The legend, photo: Christian Beckwith

Summer 1994. I leaned into my drink. I was twenty-five years old and belly up at the Stagecoach Bar on a Sunday evening. Again.

I had moved to Jackson Hole in April; in the intervening months, Sundays at the Coach had become my ritual. Not necessarily for the women, which inspired me many of the other evenings of the week: there weren’t many women under 40 at the Coach on Sundays, when the Stagecoach Band turned the bar into a crash course in two-stepping. Rather, I was inspired by the man who, just at this moment, had stepped up to the microphone.

I set my beer down to listen. The man began to strum his banjo, which emitted a metallic twang. I knew the song, and as he began to sing—his voice more notable for its passion than its mellifluous qualities—I began to sing along:

Two skis upon white powder snow-u-ow

The most beautiful thing that I know

Then Bill Briggs let out a yodel. I laughed deep and hard, and took another swallow of beer.

At that point in my Jackson Hole sojourn, I knew a few things about Bill. Like me, he was a Mainer, and he’d bailed on Dartmouth to climb in the Tetons. I knew he’d pioneered ski traverses throughout North America, and that his years as an Exum Guide had been punctuated by some rather colorful idiosyncracies that made up his character. For years, he had orchestrated musical bonfires under the bridge at Moose, serving Teton Tea, a fetid collection of whatever the local bar couldn’t sell, to whoever showed up. Those Teton Tea parties had evolved into the Hootenany, which in turn had evolved into Sunday nights at the Coach. In the years since the bonfires under the bridge, Bill had missed only a handful of Sundays at the Coach, and only when the day coincided with New Year’s Eve.

And of course, I knew that Bill had made history by becoming the first person to ski the Grand.

As Bill sang, the words tethered themselves to the alcohol in my system, transporting me to a place far from the crowded room. I’d been drawn to the Tetons by an article on alpine climbing that had captivated my imagination. This man, a climber, a musician, the first to ski the Grand, seemed removed from ordinary concerns. I wanted the same for myself.

Over the successive Sundays, as I’d listened to Bill yodel, a determination had hardened within me. I, too, would devote myself to the mountains, the way Bill had done, and make a life within them, however I could.

A few months later, I published Issue 1 of my first magazine. Inspired by Bill, I called the magazine The Mountain Yodel.

————————-

Following footsteps, photo: Christian Beckwith

In the 17 years since those summer nights at the Coach, life had unfolded in unexpected and interesting ways. I was still in Jackson, and somewhat to my surprise I’d cobbled together a living around climbing. But the last few months had been tough. A gorgeous baby daughter and a new business had enriched my life beyond measure, but, combined with a fickle spring, they’d also conspired against adventures in the Tetons. Though the snowpack was the deepest in history, I hadn’t been able to get into the mountains in weeks. My frustration had become nearly physical.

Ten days earlier, my wife and daughter went to Italy. I stayed behind to work. I thought that I’d at least get a day or two in the mountains, but so far, I hadn’t had a single one.

On Monday, June 13, I got an email from my friend Dan Nordstrom. Dan should run for president. He’s brilliant, tall, cheerful and good-looking. The owner of Outdoor Research, he’s an avid alpinist, and he flies his own plane. The email announced his plans: fly from Seattle to Jackson the afternoon of the 14th, get a few hours’ sleep, then ski the Briggs Route on the fortieth anniversary of the first descent.

I quickly checked the weather: 28° in the valley Tuesday night, followed by 71° and sunny on Wednesday. Were the stars aligning?

“Who’s going?” I quickly wrote back. “And: mind if I come?”

“Martin’s coming,” Dan responded. Like Dan, Martin Volken is a tall, fit, handsome man, amiable and as serious as you’d imagine a Swiss-born mountain guide to be. The two of them together resemble a sort of successful experiment in genetic evolution. “But it’s a Hans production,” Dan continued. “Give him a call.”

Hans Johnstone has more firsts to his credit than any other climber in town. He’s my hero, but not just because of his accomplishments. Hans simply has a better sense of what’s important in life than anyone I know. Plus, he laughs at my jokes. Not even my wife does that.

I speed-dialed Hans. “Who’s going?”

“Dan, Martin, Dan Corn and me,” he said.

My heart sank. Two people in the mountains is my ideal; three, maybe four, is my max. Six months earlier, I’d bailed on Hans and Dan for an outing on the Cathedral Traverse when the head count grew to five.

I wished Hans and company the best, and returned my focus to work.

————————–

photo: Christian Beckwith

Tuesday, June 14. I’m in the yard on the phone with my wife when Hans walks in through the gate.

I cup the phone. “What’s up?” I mouth.

“Corn’s out,” he says. “Want to come?”

I quickly make an excuse to my wife and hang up. Hell, yes, I want to come.

Dan and Martin fly in on schedule. Four hours later, we gather with friends for dinner. By the time we finish eating it’s 8:30 p.m. An hour later I finish packing. Three hours after that I walk, coffee mug in hand, into the Alpine House. It’s 1 a.m.

Dan, Hans and Martin look the way I feel.

“Morning.”

“Morning,” says Dan. His blonde head is turned down, as if he’s studying the inside of his mug.

We pile skis, packs and boots into Han’s dilapidated Westfalia. Martin and I perch on the packs as we drive toward the park. I’ve talked to Martin a couple of times since we met in January, but this is the first time we’ve done anything together. He’s never been in the Tetons, but he was born in the shadow of Monte Rosa and has been guiding around the world ever since. It will be fun to show him our mountains.

In the Lupine Meadows parking lot we navigate by the beam of our headlamps, loading skis and boots onto packs as we ready for the hike. I inhale, and the smell of the wetlands fills my nostrils. The winter slog from the Bradley-Taggert parking lot is over, and although I’ve ascended the Garnet Canyon trail hundreds of times, tonight will be the first time this year. It feels like rendezvousing with an old friend.

We rise through the darkened forest. By the 1.8 mile marker, snow has started to appear in clumps. The clumps grow larger as we ascend, and they’re surprisingly solid underfoot given the warm night air.

“What do you think, Hans?” I’m thinking ski boots.

“Should burn off by the time we round the corner and get on south-facing, don’t you think?”

Hans may have just turned 50, but he’s got a point, and I’m quick to listen. He has been climbing in these hills far longer than I have, and at a far higher level.

We ascend through the forest, following the faint impression of a bootpack in the snow. Conversation yields to silence as we concentrate on our steps. When the tracks are defined, sneakers work well, but it’s easy to lose the impressions in the darkness—and as the angle of the slope increases, so do the consequences of a fall.

Half an hour later I’m lagging behind, muttering curses at Hans under my breath. Why aren’t we putting on boots? Hell, why aren’t we putting on crampons? Even when we’ve rounded the bend of the hill and hit the south-facing slopes, the snow continues, hard and steep. Below lies the bottom of Garnet, lost in darkness. I know how far I’ll go if I fall.

“I’m glad I have my whippet,” says Dan, just ahead of me.

I wish mine weren’t in my pack.

At last we traverse into the Platforms. Lights ahead of us have appeared like fairy lanterns during our approach, and as we enter the canyon they blink from a moat. Fifteen feet of snow have pulled back from the west side of a boulder, forming a pocket; a bunch of kids are tucked into it, talking. They greet us as we walk past.

“Where you headed?” Hans asks.

“The Middle!” a voice responds.

“Make sure you give ‘er up there, will you?” Hans calls out.

At the mouth of the Meadows we hang our sneakers from a stunted whitebark and change into ski boots. I wrestle with mine. I’m tired. I haven’t hiked, let alone skied, for weeks. The last time I skied the Grand I hit a patch of frozen snow at the bottom of the Ford Couloir that scared me. My tips skittered at the start of a turn, and for a millisecond I thought my tails would follow. I don’t want to feel that way again.

Maybe I should bail, I think. I’m out of shape, Briggs’ route is completely exposed, you’re always soloing when you’re skiing—maybe I should just let these guys go on without me. I don’t want to hold them back.

You can always bail higher, comes another thought. Might as well get your nose into it, see how it feels.

I stand up when they stand up. All four of us start walking toward the Middle.

photo: Christian Beckwith

As we boot up the canyon I start to feel better. We change into crampons at the base of the headwall; the frozen surface is perfect for spikes, and as slope steepens, my breathing eases into a rhythm. The joy begins, that sensation of returning somewhere I’d not wanted to leave. Obligations fade. In their place, there’s alpenglow, hitting the east face of Cloudveil Dome and slowly spilling down the walls.

At the Jackson Hole Mountain Guides’ High Camp, we duck behind a rock to cache skins we haven’t used. Cairns dot the tops of flat boulders: one for Heather, one for Kathryn, one for Jim. The darker side of mountaineering.

The wind howls. I crouch in the lee of the boulder, fighting to retain warmth as I suck down water and a Gu.

“Let’s keep going, shall we?” Hans says.

We crampon onto the Teepe Glacier, out of shadow and into the day. A warmth suffuses me that has little to do with the sunshine and rising temperatures. Above lies the Otterbody, etched in ice, superb in its alpine architecture. Beside the Briggs Route, it’s the only line on the mountain Hans hasn’t skied.

At the Teepee Col we settle into our little worlds, hoods pulled up against the wind, the fatigue, the effort. We ditch the shovels, probes, extra bottles, extra food, then round the toe of the Underhill Ridge and peer up the Stettner.

“You ever climb this before?” I ask Hans.

“Once,” he says. “In winter. Before the chockstone fell out.”

The Grand has never been skied clean, and the Stettner is the great standing secret of the Tetons. A few years ago, the giant chockstone that guarded the top of the couloir from its connection to the slopes above exploded, a victim of global warming. Now, anytime you’re at a bar or a party and the conversation turns to skiing the Grand, the whispers start: Will it go?

Bill has gotten closest so far. In 1971, on metal-edged skis and fiberglass boots, he climbed the Stettner with Robbie Garrett, John Bolton and George Colon. Bill led all the pitches. He climbed the chockstone, then fixed a line that his partners could prussick, and that he could use on the descent.

His partners accompanied him to the diving board, a snow ridge that separates the Stettner from the east face. Bill continued solo to the summit, then clicked in and began his descent. He tip-and-tailed his way through a rockband at the base of the east face, gathered his partners, skied down to the rope, rapped the chockstone, then skied to the end of the Stettner. Nobody has ever done it cleaner.

Like every other Teton ski mountaineer, one of my cherished possessions is the poster of Bill’s tracks from ‘71. (Lou Dawson got his facts wrong: though Bill and his partners bivied on the Lower Saddle on June 15, Bill made his descent the next day.) It sits above my desk at work; I’m looking at it now as I type. I’ve studied those tracks of his for years.

I can also see the Grand from our home, and I’ve spent hours training my spotting scope on the east face.

That line: through the scope, it looks like the face necks down to a pinch in the rockband. To ski it, you’d have to thread those rocks and billy goat your way onto the diving board. To your right, the Stettner would plunge thousands of feet to the north fork of Garnet Canyon; to your left, 2,000 feet of air would separate you from the Teepe Glacier. The glacier is named for Theodor Teepe, the first person to die in the Tetons. If you blew a turn here, you’d add your name to the history books beside his.

The entry in the 1972 American Alpine Journal reads,

Grand Teton, First Ski Descent. William M. Briggs and Robbie Garrett ascended the Grand Teton on June 16 via the couloir between the Petzoldt and Underhill ridges, carrying skis. A single 100-foot rock pitch placed them on top of the Underhill ridge where unbroken snow slopes led to the summit. From the summit, the skis were then used to descend to the top of the Underhill ridge. A rappel over the cork [sic] pitch permitted an uninterrupted ski descent of the mountain, first down the couloir to the Black Dike, then over to the Teepe Snowfield and down to within 1000 feet of the valley floor where snow ended.

But now the chockstone is gone, and this is the biggest winter we’ve ever had. Whispers in bars, at parties, in the back of my mind: Will it go?

—————————–

photo: Christian Beckwith

Any of the warmth we generated on the Teepe quickly gets sucked out of our clothing in the shadowed couloir. The winter has filled it beyond any depths I’ve seen; where last year I frontpointed up ice runnels, now we climb quickly through snow. It’s a swathe, broad as a boulevard, and wide enough to ski; but it’s also locked in place by a frozen skein of ice, perhaps from the rain that came earlier in the week.

Heads down, helmets to crampons, we rise in unison. I glance to my left to check out the Chevy; to my surprise we’re already above it. Above us loom ice-grouted walls, mottled in tawny-colored rock and ribbons of gray. Wind funnels downward, blowing spindrift. We’re in the heart of the mountain.

A fifteen-foot ice bulge looks easy enough to solo. “I’ll have a look,” Hans says.

I can almost smell his excitement. As the angle kicks up, so do his endorphins. He bullies past me and into the bulge, the sheer delight of the climbing animating every swing of his tools.

Above the bulge the couloir continues, skiable, though narrow, and, needless to say, steep. A broken rockband rings the neck. Could you huck it? Perhaps—if you were twenty years younger than we are and this were at the Village and the landing weren’t a ten-foot-wide ice pinner with 1,000 feet of tight walls ending in a 1,500-foot cliff. Maybe the lads from the morning could do it, but we can’t.

One by one, we make our way over the rock bulge and continue toward the diving board. When we get to it, I poke my head over and look down the east face. The abyss is vast. I yank my head back, giddy with exhileration and vertigo. If you could bottle that emotion, you’d never have to work again.

I look toward the summit. The thin band of rocks that Bill tip-and-tailed through guards the entrance to the east-face snowfields.

“I’ll have a look,” says Hans. He’s moving before the words are out of his mouth.

From our airy perch, the exposure is awesome. Far below, the valley is budding in luminous green. I marvel at the view to the south: Buck, Nez Perce, Cloudveil, the South Teton, all plastered in snow. Ordinarily, the Glacier Route on the Middle is angled and wildly steep, its flutings directed by the underlying topography. Today, it’s all white. It looks as if someone has coated the route with foam from an enormous hose.

“What do you think, Martin?” I ask.

Martin doesn’t say anything. He’s gazing toward the Wind River Mountains to the east.

Hans is above, digging around in a thin clump of rocks for an anchor that we can use on the descent. We already know we’re going to need it. I try to visualize the poster above my desk, and the view of the route from my window at home. Did Bill ski through this section?

The east face rises above us like a tsunami of snow, frozen in time, about to break on our heads. High on the mountain, we’re right where we like it, cut off from everything in life that usually matters. Families, work, mortgages, phone bills—they’re as remote to us now as this face will be when I return to work tomorrow.

A gust of wind rattles my step. I’m forced to stop moving just to stay upright. The winds have been picking up all morning, and the forecast calls for them to increase throughout the day. I think of what Bill wrote: “Gusts of wind made balance uncertain….”

One step; rest; another step. Martin and I take turns breaking trail, and soon enough the top appears.

The summit is coated in meringue profusions of rime and snow. Everything’s white. Clouds gather and break. Martin and I click axes. A smile steals onto his face.

When Dan and Hans arrive, we eat, drink, layer. The first time I skied the Grand, the elation lasted for weeks. How long did it last for Bill? And what could he possibly have felt when he stood here, forty years ago, his partners awaiting him on the diving board far below?

“I’d planned very carefully,” Bill wrote of his descent, “but you can’t predict everything. I didn’t know just how steep that skiing would be—it was really steep—and I didn’t know how much the snow was going to sluff off when I traversed across.”

We ski off the summit and down a hundred feet, tucking into an alcove that’s sheltered from the wind. Conversation is limited; we’ve all got our own thoughts for company as we ready for the descent.

I click into my bindings. As I lock the toe piece of my Dynafits… snap! A shard of brown plastic explodes from the binding and pops unceremoniously onto the snow.

Shit! My binding’s broken? Here? Now?

Martin calmly surveys my panic, then walks over to take a look. “You’re alright,” he reassures me. He snaps the binding forward again. “You’ve just overextended the toe piece.”

“Are you sure?” I ask. His eyes are hidden behind polarized glasses. I don’t know him well enough to read his features.

“Yes,” he says. There is no inflection in his voice. “No problem.”

I look down at my broken toe piece, then over to the east face. I hope he’s right.

Far off to the south we hear hooting. It’s the guys from the morning, on the summit of the Middle. Hans hoots back. I wonder if they can see us as well as we can see them.

Martin inches onto the face. Like Dan, he lives near sea level. Unlike Dan, he has logged 6,000-foot days all spring. The two of them skied Mont Blanc six weeks ago. That was the last time Dan got out.

Clouds blow in, enveloping us. When I last skied the mountain, the same thing happened: the clouds came in, and we remained in the alcove for two hours waiting for the snow to corn up. It never did, and in the bottom of the Ford my tips skittered. That’s the feeling I’m thinking of now.

Martin drops into the void. The clouds close around him. I look at Dan and Hans, both older than me, both still charging. Between the four of us, we’ve got nearly two centuries of living under our belts. I don’t know whether to be consoled by the thought, or appalled at how ridiculous it is that we’re up here at all.

photo: Christian Beckwith

When Bill began his turns from the summit, the temperatures had already risen well above freezing, turning the neve into wet, heavy corn. “The snow above Ford’s Couloir was good for a few turns,” he wrote. “Then I broke through, the skis sank about a foot into the snow unexpectedly, and caused my first fall. I fell downhill, quickly rolled over, and stood up on the skis again. From there on the snow was deep corn but quite skiable.”

One by one my partners disappear. My turn.

The upper part of the east face is not steep; only the knowledge of the consequences of your turns, should you blow one, remind you of its danger. Bill fell—twice—and recovered, but that doesn’t mean you should make a habit of it.

I ski out of the envelope. Hans and Martin are perched at the top of the Ford, chatting as if they were at a coffeeshop. Martin’s as comfortable here as if he’s been climbing in the Tetons his whole life.

I look at Hans: his craggy features are more deeply lined than they were 15 years ago when I first met him, but he still looks like he was hewn from granite. I can tell by the way he’s moving his hands that he’s alive with the position and the adventure. “It’s skiing on the moon,” he’d said to me, the first time I’d skied the Grand. We’re on the surface of it now.

I peek into the Ford. The walls of the couloir offer a kind of womb-like solace. I swivel my head toward our line. Only the mountains in the foreground break up the vertical mile between us and Jackon’s Hole far below. Though the result of a fall on the Briggs Route would be the same as they would be in the Ford, the exposure—and thus, the mind-trickery—is far greater here.

The exposure is what gets you. It scurries into your thoughts, weaving itself around your breathing as you ski. If you let it, it will wrap everything in a sticky web of doubt.

With a swallow, I turn my tips toward the green valley floor.

One by one we leapfrog and drop, making decisions wordlessly, in fluid expressions of movement and choice.

“Shortage of breath and strength forced me to make rather large turns down what can be called the upper Petzoldt Ridge,” wrote Bill. “This got a little narrow between the cornice of Ford’s Couloir and the rocks. I actually skied into the rock at the narrowest place.”

We ski toward Bill’s rocks. As we do, the angle steepens.

Martin is already at the anchor that Hans built on the way up, setting up the rappel, when I reach the others. They’re sidestepping toward the anchor. I visualize the poster above my desk.

Bill skied this?

Suddenly, I’m uncomfortable. Burnt Wagon Gulch far below tugs at my focus. I fight the feeling that I shouldn’t be here. Thoughts of my daugher, rolling toward me in her Tot Rider on our cork kitchen floor, come to me now.

I begin to sidestep. I try to make each move as solid and precise as I can.

When I reach the anchor, Dan hands me his runner, and I clip into it, take my pack off and extricate the rope. Soon Martin’s rappelling toward the diving board, bypassing the tips-and-tails variant Bill used to reach his waiting partners.

At the top of the Stettner, the rain crust remains frozen, and the couloir below is locked in shadow. Bill skied this, too.

Rap, downclimb, rap, downclimb. Soon enough, we’re at the Teepe Col. As we collect our cache of gear, a levity begins to work itself into our laughter. It will last for days, maybe weeks. It’s why I’m addicted.

We regain our frozen skins at the JHMG camp, then link turns for thousands of feet through increasingly wet, heavy snow, down the headwall, through the Meadows, toward the Platforms. The lads are in their moat; they hoot as we ski past.

“Did you give ‘er?” shouts Hans.

“Hell yeah, we did?” one shouts back. “The Glacier Route!”

“Good on ya!” Hans calls over his shoulder. I laugh as I ski past.

We were young once too.

—————————–

photo: Christian Beckwith

An hour and a beer after returning to the parking lot, we’re at the airport, dropping Dan and Martin off at their plane.

I shade my eyes and look up at the Grand. A backdrop of clouds is gathering to the west. Tomorrow the mountains will be socked in again, the window closed on spring skiing once more.

I think of the poster. After his descent, Bill called Virginia Huidekooper, homesteader, pilot and the founder of the Jackson Hole News. Virginia rushed to the airport, jumped in her plane and flew past the Grand, snapping photos of Bill’s tracks as she went. The results have inspired us for years.

“You know, it would be pretty awesome if you flew by the face on the way out and took a photo of our line,” I suggest.
“Can’t,” says Dan.  “Regulations won’t allow it.”

It’s a shame. I would have loved to have seen a photo of our tracks; I would have loved to have framed it, and hung it on my wall next to Bill’s. But regulations won’t allow it, and besides: Bill’s tracks would make ours look like what they were.

We made some great turns up there on Bill’s route, and we had a fine adventure. I like to think that Martin’s first outing in the Tetons left an impression on him that will bring him back, and Dan added a classic tick to an already great alpine resume.

But in the end, each one of us knows the truth: we were just four old guys up there yesterday, out there for the fun of it, following in the tracks of a legend.

Re-posted with permission from Christian Beckwith, founding editor of  the Alpinist Magazine. See more photos and read more of his stories on OuterLocal.

VertFest is back -  bigger and better than ever!

Come join us for 2 days of clinics, demos, films and of course the biggest rando rally in the Northwest!  It all begins on Saturday February 12th at Alpental with Ski Photography clinics with Grant Gunderson and Jason Hummel.  Sidecoutnry Adventure Skiing with pros and guides from Pro Guiding Service; other clinics will include Advance Beacon Skills and Snow Pack analysis.

Once the fun is over on the mountain, come join us for the Backcountry Film Festival at the North Bend theater in the evening.   There will be awesome gear raffles, a chance check out the latest product showcased by our sponsors and time to enjoy a beer and food in our beer garden and oh course some great backcountry films!

Sunday the 13th is race day, so don’t drink too much on Saturday at the film fest!

For more details checkout the official VertFest Facebook page for all the up-dates, details and info as it becomes available!

Get ready for ‘HurtFest’ 2011…same Vert, more Fest!

Find more articles by Martin and other IFMGA Test Team guides here on VertiCulture. Martin is a Swiss Trained IFMGA guide living in the Pacific Northwest and is the owner of ProGuiding Service, North Bend, WA.

Declaration of Mountain Travel: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

I have been in the guiding business for just about 20 years now. I would be lying if I said that I became a mountain guide to interact with a large diversity of people. I simply wanted to go to the mountains and needed some type of job that would make this possible. Being from the Valais in the Swiss Alps made becoming a mountain guide seem like a logical conclusion. What I did not know then was that some of my best friendships would arise from people who were so-called “clients” of mine.

Not all of my clients became friends, but certainly a lot of them seem to live very interesting lives that have captured my attention in many a hut or tent. I have had the pleasure to roam the mountains with doctors, surgeons, dirt bags, lawyers, carpenters, accountants, nurses, teachers, scientists, physicists, CEO’s, CFO’s, (and SOB’s), house wives, cops, marketing managers, engineers, restaurant managers, slackers, industry reps, photographers, software developers, electricians, construction workers, movie producers, fighter pilots, marines, home builders, and many more. They come from a large diversity of socioeconomic backgrounds, though most of them make a decent living. I have been with these people on short trips, long trips, trips that were casual or where we all were scared, where the weather was on our side or where we were not invited into the mountains. I have been quietly observing these people for many years now and how they adapt to the unpredictable situations that the mountains will throw at them. Many of them get taxed to their maximum physical and emotional ability and very quickly their true colors start shining through.

Martin, in Norway, 2008

Once we make the commitment to go into the mountains, we all get reduced to pretty much the same class. What we want needs to be carried on our backs and [that reality is where] the first switch occurs. In the “civilized world” we generally acquire more goods and services to make our lives more comfortable and better. Of course, once you have to carry all your belongings on your back, the story changes almost instantly. We start paying attention to what we really need and what we could possibly leave behind. Once this switch has been made, I have seen many of my clients experience some sense of liberation. The mountains of the Pacific Northwest are extra special that way, since there are no huts, helicopters, gondolas or porters to help out. But even in a place like the Alps with its amazing infrastructure, the story does not change all that much. Once we leave the last gondola behind, we still have to carry our belongings from one hut to the next on our very own backs. We are all pretty much the same that way, no matter what our background may be.

We keep returning to the mountains because we have experienced a great sense of freedom and fairness out there and have created some of the happiest memories of our lives. And, as I was writing this short piece, I realized that this thought sounded curiously similar to the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I wonder if Jefferson, Franklin, Chase and company would have liked ski touring?

Also, huge thank you to all the participants, spectators and volunteers who made this event a success and the post-race party such a good time.

Race results and photos can be found on our VertFest site.

Check out The Snow Troopers site for more videos, including posts from their current trip up in Alaska.

Hope to see you all out there next year for the 5th Annual VertFest,

Cheers,

Racer # 659, aka the turkey.

Our well intended photo shoot for Outdoor Research, which was to take us around the Fitzsimmons and Spearhead Range in the Southern BC Coast Range, seemed ill-fated. Some of our athletes got injured a few days before the trip and now the forecast called for arctic temperatures that would render video and photo assignments a real chore.

It is easy to loose momentum when plans need to be changed for the third time. “Let’s just do it another time” seems like a very inviting option – and sometimes it is the best option.  In our case, it was not. We certainly did not seem invited to the Spearhead Traverse. We might have been tolerated out there, as long as we were willing to deal with the 20degrees below Fahrenheit temperatures that had been forecasted.  After another weather check, we concluded that we had made the 5 hour journey into BC to get into position for a trip that actually made most sense in our own backyard.

Snoqualmie Pass. Hmmm. Not very exotic… But after all it was our backyard and here we seemed invited. Cold, but acceptable temps, heaps of fresh powder, excellent stability, and a brilliant forecast. The crew was set to go at that moment and chances were good that we would not be able to coordinate everyone’s schedule again in the near future.

There was still that lingering hesitation about the actual destination. But I was confident. The immediate terrain west and north of Snoqualmie Pass is quite rugged and has surprised many. And so I met up with well known photographer Grant Gunderson, fellow Pro Guiding Service guide Erica Engle and Outdoor Research’s Keith Karlick at my gear shop in North Bend, WA.  Keith handed out the pertinent garments for the shoot, we went through a final gear check, and off we were to Snoqualmie Pass.

Cold temperatures awaited us in the parking lot and we were glad that it was not any colder. What followed is exactly what mountain memories are made of. I won’t bore you with stories of cold feet, insane views, beautiful touring, steep couloirs, relentless blower pow, sweating and freezing at the same time or the mediocre instant coffee that seemed pretty good in a frost covered tent.

I will say this though; Outdoor Research’s immediate backyard is amazing. Snoqualmie Pass’s terrain is rugged, transition-intensive, spectacular, and accessible. The reason why it has found a following over the years is that it demands respect. You can keep learning here. You won’t get bored.  Certain tours around here get done only once or twice a year because they are simply too committing and too big. Others are just hard enough and so spectacular that they have turned into classics. They add real value to the Seattle ski tourer’s life. You can summit over a dozen ski touring peaks here as day objectives, many more than that if you are willing to sleep a night outside.  I know very few people who have summited them all.

There are not a lot of places like this backyard where you can go and ski a wild couloir in the morning, go to work in the afternoon, then go out for a great dinner by the beach with your spouse in the evening before heading to the Opera (not that I have been in the Opera lately…)

So there we were on Snoqualmie Pass, touring and skiing around in perfect snow, perfect stability and visibility. We were invited – clearly. Not much thought was wasted on the Spearhead Traverse anymore. We spent a few days reconnecting with an old friend we thought we knew so well already. Similar to when you miss a flight and end up stopping over at a friend’s house because he is there, there’s the glaringly realization is that your old friend is actually a very cool person and, darned, you really should try to keep in touch.

The Spearhead Traverse is just another great place that we did not get to this time. Because the mountains are in charge, we ended up hanging out with our old buddy Snoqualmie Pass. What great get-together.