Why I'm Not a Smart Individual

So the reason that I sometimes think that I'm not a smart individual stems from a recent ice climbing outing. First of all, just the fact that I go ice climbing shows you that I'm not terribly smart. Then you add all the little missteps of the day, and there you have it, not too bright.

Last Tuesday, Ed and I decided to go out and try to climb Prospector Falls in Grand Teton NP. We hit the trail about 8:00 in the morning, which we actually consider a somewhat early start. After a 3 hour approach that consisted of bushwhacking and hiking over half-snow covered talus, we reached the base of the climb. At the base of the climb, we burned a lot of time gearing up, as well as trying to warm ourselves up. What we should have also been doing was eating and drinking more after the long approach. However, trying to down our freezing water left us both with ice cream headaches. As it goes, not drinking much leads to not eating too much either. One 100 calorie GU after 3 hours of heinous hiking should be enough, right. Yeah, not too bright.


So we finally started up the climb with Ed leading all the pitches. My justification for this was that we were going to be out on the climb long enough, and me leading would just slow us down even more. However, this was just me trying to justify not taking some of the leads. Basically, I was just scared as I have not lead much ice. Maybe next time I will grow a pair and lead more.


The climb ended up being 5 good pitches. The only problem was that none of the stances I was belaying at, were all that protected. When ice climbing, the belayer generally faces a barrage of ice chunks falling down from the leader, unless the belayer is in a well protected spot. Unfortunately, I was not protected very much. I was doing a pretty good job of dodging ice chunks all day with my cat-like reflexes until we reached the last pitch. By now, we were in a gully that funneled all the falling debris right toward me. This is when my cat-like reflexes started to betray me (this could have happened because I was already dead tired). The first small chunk I took off my eye, ouch, that's going to leave a mark. The next big chunk I took off the top of my helmet (wearing a helmet was the one smart thing I'd done all day). The ice chunk off the helmet definitely woke me up.

As Ed was leading the last pitch, we were both hit several times by large amounts of spindrift. It had been snowing most of the day and Prospectors is known for letting loose snow from above onto climbing parties. Of course we chose to climb the route on the only poor weather day in the last week. Maybe we should have read a weather report.

We started the first of 5 rappels as it was getting dark. We had decided to climb without packs and I had forgotten to put my headlamp in my pocket. I should have known, as almost every time we go ice climbing we end up rappelling in the dark. Once again, not too bright. Luckily, Ed had his headlamp and would rap first to find the next anchor. The iced-up, skinny ropes were difficult to pull after each rap, but we finally made it down off the climb.

After we gathered all of our stuff together and I drank some water from the one water bottle that wasn't completely frozen, we set off for the 3 hour hike back to the trailhead in the dark. Luckily by now, I had my headlamp. We finally made it back to the trailhead after a sketchy creek crossing (Ed is 30-40lbs lighter than me, so just because he doesn't fall through the ice, doesn't mean I won't) and the soul-crushing uphill switchbacks near the end of the hike.

We had been on the move for about 13.5 hours, and we both realized that we had eaten about 300 calories and drank maybe a liter of water the whole day. This is the fluid and calorie intake of an idiot. Again, not bright. Hopefully, I will learn from these bumblings the next time I go out.

Mt. Russell

Chalk Fire Pictures

Pictures from the Backbone Fire

East Face of Teewinot

I went out yesterday with Scott to ski the East Face of Teewinot, which has been high up on my list of things to ski. We had a very pleasant weather day and that combined with the snow conditions made for a fun day. The East Face is quite steep at 50 degrees, and it stays steep for most of the face. It also has a few narrow slots that are about a ski length wide that must be negotiated. Overall, it was a a very fun, tiring day.

Rando Race Results

Results from the recent randonee race can be viewed at www.jacksonrandoneerace.blogspot.com

Randonee Race

Yesterday, I went to the ski resort and participated in a randonee race. Randonee skiing is the type of skiing that I do. This means that you skin uphill under your own power, without the use of ski lifts, and then take off your skins and ski down. A randonee race takes skinning uphill to an all new, completely absurd level. There were three categories to the race; race division, heavy metal division, and recreational division. The race division is for people who travel throughout the west during the ski season and regularly participate in the races held at different ski resorts. These racers are very serious about what they are doing and have very light, specialized skis for going uphill, as well as having skin-tight race suits. They also have the longest race course. The heavy metal category is for those who want to complete the same race course as the racers, but don't have the ultra-light gear and don't where race suits. The recreational category is for those that have not raced before and want a shorter course just to see how they compete against other randonee skiers. I chose to race in the recreational category because I have never competed in a race before and did not know what to expect. I also didn't have ultra-light gear and am not sure if I could sufficiently fill-out the super tight race suit.
For the rec. division, we had two uphills and two downhills to complete the race. This totalled 3,200 ft. of elevation gain and loss. While going up the last uphill of the race, I thought that I was in lead for the rec. division, but was told by a race official that I was in second place. This confused me because I only saw tight race suits in front of me, which lead me to believe that I was in first place. Finally near the end of the last uphil, I saw a tight race suit coming down the rec. course. I figured that must be the guy in first place. At about that same time, I slipped going uphill on some hard snow/ice and my ski came off. I quickly put the ski back on, but realized that my heal was locked down (while going up, only the toe gets locked down), so I had to take the ski off and back on to release my heal. By this time, the guy who was behind me was starting to gain on me. I hurried up and arrived at the transition area (where you take of your skins and get ready to ski down) just before the other guy. However, at this point I was extremely tired and frothing at the mouth from the intense uphill climb. The guy behind me was able to transition faster that me and took off down the hill before I did. I knew there was no way to catch him on the downhill, but I tried my best. On the downhill, I was skiing as fast a comfortably possible. Actually, it wasn't comfortable at all, and I was terrified I was going to wipeout in stellar form. At the speed I was going, this would have been a really bad idea. Luckily, no one was close behind me and I was able to slow down a bit. When I got down to the finish line, I was exhausted and my thighs were burning. I was so tired and beat, I thought I was going to lose my breakfast.
I ended up coming in third place, which I was pretty happy with. Not bad in the town of Jackson, that is filled with super-athletes. The second place guy finished less that a minute in front of me and the first place guy was a whole five minutes faster that us. The second place guy and I both agreed that if you are going wear a tight race suit and ultra-light gear, you should probably be racing in the race division.

South Couloir on Shadow Peak

Last Thursday I went out by myself and finally skied the South Couloir on Shadow Peak. This couloir has been my nemesis for the last two years. I have tried to ski it three times before and had been shut down by poor conditions and not knowing exactly where it was. Finally, on my fourth trip up there to ski it, I was successful. Because we access this couloir from the top, rather than climbing the couloir before skiing it, we were never quite sure where to start the route because the top of it is obscured by some trees. This last time when I started to ski down into the trees, I was 99% sure that I was in the right place. The couloir was not too steep or narrow and was quite fun and enjoyable to ski. I wish I had a picture of the couloir from the top of 25 Short, because it gives a great view of the route.

Pico de Orizaba

I now have a published article on the Powder Magazine website about my trip to Mexico to climb and ski Pico de Orizaba. The website is www.powdermag.com/media/photo/flash/orizaba/

The Skillet Glacier

In the guidebook to Teton skiing, the Skillet Glacier on Mt. Moran is descrbied as, "THE classic Teton descent." This route has been at the top of my list of routes to do for the last two years, so Ed and I decided to do a two night trip into the backcountry to try to ski it.

We left Saturday afternoon to ski into the Leigh Lake cabin. To do this, we left from the String Lake parking lot and had to cross both String Lake and Leigh Lake. The cabin, which is located on the north shore of Leigh Lake, is a small 14x16 ft. log cabin. Inside, there is no running water or electricity, so you have to use lanterns for light and make a fire in the stove for heat. It is actually quite cozy and warm inside when the stove is going, and was quite luxuorious compared to the alternative, which was camping in the snow. Because the cabin is already equipped with sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and everything you would need to cook with, all we had to bring was our ski gear and a bunch of food.

We both went to bed early, as we had set the alarm for 4:00, in anticipation of a long day the next morning. None of us like to get up that early and when the alarm went off, we slowly got out of bed and went about eating breakfast and getting ready for the long climb ahead of us. We left the cabin in the dark just before 6:00 and started skinning towards Mt. Moran. We started out the ascent by skiing up a 3,000 ft. forested slope. While ascending the slope we were treated to amazing sunrise through the clouds to the east. After reaching the top of the slope we then had to traverse around a large bowl to reach the Skillet Glacier. Because of a few rocky cliffs that blocked our access to the glacier, we were forced to descend a few hundred feet of hard won elevation gain. It's always somewhat of a sin to lose elevation. Once on the Skillet, we again started the long skin up. Ed led through this section and he had to skirt around the left of the bergschrund. The bergshrund is a crevasse at the very top of a glacier. Luckily, because it is the dead of winter, all of the other crevasses were covered with snow. After we got past the 'schrund, we entered into what is known as the panhandle. After seeing the route from afar, you can see why it's called the "Skillet" glacier because it looks like a large frying pan or skillet. The panhandle is where the route begins to steepen and we were forced to put our skis on our backs and begin to hike (or boot) up the couloir. Fortunately, part of the couloir had been flushed out recently by an avalanche, and we were able to hike up the relatively hard snow of the avalanche debris instead of wallowing in the soft snow in the couloir to our left. However, after we got into the narrowest part of the upper couloir the hard snow was gone and we began to wallow. At this point, Ed and I took turns breaking trail upwards. When Ed had completed one of his leads and had pulled over to put on an extra jacket and eat some food, it was my turn to finish the final 300-400 ft. of the couloir. We always call the final pitch to the top, "the glory pitch". This pitch involved the most wallowing of the ascent and took place 7 1/2 hours after leaving the cabin. Apparently, the mountain wasn't going to ease up its defenses near the top. However, after much struggling and a large dose of determination, I was able to gain the top of the couloir. After Ed made it up, we dumped our packs and hiked the 300-400 ft. to the main windblown summit. I had never summitted Moran, so making to the very top was a must. The wind was howling up there, so we only spent a couple minutes on the flat summit.

After we hiked down off the summit, we started to get into ski mode. I started down the couloir first, and had to side-slip the first 15 ft. as it was too narrow to make turns. Once it widened up a bit, I was able to make a few turns and then pull into a safe spot to wait for Ed. He came down shortly after me and we were both enjoying the deep, soft powder skiing. We slowly and carefully made our way down the panhandle and then made it down into the main body of the Skillet. By this time, both of our thighs were burning from the long ascent and descent, but we still had a long way to ski down. The rest of the way down, the angle of the slope eased considerably and we were able to open up some turns and quickly made it down. We could not have asked for better snow at this point and we were glad to be skiing down after all the hard work.

Once we made it down almost to Jackson Lake, we started to traverse north back towards the cabin. After much traversing and a few sketchy creek crossing, we finally made it back to the cabin. Once there, we got the stove roaring and proceeded to stuff ourselves with food to try the impossible task of replacing all the calories we burned during the day. Sleep came easily, and we woke up at a leisurely time the next morning and were treated to the snow falling outside.

This ascent, though it was very tiring and took a lot of determination, went almost too smoothly. There really was no dramatic moment; we went, we saw, we climbed, and we skied. That basically could wrap up the whole story. I guess it doesn't always need to be an epic to be fun.

The Sliver

On Sunday, Jon and I went up to attempt to ski the Sliver on Nez Perce. The Sliver is a long, narrow couloir that looks like a white stripe on a wall when viewed from the valley of Jackson Hole. To reach the Sliver, we first skinned around the north side of Taggart Lake to the lateral moraine that separates Taggart from Bradley Lake. From there we started the long skin up Shadow Peak. From the top of Shadow Peak, you get a terrifying, head on view of the Sliver. This view makes the Sliver look incredibly steep and I often get a queasy, nauseous feeling in my stomach when I see it from this vantage point. This would be my second time skiing the route and I knew that the couloir was not nearly as bad as it looked from here. This was Jon's first attempt to ski the Sliver and when he came up and met me on top of Shadow Peak, you could see that he had some doubt about whether we could actually accomplish our goal. I tried to reassure him that it was not as hard as it looked. Luckily, on my first trip up to ski it last year, we accessed it from a different route and did not get this in your face look. I think if I had, I would have lost my breakfast.

From the top of Shadow Peak, we downclimbed to a small notch where we put our skis on and skied down a short, north facing chute that led down into Shadow Peak Cirque. Once in the bottom of the cirque, we once again put our skins on and skinned to the base of the couloir. At the base of the couloir, we put our skis on our backs and began the long hike up the 1,500 ft. couloir. The hike to the top of the couloir was not difficult and we made quick time to the top. The top of the couloir is a wild notch that separates the main body of Nez Perce from the east summit of Nez Perce.

The wind was howling at the notch and we were both anxious to get into ski mode and start the descent. The top of the couloir is 50+ degrees (which is pretty steep) and we had to side-step around some boulders before we could make our first tentative turns. Trying to fire off the first turn of a steep route such as this is always the scariest part. It takes a leap of faith to know that you will land your turn and not go tumbling out of control down the couloir. However, once you have a couple turns under your belt, you start to gain some confidence, and it's not nearly as bad after that. From the top, I made a few hop-turns down the couloir and pulled behind a small rock outcropping so that I was out of the way when Jon came down. Once he got to my spot, I took off and skied down further and once again pulled off into a little island of safety so that I would not be hit by any sluff that Jon would knock down while skiing. All the snow sluff that we would kick down made it interesting to try to poke your head out from behind the rocks and take video. As you can see in the video, the manner in which we are skiing is not pretty, and it's not the nice skiing turns you would see at the ski resort. What we are doing is called "survival skiing", which basically means that it does not matter what you look like, just as long as you get down the route in one piece. We took turns going down first and after much effort we exited the couloir safely with a big sigh of relief.

After making it out of the couloir we still had a long ways to ski back to the truck, but with soft snow and low angled slopes we had no problem making it down. I think that one of the best parts about having skied this route is that you can see it from the bar while you are drinking beer after coming down out of the mountains. And because you can see it from all over Jackson Hole, it's a great route to point out to people and say as casually as possible, "yeah, I skied that. It wasn't that big of deal." Once again, a larger video can be viewed at www.youtube.com/user/jhskier13.

Sentinel Gully Ice Climb

Yesterday, Ed and I went out and climbed Sentinel Gully in Death Canyon (I know, what a great name for a canyon, we also have Avalanche Canyon here in Grand Teton NP). The climb was great, but only two pitches long. Here are a few pictures of me leading the second pitch.

Ice Climbing in Bozeman

This weekend I was able to go up to Bozeman, MT with Ed to swing really sharp metal objects at a very impermanent surface. That's also know as ice climbing. We were able to climb several one pitch routes Friday and Saturday. They were all great routes, but one in particular stands out for me. On Saturday morning we headed up from the parking lot to attempt a climb called Mummery Cooler II. The approach to the route only took about 30 minutes and when we arrived at the base, it didn't look like too hard of a climb. I guess looks can be deceiving. Ed started up the route with no problems while I belayed him. After gaining about 30 ft., he swung his ice tool and broke through a thin layer of ice which released the cold water that was flowing underneath the surface. This was not really a big deal for him because the "ice hose" was below him, thus not getting him wet. After he went up another 10 ft., this happened again. Even though, this was not going to be a problem for him, it was going to be a huge problem for me since icy cold water was running down where I was going to be climbing. Once Ed got to the top and made an anchor, he started to belay me up the climb. Almost immediately I started to get wet from the ice hose. It wasn't too bad that I was getting wet on my pants and jacket, but the real problem was my hands were getting soaked. I tried to make it through this section as quickly as possible, but I still had to stop and remove the ice screws that Ed had placed for protection. By the time I had made it past both ice hoses my hands were wooden. I was able to continue climbing up, but soon the wind started to pick up and was blowing snow around in what we call spindrift. The thing about spindrift is that it gets into every little nook and cranny in your open clothing, especially down your neck. This added to my already cold condition, as well as fogging up my glasses, making it hard to see. I tried taking the glasses off, but then the snow would just get into my eyes. By this time I was ready for the pitch to be over, but I still had a little ways to go. I swung my tools indiscriminately at the ice, trying to get them to stick without really being able to see what I was doing. Instead of being able to look at my tools and see if they were placed well, I went off of sound and feel. Ice tools have a very distinctive sound when then are placed well. After much clawing and scraping, I was finally able to make it up to Ed's anchor. This is when things started to get painful. Because my hands were freezing and had been over my head for some time, the blood had flowed out of them. After ending the pitch and being able to put my hands back down, the blood came rushing back into them. In climbers terms, this is called "screaming barfies" or "screaming meemies" because you simultaneously want to scream and throw up because it hurts so bad. Let me tell you, its probably some of the most intense pain I have ever felt. I'm not sure if it was because of the cold or the pain, but I was short of breath and shaking at the belay. Ed, who was standing next to me, chuckled a bit and let me suffer in peace because he knew exactly what I was going through. Eventually, I was able to use my hands again to rappel down. Luckily, I was able to warm up and climb the rest of the day, including doing my first ever ice lead. This goes to show that ice climbing can be quite miserable at times. However, an oft-quoted climber saying is "it doesn't have to be fun to be fun." These are all pictures of Ed. I will add some more when I get the pictures he took.

Shutdown on Nez Perce

A trip report from Thursday: After looking at the weather forecast and seeing that snow was predicted for this afternoon and the coming week, I realized that today would be the last chance to get up into the high peaks for some time. With that in mind, Jon and I decided to go and try to ski the West Hourglass Couloir on Nez Perce. Once again, we left from the Taggart/Bradley Lake trailhead at about 8 in the morning. Luckily it wasn't too cold out and the temperature was perfect for skinning. The sky was clear, but that was soon to change. After ascending the lateral moraine that seperates Taggart Lake from Bradley Lake, we quickly crossed the frozen Bradley Lake and began ascending into Garnet Canyon. It was my first time into Garnet Canyon this winter, and I am always excited to go there, as it is one of my favorite places to go. Most of the high peaks in the Teton Range rise out of Garnet Canyon. Once in the canyon we began skinning toward Nez Perce, which is a peak located on the south side of the canyon. As we gradually ascended up-canyon, the wind started to pick up, which is usually the case because the canyon acts somewhat like a wind funnel. At this point the skies began to darken, and we had to don an extra layer of clothing to protect against the wind and cold. When we arrived at the apron below the West Hourglass Couloir, we noticed there was a party of two up ahead of us inteding to ski the same route. As the skinning became too steep, we took our skis off, attached them to our packs, and started to hike uphill. After a short while, we saw that the party ahead of us was starting to prematurely ski down. Surely they could not have reached the top of the couloir so quickly. As they passed us coming down, they said they had turned around at the base of the couloir due poor conditions. Not wanting to take their word for it, we decided to continue up and have a look for ourselves. Once we got to their high point, we realized they had been right, and the couloir above was in horrendous condition. The snow had been completely hammered by the wind and though we could probably descend it on skis, we would hardly be "skiing" it. More likely just skidding down. It also did not look to be very safe, as in, a fall or slip would have been a bad idea. We also had a fair amount of rock falling near us, which did not seem very appealling to my helmetless head. Jon, being a bit smarter than I, had brought a helmet and quickly put it on. On top of all that, it was beginning to snow. After judging the conditions to not be in our favor, we decided to stop where we were and ski down without reaching our objective. The ski down was uneventful, if not really poor skiing. I was very tired when we reached the truck after three long, consecutive days in the mountains. Things did not exactly line up for us today, but that is how it goes in ski mountaineering. Luckily, I don't think the West Hourglass will be going anywhere anytime soon, and we can try it again under better conditions.

Wildlife Viewing on Shadow Peak

One of the great things about skiing in the Tetons is you never know when you might run into some interesting wildlife. This picture was from a trip up Shadow Peak yesterday, but I also saw these two moose a couple days earlier on a trip to the same area. These moose did not seem to mind us skiing by them, but we gave them a wide berth anyways. I don't think you want to mess with a mama moose and its youngin.