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.