Last Call in the Tetons
- Henry Coppolillo
- Jun 6, 2020
- 8 min read
Tatum and I headed down to the Tetons on a Saturday afternoon at the tail end of a late-May storm. We were hoping to catch a few more days of good spring conditions before the freeze/thaw cycles ended and summer began in force.
The forecast for the next day was uncertain, partly sunny but with a chance of snow or even rain at lower elevations. The two main objectives for this trip were the Skillet Glacier on Mt. Moran, and the East Face (a.ka. the Glacier Route) of the Middle Teton. These are two of the most classic ski routes in the range if not all of North America (they did make it into that one book after all!), so I was excited to get a chance to ski them both at the tail end of my ski season, especially since Grand Teton National Park had been closed for most of the spring and only reopened a few days prior.
The alarm went off at 1:30 a.m., and we groggily made coffee and oatmeal before driving to the trailhead. Climbing and skiing Mt. Moran is a longer and more physically demanding day than the Middle Teton, so we decided to go for that first while we were still totally fresh. In mid-winter conditions one can skate across the frozen lakes to the base of the Skillet. In spring or summer the peak is best approached with the use of a canoe or kayaks. Since we had neither of these things, we got to walk on a trail all the way around Leigh Lake. I had apparently learned nothing from my recent dirt trudging in the Beartooths, so we wore ski boots right from the trailhead. Once again, it quickly became apparent that this was a mistake. We walked almost six miles on dirt and patchy yet often deep and isothermal snow. The cold air and our fresh feet and legs made this tolerable in the morning, but I was already dreading the walk out many hours later.
I’d heard a lot about the legendary bushwhack from the end of the lake to the base of the Skillet, but we found it to be fairly tame, with only a short section of steep shrub-climbing and one accidental entrance into a creek by yours truly. Luckily it was warm enough that having one wet boot wasn’t a total show-stopper. We finally put our skis on a little above 7000’ and began the long climb up to the 12605’ summit of Mt. Moran. Shortly after leaving the trailhead we’d made two new friends from Salt Lake City, Adam and Jared. They had attempted the Skillet the year prior, so their familiarity with the approach combined with wicked strength and an eagerness to break trail was hugely helpful.
We were able to keep skins on until almost 11,000’, at which point the couloir narrowed and the slope angle kicked up. At this point the fours of us transitioned to boot packing, or more accurately, wallowing. Upward progress was slow and hard. Adam had a pair of Billygoat Plates which made a big difference. Below us we noticed another team of three that was hauling ass and quickly gaining on us. We were initially disappointed at the idea of having to share our line with even more people but the idea of having some additional help setting the bootpack quickly became more appealing. Adam put in a truly heroic 1000’ of trailbreaking before the third team caught up. Turns out they were also from SLC and had run into Adam and Jared skiing in the Wasatch the week prior. They were psyched to take over and soon we were a team of seven diligently taking turns breaking trail towards the summit.
The top of the peak had been in the clouds all day, and visibility was in and out as we climbed the couloir. We could tell however that it was just a thin layer of clouds blocking the bright and hot sun. We began to hear avalanches coming off of the rock walls lower down in the couloir and I was a little anxious not knowing what was happening below the cloud cap that was keeping the snow around us at a safe temperature.
I was also apprehensive about our group size. The Skillet isn’t a particularly steep or exposed line, but it is incredibly long with over 5000’ of continuous fall line skiing. Having seven people all stacked up above one another with poor visibility and a bunch of new snow seemed like a recipe for something bad to happen. However, we made a plan and executed it perfectly, making for an enjoyable and safe descent for everyone involved. We let Adam and Jared drop first, and then Tatum and I followed after giving them enough time to get clear of the narrow and steeper upper section of the couloir. Our last three new friends gave us the same courtesy and everyone got fresh tracks. It was great to be surrounded by so many competent and responsible people on a big peak, and had it just been Tatum and me I’m not sure we would have made it up in time to ski down before it got dangerously warm.
The skiing in the upper couloir was absolutely epic, similar to what I’d experienced on Whitetail Peak a few weeks earlier. At one point I linked a dozen or more bottomless GS turns with face shots at the apex of each. Pretty unusual for May 24th!
Entering the lower half of the line we broke through the cloud deck and into the sun. The snow here was more of the “hot pow” consistency, but it remained great skiing for a few thousand feet. Towards the top of the lower apron we found a large wet slide covering our skin track from many hours earlier, presumably triggered by spindrift or rockfall coming off of the cliffs above. From here on down the skiing was pretty manky, but we still had a ton of fun linking huge lazy turns down the apron to hold speed through the slush. On such a big line that late in the season there’s inevitably going to be huge variability in snow conditions between the top and the bottom, so I’d say what we experienced was about as good as it possibly could have been!
We’d been moving pretty fast for several hours trying to get up and down the mountain before it was too hot, so we were both pretty tired and dehydrated. We hung out on a rock for half an hour and melted some snow for water. In the past I’ve only carried a stove on overnight missions, but I’ve been bringing one on longer day trips this spring as well and it’s been really nice. A small stove like a JetBoil or MSR Reactor weighs less than an extra water bottle, and it also gives you a great excuse to stop and rest for a little longer than you normally might, which is probably a good thing on a 10+ hour day.
We skied and scooted as far as we could before eventually giving in to the inevitable and putting our skis on our packs. Both of our feet were in agony by the end, and I actually considered walking barefoot or in my liners. This was the punishment I deserved for not learning from the last time I made this mistake. Tatum totally crushed it, keeping the pace high in front while I grumpily waddled along behind her all the way to the parking lot. It wasn’t long before the whole team of seven had arrived and we were all sharing a well deserved victory beer.
Our friends Chris and Meredith had skied the Middle Teton that same day and reported similar conditions. I wasn’t sure how the fresh snow would react to the heat and subsequent freeze, but it looked like it wasn’t going to freeze the following night, so if we wanted to ski another big line then we’d have to go for it the next day. With the shorter approach we allowed ourselves the luxury of sleeping an extra half hour until 2 a.m. A second consecutive alpine start is always brutal when the alarm goes off, but once we got moving I actually felt better out of the gate than I had the day prior. Maybe that was just because I wore hiking shoes.
My friends Chance and Miranda had arrived the night before and accompanied us up Garnet Canyon to the base of the Middle Teton’s Southwest Couloir. From there a fresh bootpack indicated that there was a party ahead of us. We caught them on the summit just as they were about to drop in. I think one of the coolest parts of skiing the Glacier Route is that you almost circumnavigate the entire mountain, wrapping around to the Southwest Couloir and then dropping back into the main fork of Garnet Canyon via the East Face. On the south side of the peak we were in the shade and climbing through dry loose snow. The sunnier face we planned to ski was in and out of the clouds all morning, which gave us the misconception that we didn’t need to worry about warming on that side. From the summit I scratched at the snow with my pole and found it to be more towards the overripe side of the corn spectrum. We decided we were still comfortable skiing our intended route after watching the group ahead of us descend and observing that their slough wasn’t entraining very much additional loose snow and there had been no slab formation to speak off.
The East Face is truly a “classic” ski route in every sense of the word. It follows a consistently steep line from the summit of the third highest peak in the Tetons, with exposure that demands confidence in both the conditions and your abilities. The Ford-Stettner route on the Grand made for a stunning backdrop, especially with the gorgeous set of tracks someone had left there earlier that morning. Next time!
Clicking into our skis right on the true summit, we skied a short hanging snowfield before traversing skier’s right to a small notch in the ridge. The crux is getting from this notch onto the face itself via a tight and very steep chute. In low snow or firmer conditions this sometimes requires a rappel, but the slightly-too-soft corn snow allowed for fairly mellow sidestepping, and the rope stayed in my pack as training weight, which is just how I like it. If I want to dangle on ropes I’ll just go sport climbing.
I led the way through the crux and then skied a little further until I was out from underneath Tatum as she made her way through. I could feel the heat emanating from the sky, the snow and the rocks all around me and I was starting to get a little stressed. As soon as Tatum was clear of the narrow side step I launched into the next section of the route. The slope remained well above fifty degrees and I hugged the skier’s right side before jumping over a slough runnel down the center and skirting some rocks to the left. As the angle lessened I cut back right towards a saddle where I was out of the direct sun and out from underneath the cornices on the summit ridge. The snow here faced ever so slightly more to the north and I was pleasantly surprised to find dry powder! Tatum styled the upper face and we ripped pow and then corn snow all the way down to the mouth of Garnet Canyon. As we were once again sitting on a rock melting water we saw some of our friends from Moran the day before exiting the West Hourglass Couloir on Nez Perce in what looked like great snow as well!
To make up for our long and painful egress from Moran and a slightly-too-leisurely pace that morning we ran most of the way to the car after we put our approach shoes back on. It made for a proud end to a great couple of days in the Tetons.
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