I once jokingly called Eric Haferman and Jackson Keogh the Elder Statesmen of Bozeman Steep Skiing, since it seems as though the group of folks really getting after it in the local backcountry has skewed so young in the past few years that at 26 they are still a few years older than me and most of my other partners. But in all seriousness, these two have been putting down way more impressive lines in the Greater Yellowstone area than anyone else in the past few years, all while building an awesome local company, Big Sky Mountain Products. Typically they spend every spring living in an Airstream trailer in Cooke City, but with the crazy state of the world that wasn’t possible this year so instead they’ve shifted their focus to trying to summit and ski every 12,000’ peak in Montana, all of which are conveniently located in the Beartooth Range. In early May I got to tag along on one of their forays and it ended up being some of the most fun days I had all season.
Jackson, Eric and I left the trailhead around 5 p.m. in our ski boots, confident that we would soon be able to transition to skinning. After an hour of trudging along the dry trail with only intermittent snow patches we realized that we definitely should have brought hiking shoes, but it was too late to go back for them. Eventually we hit the snowline about three miles from the trailhead and shortly thereafter we broke off the summer trail and started bushwacking up towards Black Canyon Lake. The lake sits less than 1000’ above the main Lake Fork drainage, but the isothermal snow and dense vegetation made for slow travel, and we didn’t crawl into our tents until after 10 pm. Chris had been skiing in the Crazies that day and Marika was still finishing up school for the semester so they were planning on driving over later in the evening and leaving the trailhead early the next morning. Since our approach had taken quite a bit longer than anticipated we weren’t expecting to see them until mid morning, so we were quite surprised when they rolled in to camp at 7 a.m. the next day while we were still making breakfast.
We hastily packed up for the day and the five of us set out across Black Canyon Lake. After surveying the impressive cirque we set our sights on a short but steep and somewhat exposed looking couloir on the northeast side of Spirit Mountain. As we started booting up it became apparent that our sense of scale was way off (this is the Beartooths after all) and the couloir was actually quite a bit longer than we had guessed! The only downside was that by the time we neared the top the sun had been beating down for a little longer than we’d have preferred. As a group of five it was also going to take us longer than normal to descend the line, so I was anticipating a hasty transition on top. But as we climbed out of the couloir and onto the huge summit plateau some clouds rolled in and mercifully delayed the rapid warming of the snow. We wandered the plateau for the better part of an hour, staring at the countless other peaks on all sides of us and debating which pile of rocks constituted the true summit. Eventually the sun reemerged and it was time to go skiing. Chris found a giant boulder teetering on the edge of the cliff and shoved it off onto the top of our line as a sort of improvised stability test. The giant rock bounced several times before flying off the cliff below, but none of the snow it displaced seemed to gain much momentum. Eric and Jackson swapped leads the whole way down the couloir with Marika, Chris, and myself following behind.
The exposure was real and the skiing was steep, but the high quality snow kept the stress level from getting too high. We all high fived at the bottom and trudged back up to the ridge and skied another fun and mellow couloir back into the Black Canyon drainage.
Chris was understandably tired from skiing the past several days in a row so he headed back to camp while Jackson, Eric, Marika and I headed up Mount Rearguard. Rearguard is another big plateau of a mountain, so Marika and I just went to the top of the quality skiing while Jackson and Eric continued up several hundred feet of scree to tag the summit for the purpose of their project. We enjoyed a few thousand feet of excellent corn and then scooted back across the lake to camp.
The next day we set our sights on another 12,000’ peak in the cirque, either Drop Off or Forget-Me-Not Mountain, depending on which map you look at. We had spotted a broad east facing couloir from Spirit that looked like it would provide a fast ripper of a corn run. Oh how wrong we were…
The top of the couloir was guarded by a giant cornice but there appeared to be a narrow sneak entrance on the skier’s left side. Not wanting to be exposed to that objective hazard on the way up we took a round-a-bout route to the summit. Peering over the edge of the couloir we realized that it was once again bigger, badder and steeper than our eyes led us to believe. The entrance we’d spotted would go, but the whole experience was going to be more full-value than anticipated. After Jackson disappeared over the edge I counted to 100 and then started gingerly side-stepping my way in with an iron grip on my ice axe. The entrance was firm, narrow and felt like it was above 55 degrees. Traversing out into the gut of the chute was a minor relief, although now I was under a giant cornice and still on icy and very steep snow. I’ve put a lot of effort into improving my steep skiing this season, and in these tricky conditions it really paid off. The first few turns are always a little scary, but soon I found a rhythm and began to have a lot of fun. I find that once I overcome my fear and commit to the fall line on a slope that steep, the ease with which my edges detach and my skis whip around is a truly magical feeling. Towards the bottom the angle eased off a little, the snow softened and I was able to open up my turns and really rip the last few hundred feet down to the rock slab where Jackson and Eric had posted up to watch the rest of us.
Chris and Marika had to get back to Bozeman that night, so they skied back to camp and packed up while Jackson, Eric and I took a detour to check out a potential line we’d spotted on Beartooth Mountain. We were psyched to find that the narrow section we couldn’t see appeared to go with one short rappel or maybe even a downclimb on some moderate looking ice and mixed terrain.
My alarm went off at 4 a.m. the next day and I awoke to the sound of snow falling on the tent. Through a series of half-asleep grunts we decided to give the weather some more time to blow over and eventually started skinning around 7. The closer we got to our objective the worse the weather became. From the summit we intended to ski a broad snowfield for about 1000’ before traversing into the couloir we had scouted the day before. Visibility would need to improve to safely descend the upper portion of the line without skiing off a cliff, but the new snow was bonding well so we decided to at least start up the couloir and hope for a change in conditions. If you don’t go at all, then there’s always a 0% chance of skiing anything…
Eric started charging up while Jackson and I followed a bit more apprehensively. The first thing to give me pause was a deep runnel that had formed in the gut of the couloir, essentially cutting the amount of skiable snow in half. As I climbed higher and approached a steep choke I became increasingly aware of the super firm crust I was kicking my front points into. There wasn’t enough new snow to fully cover the bulletproof layer, and in a line that narrow it would be all that was left after one person skied down. Not wanting have a stupid accident on what had already been a great trip, I downclimbed past Jackson and waited in a small cave adjacent to the mouth of the couloir. A few minutes later he joined me having reached a similar conclusion. We waited over an hour before Eric appeared. Apparently he topped out the couloir but after making just one turn decided it was too firm given the steepness of the line and transitioned back to crampons to downclimb. Jackson and Eric are much bolder and more skilled skiers than I am, so hearing this I felt great about my decision to pull the plug early on. We still got to ski some nice powder back to camp and spent a soggy afternoon in our tents trying to dry out our gear while the snow kept accumulating. I didn't take very many pictures during the storm, but here's one of my damp living quarters:
The plan for the final two days was to ski back down to the trail and cache the tents and some more gear before continuing up drainage to a bivy beneath Sky Pilot Mountain, which would put us in a good position to hit one or two more good lines before heading home. Between the crap weather and my cold, wet clothes my morale was considerably lower that night and I strongly considered just skiing out to the trailhead the next day. But the next morning started out warm and sunny so I was able to spread out all of my gear on rocks to dry and I soaked up some much needed Vitamin D, which provided all the stoke I needed to stick it out.
We bushwhacked our way down to the river and made a feeble attempt at getting our gear cache high enough into a tree that a passing grizzly might not reach it. Then we started the long slog up towards the head of the drainage as the weather deteriorated. Soon we were once again walking in a whiteout with precipitation that was just barely snow, but really wanted to be rain. Our skins glopped up worse than I have ever experienced, making it just that much more of a sufferfest. After a few hours of awful trudging with what felt like ten pounds of snow on each food I realized the snow was so sticky that I could walk uphill just fine without skins. In retrospect I find the whole ordeal pretty comical, but at the time I was just pissed I hadn’t thought to try that sooner.
We had a pretty vague idea of where we were, but we knew we needed to get out of the storm soon or our Gore Tex would soak through and we’d turn into blocks of ice as soon as the sun went down. So we found a good snowdrift and started digging out our bivy for the night. I haven’t spent too many nights in snow caves, but whenever I do I’m always surprised by how warm and comfortable they can be if you put in enough work to do it right. Within 90 minutes we had an excellent shelter with plenty of room for the three of us and all the gear we wanted to keep out of the storm.
Just as I was about to crawl into our cave the storm broke and the peaks all around us were revealed. Turns out we were a lot further up the drainage than I’d thought! The first thing I noticed was a beautiful 2500’ couloir on the south side of Whitetail Peak. I had spotted this line on satellite images before but I wasn’t sure if it held snow or went cleanly. The Whitetail Couloir on the north side of the mountain is one of the most classic lines in the range (and the namesake for the peak), but this looked to be almost as high-quality of a run that has undoubtedly seen far fewer descents. Obviously this became our primary objective for the next day. We set an alarm for 4 a.m. and turned in for what ended up being my best night of sleep all week. There might be something to this snow cave thing!
The unique spire of Skypilot and the impressive north face of Beartooth Mountain made for epic sunrise views as we made our way to the base of Whitetail’s South Couloir. The apron below was rocky and didn’t seem like very good skiing, so we were pretty uncertain of what we’d find in the couloir itself. Jackson decided that bootpacking was the move, but Eric and I kept our skis on and started making endless switchbacks. Within a few hundred feet Jackson was wallowing and it was obvious we had made the right call, but he’d stashed his skins at the bottom and it was too late to go back for them.
As we skinned higher and higher the snow just got deeper and deeper, but with no real signs of instability. It started to dawn on me that I was about to have one of the best runs of my ski season. In backcountry skiing it’s not too often that avalanche conditions allow for truly “steep and deep” skiing, but if you put in enough days then every once in a while you’ll get lucky. Eric and I took turns breaking trail and were able to keep our skis on almost the entire way up. Jackson kept wallowing behind, eventually shouting up to us that we should just ski down whenever we felt like it and not bother waiting for him. We took that to mean he was bailing. We topped out in the clouds and waited a half hour or so for better visibility. It turned out Jackson hadn’t bailed after all and that was all the time he needed to catch back up! I’d already been to the top of Whitetail in the summer, but Jackson and Eric scrambled the last 100’ or so to the true summit and were actually able to ski from there, connected hanging snowfields and a thin, rocky chute to the top of the South Couloir! I shot some photos of their summit ski descent and then dropped into the deep powder I’d been anticipating for the last few hours.
In a very high snow year I think the South Couloir might fill in completely, but in fairly average early May conditions we found there to be several big boulders to navigate around as well as several more rock patches lurking under the 2-3 feet of new snow. Nevertheless it was indeed one of the best ski runs I had all year. We dropped in one at a time and each skied the entire line in one long glorious pitch. Cold, dry powder is a rare commodity in May, especially in a south facing couloir on one of the highest peaks in Montana!
After skiing Whitetail Jackson and Eric had their sights set on Sky Pilot before heading home. I was almost completely out of food, and I’d promised my mom I’d be back to Bozeman in time for Mother’s Day. So I headed back to our bivy spot and packed up before skiing out alone. Those guys continued over to the next peak and Eric ended up sending a wild, Chamonix-esque line that I might’ve been too scared to ski anyways. A few miles from the trailhead I hit dirt and began the ski boot trudge I’d been dreading since we realized the mistake of leaving our hiking shoes six days prior. But just as my abused feet really started to scream for mercy I found myself back at the car where a cold six pack was waiting. I enjoyed a victory beer and left the rest in Eric’s truck for whenever they got back (which ended up being around 1 a.m. that night!). Many thanks to Jackson and Eric for letting me join one of their legendary Beartooth exploratory missions, it certainly inspired me to keep pushing deeper into this giant and mysterious range!
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