dollar, 185 GS skis with ancient tele bindings and a crappy job serving soup to keep my Teton Village pass. When I thought of backcountry skiing I thought of avalanches waiting spring-loaded under my boot-packing feet, ready to release at random for reasons still unknown. The upper reaches of the Tetons, the couloirs, the faces, were the realm of mountaineers (*ahem* alpinists), of TGR guys filming and of climbers and guides. The mystery and challenge had me hooked. My second week in the Tetons, knocked down by dry air and a bad chest cold, I hitched to the park and hiked my New Balance sneakers up to the campground in Garnet Canyon. "Hey," I asked someone who looked climber-ish. "How far can I go without ropes?" He smiled and pointed up towards the Grand. "Lower Saddle. That way." I scrambled on into the late morning, crossing patches of snow and using a hand line to ascend to the saddle. Guide huts and the Parks Service structure huddled against the wind. I saw someone in an official-looking puffy with Exum embroidered on the side. "Hey, how far up the Grand can I go without ropes?" "I'd say the Enclosure. It's fourth-class scrambling up until there, and the descent isn't that bad." I thanked him, knowing that I was simply radiating Noob vibes but too excited to care. That, perhaps, is why I have ended up so in love with climbing and being in the mountains: false pride, pretense, whinyness: these all fall away as I look up and ponder how to get there. As I am climbing. As I figure out how to get down. Whatever I must do to spend my time among those peaks, I will do it, and worry about looking good later.
I ended up at the base of the Owen-Spaulding route, contemplating the face. This is where I stop. Kicking around on the summit I found a circle of rocks. Perhaps this was the enclosure he was talking about? I stepped into the middle, wondering if climbers had made the circle. It lacked the practicality of the little windblocks I had seen among the boulders on other mountains. It was old, sort of ceremonial. I sat there watching the sun sparkle off the Snake River threading its way through the flatness of sage and cottonwood below. The wind played its high and lonesome music around the tops of the peaks. All around me, mountains. It was the same feeling that the spring ascent of Mt. Washington long ago had stirred within me. Up here was the right place to be. Later I learned that the Enclosure predated the climbing history of the Tetons. People speculated one of the nomadic Indians that passed through the valley had built it on a vision quest. There was nobody around to tell the straight story to the settlers, though, so it remains unknown.
I told this story to my climbing partner yesterday as we skinned up the ridge between Bradley and Taggart Lakes towards Nez Perce. As we ascended we shared the kind of stories of climbs, skis, ranges, and mishaps with sketchy climbing partners that made me feel safe at my choice to undertake such a trip with a heretofore unknown ski partner. Bojan and I had met Greg in the parking lot after skiing a safe line on Albright Peak. The conditions in the Tetons had changed with a recent warming spell into a spring transitional snowpack, releasing big slides on south and east aspects and carrying world-class athlete Jimmy Chin in a 1200 foot slide down Shadow Peak. Bojan and I had found a bulletproof top section and a challenging, mushy bottom section on Albright, and were dubious about there being any good snow in the Tetons. Greg had just finished the Apocalypse Couloir and was grilling at the trailhead on a mini propane grill and offered us beers. We went to the store in Moose, got some more brats, and rejoined him for an afternoon of huddling against the light spring rain and recounting stories at the tailgates of our cars. What we all did for work didn't even come up until the next ski trip: we were climbers. Such is the beauty of the Tetons. These mountains and what you have done in them will say who you are among women and men, not how you earn your living or what material trappings you have accumulated. We all knew and spoke of with bemused wonderment the climbers who had made the speed traverses and ascents of the range and the times of said ascents. It was a common language. As I skinned with Greg up towards the high couloir I saw that I had finally learned the language of those skiiers in the Brew Pub. But was I worth my mettle? How would I actually do once in the business of The Sliver?
As we skinned up onto the treed ridge that leads to the false summit of Nez Perce we could not help but notice that the light dust on crust powder had deepened to a respectable 4 inches. Huh. Powder. "See that, Greg? Face shots all day." He laughed, poking the snow with his pole. We hadn't expected fresh snow! Our mood grew happier the higher we went and the more powder we found. By the time we stood at the top of the false summit looking down into the bowl below the Sliver we were breaking a skin track through a foot of powder. A strong, g
usty wind and light snow shrouded Nez Perce's rocky upper reaches as we de-skinned and picked our way down to the little couloir that led to the basin below the big one. The snow was still dust on crust. This soon changed as we skinned up to the mouth of the big chute and began our bootpack. Kicked steps turned to a vertical wallow. Ten thousand feet, ten five. Between the breathless business of breaking trail we hid our grins from the tooth-freezing wind: there was so much snow. The couloir was 1500 feet long and never got steeper than 40 degrees. There was a good 18 inches of fresh powder wind-loaded from the west. We took turns plowing upward, finishing our effort with a terse "Spell me," a term Greg had learned for switching leaders when breaking trail from an old-timer in Montana who had climbed ice since the seventies.
When you see the top you think it's close. But it isn't. The couloir doglegged as we struggled on up to the slot between two huge rock walls that disappeared up into the snowy sky. The snow in front of my face was sparkling with the diamonds of weak sunlight. I focused on the unbroken white and my breath as I found firm snow beneath the powder. The altitude was making itself known and breathing just wasn't doing what it usually does for me. In this mindless rhythm I flopped through the last of the drifts and reached a small, sheltered spot at the 20 foot gap between cliffs. A natural wall blocked the wind that howled up out of Garnet Canyon and created a hulking cornice with a delicate curve sculpted by moving air. We ate and clicked in. The moment of truth.
The truth is this: powder skiing is amazing. Thirty feet at its narrowest point and full of untracked fluff. This is a recipe for turns the like of which neither of us had ever experienced. Hours from town and alone in a cradle of stone and wind we entered a soft dance with gravity. In the midst of a strange snowpack we had read the signs right: the warm spell of a few days earlier shedding the aspects prone to sliding. Wind from the west loading the east-facing couloirs with what powder there was in the Tetons. And this is what we found. We reached the bottom of the bowl, faces red, whooping and grinning. We did it right.
Later we ate well at the Brew Pub, sharing the story with Bojan, him and I sharing stories with Greg about our trip last spring in Alaska. All of us cracking each other up. Powder, friendship, leftover adrenaline - what was it? All of it. Too much to say. Between us, hundreds of climbs, of runs, of ski lines in the mountains. We bore signs of our passage out and back in our windburned faces and ratty functional jackets and we told our stories to these two others who understood more deeply than those who have not been. Walking back to the table after the restroom I looked at these climbing partners of mine. We were not different from those gathered at the other tables. In the company of both I had broken down what I once considered impossible into the small steps that shift such undertakings into the realm of the possible.
What we
had done on skis that day was not that difficult for either of us. Nor were we setting speed records or creating legends among Teton climbers. We were just getting after it. The Gnar was not so intimidating or mysterious: it was one more puzzle to solve. It is then I realized the beauty of Jackson and the Tetons: wherever you are in your progression, there is someone there just as eager to get up there with you and try something harder. I had never been any different than those bro-bras with their transcievers prominently displayed at the bar, just a few years behind. Now I am not. Except that I prefer to take a shower and change into cotton before I go out to eat: all-day polypro stinks, and cotton is way more comfortable.
